Before the masters' tyranny
   Shall rule our rights and laws,
We'll have another strike, my boys,
   If ever we have cause.
                Chorus—So now, &c.

These ballads vary constantly to meet the
exigencies of passing events. A disgraceful
riot at Blackburn, in which some inoffensive
persons were attacked for cotton-spinners, is
celebrated by the Prestonian operatives in the
following epic strain:—-

The Preston manufacturers
    To Blackburn they did go,
To the Black Bull in Darwen Street,
     Their tyranny to show.
The gallant troops of Blackburn
     Full soon did find it out,
They sent broken bones to Preston,
     And the rest run up the spout.
          Hurrah! my boys, hurrah!
              I'd have them be aware.
          Or the cotton lords of Preston
              Will be drove into a snare.

The tyrants of proud Preston
    Have returned home with shame,
Beat out by bold Blackburn,
    Who have won the laurel's fame.
To subdue the foes of Preston,
     Their minds are firmly bent,
To throw off the yoke of bondage,
      And restore the ten per cent.
             Hurrah! my boys, &c.

Tyrtæus wakened not more enthusiasm in
the breast of his auditors, than these simple
doggrels do among the rude but earnest
crowds which throng to hearken to them.
In one of the committee rooms, the work of
distributing the funds volunteered by the
operatives of the neighbouring towns towards
the support of their brethren is going on.
These funds are collected by six committees,
and are distributed for the relief of a little
more than fourteen thousand of the hands.
Since the commencement of the strike
upwards of twenty-four thousand pounds have
been contributed by the poor for the support
of the poor. Each committee relieves its own
hands. The Power-loom Weavers' Committee
cares for the interests of the weavers, the
winders, the warpers, the twisters, the dressers,
the helpers, and the reachers; the
Spinners' and Self-actors' Committee sees to
the spinners, the minders, the piecers, and
the bobbiners; the card-room hands have
their committee, and the throstle spinners,
the tape machine sizers, and the power-loom
overlookers theirs; each collects and
distributes its funds without in any way interfering
with the others. The proceedings in
the room we peep into are quiet, orderly, and
business-like.

Again we sally out into the dingy streets,
and find that the evening is closing in over
them. More knots of " lads and lasses'' idling
about the corners, more bands of singers,
solitary famine-stricken faces, too, plead
mutely for bread, and even worse expedients
are evidently resorted to for the purpose of
keeping body and soul together: in Preston,
as elsewhere, the facilities for crime are too
abundant, and we repeat to ourselves those
lines of Coleridge:—

Oh I could weep to think, that there should be
Cold-bosomed lewd ones, who endure to place
Foul offerings on the shrine of misery,
And force from Famine the caress of Love.

Ignorance of the most deplorable kind is at
the root of all this sort of strife and
demoralizing misery. Every employer of labour
should write up over his mill door, that
Brains in the Operative's Head is Money in
the Master's Pocket.

MIASMA.

Near a cotter's back door, in a murky lane,
Beneath steaming dirt and stagnant rain,
Miasma lay in a festering drain.

A home of clay, cemented with slime.
He artfully built—for he hated lime—
'Midst slop, and rot, and want, and crime.
He lay securely, biding his time.

Though a voice cried, pointing out his lair,
"Run, run, for Miasma lies hidden there!"
It died unheeded away on the air.

Living and breathing the filth among,
Miasma's home was secure and strong,
And the cotter did nothing; for nothing went
        wrong.

And his children would play by the poisonous pool,
For they liked it much better than going to school.

Then Miasma arose from his reeking bed,
And around the children his mantle spread—
"To save them from harm," Miasma said.

But they sighed a last sigh. He had stolen their
      breath.
And had wrapped them in Cholera's cloak of death.

TRAITS AND STORIES OF THE
HUGUENOTS.

I HAVE always been interested in the
conversation of any one who could tell me
anything about the Huguenots; and, little by
little, I have picked up many fragments of
information respecting them. I will just
recur to the well-known fact that, five years
after Henry the Fourth's formal abjuration of
the Protestant faith, in fifteen hundred and
ninety-three, he secured to the French
Protestants their religious liberty by the Edict of
Nantes. His unworthy son, however, Louis
the Thirteenth, refused them the privileges
which had been granted to them by this act;
and, when reminded of the claims they had,
if the promises of Henry the Third and Henry
the Fourth were to be regarded, he answered
that " the first-named monarch feared them,
and the latter loved them; but he neither