up; she has not to stint her appetite, that she may have a plurality of gowns ; she has not to soothe a hungry stomach with a bit of gauze, a yard or so of riband-any morsel of finery-that shall at least be the type, shall present a show, of a condition of comfort, although the cupboard shall 'remain empty for it. The ballad-singer, the charwoman, the maid-of-all-work, none of these-her more fortunate sisters are required by the hardness of their destiny to "be genteel." They live not, as it were, on the frontiers of higher society; they are never in a condition to be confounded with their betters. They have their marked, defined places in the world, with generally a sufficiency of means to compass their limited desires. The Dress-Maker may be in thought, in feeling,-nay, in education, one of the gentlest, noblest, meekest of her sex; and, with all these sensibilities, pine in genteel squalor-in "respectable" starvation. How many hundred such may, at this moment, be found in "stony-hearted" London!

Let us, however, "take a single victim;" let us present the Dress-Maker's Girl, but a year in her teens, compelled, it may be, to aid in the support of younger brothers and sisters. How many

bleak, savage winter mornings does she rise, and, with half-frozen fingers, put on her scanty clothes-all insufficient to guard her shrinking limbs from the frost, the wind, and rain-and with noiseless feet, that she may not disturb "any of the lodgers," creep down three pair of stairs, and, at six o'clock, pick her timid way through mud, and cold, and darkness, to the distant "work-room?" Poor, gentle thing!-now, hurrying on, fearing that she is five minutes too late, and now pausing, and creeping into a door-way, to let some staggering drunkard pass, roaring and reeling home. It may be, too, that this little creature was born in the lap of comfort was the pet, the hope, of a fireside-was the darling of a circle--the child of competence, of luxury. Death, however, has taken her father-the sole prop and stay of a house of plenty; and the widow, after struggling from year to year, has passed from bad to worse; and now, with four children-our little Dress-Maker's Girl the eldest-pines in a three-pair back room, whence, every morning, our young heroine, with a patience and a pensive sweetness-the gifts of early adversity -sallies forth to unremitting toil."

Gentle Reader-is this a false picture? Is this a coloured thing, tricked out to cozen sensibility?—the creation of a florid storywriter-the flimsy heroine of a foolish novel? Oh, no! do not think it at this moment, hundreds upon hundreds of the fairest and the most delicate human buds-of creatures who, born in the regions of May Fair, had been painted, and their portraits scattered through

the empire, as very triumphs of the "excelling hand of nature" -work twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours per day-for what? For just enough to prove how very little human nature may exist upon. To proceed.

Our little Dress-Maker has arrived at the "work-room." After two or three hours, she takes her bread and butter, and warm adulterated water, denominated tea. Breakfast hurriedly over, she works, under the rigid, scrutinising eye of a task-mistress, some four hours more; and then proceeds to the important work of dinner. A scanty slice of meat-perhaps, an egg-is produced from her basket: she dines, and sews again till five. Then comes again the fluid of the morning, and again the needle until eight. Hark! yes, that's eight now striking. "Thank heaven!" thinks our heroine, as she rises to put by her work, "the task for the day is done!"

At this moment, a thundering knock is heard at the door :- "The Duchess of Daffodils must have her robe by four to-morrow!"

Again the Dress-Maker's apprentice is made to take her place-again she resumes her thread and needle; and, perhaps, the clock is "beating one," as she again, jaded and half dead with work, creeps to her lodging, and goes to bed, still haunted with the thought that as "the work is very back," she must be up by five to-morrow.

Beautiful, and very beautiful, are the dresses at a drawing-room! Surpassingly delightful, as minutely described in the columns of "The Morning Herald," and "The Morning Post!" To the rapt imagination they seem woven of "Iris' woof;" or things manufactured by the Fairy Queen, and her maids of Honour: yet may imagination, if it will, see in the trappings the work of penury, of patient suffering, and scantily-rewarded toil. How many sighs from modest humble worth have been breathed upon that lace! How much of the heart-ache has gone to the sewing of that flounce! "All the beauty of the kingdom," says the Court Chronicler, for the thousandth time, 66 was at her Majesty's Drawing Room!" What! all the beauty in brocade, in satins, and in velvets? Is none left for humble gingham-none for homespun stuff? Oh, yes! beauty that has grown pale at midnight, that wealthy beauty might shine with richer lustre the next court day! Beauty that has pined and withered in a garret, that sister-beauty might be more beautiful in a carriage!

We have given the day's work of our little Dress-Maker's Girl. She has, however, certain glimpses of holidays: she is despatched to receive orders, to take home work; and, despite herself, if the weather be fine--if it be not her fate to trudge, ankle-deep in mud, with bandbox in one hand, and umbrella in the other-she cannot but pause at

shop-windows, and indulge in a day-dream that shall possess her of a few trinkets from the jeweller's, her eye unconsciously wandering towards the wedding-rings-at the next window a new bonnet-at the next, a gown for very great occasions.

