Homes there are, we are sure, that are no homes: the home of the very poor man, and another which we shall speak to presently. Crowded places of cheap eai, and the benches of ale-houses, if they could speak, might bear mournful testimony to the first. To them the very poor mas for an image of the home, which he ot find at home. For a starved grate, and a sty firing, that is not enough to keep alive the natural heat in the fingers of so many shivering children with their mother, he finds in the depth of winter always a blazih, and a hob to warm his pittance of beer by. Instead of the clamours of a wife, made gaunt by famishing, he meets with a cheerful attendance beyond the merits of the trifle which he afford to spend. He has panions which his home denies him, for the very poor man has no visitors. He look into the goings on of the world, and speak a little to politics. At home there are no politics stirring, but the domestic. All is, real or imaginary, all topics that should expand the mind of man, and ect him to a sympathy with general existence, are crushed in the abs sideration of food to be obtained for the family. Beyond the price of bread, news is senseless and imperti. At home there is no larder. Here there is at least a show of plenty; and while he cooks his lean scrap of butchers meat before the on bars, or munches his humbler cold viands, his relishing bread and cheese with an onion, in a er, where no one reflects upon his poverty, he has sight of the substantial joint providing for the landlord and his family. He takes an i in the dressing of it; and while he assists in removing the trivet from the fire, he feels that there is such a thing as beef and cabbage, which he was beginning tet at home. All this while he deserts his wife and children. But what wife, and what children? Prosperous men, who object to this desertion, image to themselves some tented family like that which [p 264] they go home to. But look at the tenance of the poor wives who folloersecute their good man to the door of the public-house, which he is about to enter, when something like shame would restrain him, if stronger misery did not induce him to pass the threshold. That face, ground by want, in which every cheerful, every versable li has been long effaced by misery, is that a face to stay at home with is it more a woman, or a wild cat? alas! it is the face of the wife of his youth, that once smiled upon him. It smile no longer. What forts it share? what burthens it lighten? Oh, `tis a fihing to talk of the humble meal shared together! But what if there be no bread in the cupboard? The i prattle of his children takes out the sting of a mans poverty. But the children of the very poor do not prattle. It is none of the least frightful features in that dition, that there is no childishness in its dwellings. Poor people, said a sensible old o us once, do n up their children; they drag them up. The little careless darling of the wealthier nursery, in their hovel is transformed betimes into a premature refleg person. No one has time to da, no ohinks it worth while to coax it, to soothe it, to toss it up and down, to humour it. There is o kiss away its tears. If it cries, it only be beaten. It has beeily said that "a babe is fed with milk and praise." But the aliment of this poor babe was thin, unnourishing; the return to its little baby-tricks, and efforts to eention, bitter ceaseless ation. It never had a toy, or knew what a coral meant. It grew u