Besides these little trespasses upon the time of her mistress, the Dress-Maker's Girl is but too apt to tarry and muse upon the playbills. She knows nearly all the actors and actresses, for she has seen most of them once; and, moreover, has her especial favourites in tragedy, comedy, and opera: will, in the work-room, publish her decided preference to Mr. A. over Mr. B.; and, in her own words, "thinks Mr. W. the dearest of men!" Marvels why Malibran could ever have died; and pronounces Mr. C. to be "a wonderful composer." These tastes, be it understood, gradually unfold themselves in the work-room, where, on certain occasions-particularly in the absence of the mistress and the forewoman-the whole round of arts and letters is criticised with no less fervour than freedom. The Dress-Maker's Girl will, for a certainty point out which is the best likeness among the ninety-nine portraits of that most ill-painted of ladies, her most gracious Majesty; at the same time hopes and trusts that no "filthy foreigner" will marry her; whilst she gives it as her private, but most stubborn opinion, that "there must be a sweetheart somewhere."

The Dress-Maker's Girl is a reader of novels. She thinks Bulwer divine, "especially if he's anything like that angel of a fellow that sits cross-legged to Leila;" but fears that Marryat is low. She sometimes wonders why Mr. Moore does not "do" some more "Melodies ;" and a minute after will speculate if a certain fashionable poet "is a man with a family."

The Dress-Maker's Girl has a profound secret—a secret hidden in the inmost recesses of her virgin heart. "A lieutenant of the Guards -(take care of that lieutenant)-such a pensive-looking, melancholy, elegant young man, kissed his hand to her twice in Pall Mall." This secret she has revealed to nobody except ten familiar friends. She learns a song-something about "A Soldier's Bride"-which she hums whilst working, unconscious of the tittering of her sistersempstresses; and only leaves off to blush and tell them "not to be so silly."

These, however, are green, sunny spots in the life of the DressMaker's Girl as she grows towards womanhood, years bring with them a deeper sense of her forlorn and unprotected condition; effacing her beauty, saddening her mind, and making her taste all the bitterness of that bitter morsel of bread earned by tasked needle-work.

Her position as an attendant on the wealthy and the great, her almost daily visits to the abodes of luxury, occasionally vex her rebel spirit; rising as it will against the insufficiency of twelve or fifteen shillings per week, for raiment, food, and lodging. A thousand and a thousand times, she wishes herself a washerwoman-a hop-picker-any drudge of the lowest class, not forced, by the necessity of a "genteel look," to submit to deadly privations; to stint herself in the humblest necessaries of life, that she may, in her external appearance, "do credit to the shop." Can there be a more forlorn, more pitiable condition than that of the Daily Sempstress, growing old and lonely on the wages of her ill-paid craft? Follow her to her room-the topmost nook of some old, gloomy house, in some gloomy court; survey the abode of penury; of penury, striving with a stoutness of heart, of which the world knows nothing, to put a bright face upon want; to smile with patience on the greatest, as on the pettiest privations. This is the Dress-Maker, long past her girlhood; the Sempstress, no longer out-stared in the street-followed for her beauty-flattered -lied to; tempted with ease and luxury, when her own home offers nothing but indigence and hardest labour. This is not the young, blushing creature, walking in London streets, her path full of pitfalls; the lawful prey of selfish vice-the watched-for prize of mercenary infamy. No; she has escaped all these snares; she has, in the innocence and constancy of her heart, triumphed over the seductions of pleasure: has, "with the wings of a dove," escaped the net spread for her by fiends with the faces of women. She has wasted the light-heartedness of her childhood, and the bloom of her youth, in daily, nightly toil; and arrived at middle age, she is still the working Sempstress-the lonely, faded spinster-the human animal vegetating on two shillings per diem. Is not this the fate of thousands in this our glorious metropolis?

And yet, how much worse, how much more terrible the destiny of thousands of others! of poor, unprotected creatures, with hearts in their bosoms once throbbing with the best and purest hopes, once yearning with the noblest and tenderest affections-creatures in whom the character of wife and mother might have shone with the brightest lustre-cast abroad and trodden on like way-side weeds: loathed and scorned by one sex; outraged, bullied by the other; until deceived, wounded, and exasperated nature rises against its wrongers; and, denaturalised in voice, face, and feeling, we cannot recognise the Dress-Maker's Girl-the modest, gentle thing, with blushing face and dewy eyes-in that screeching virago, that howling, raving Jezebel; now stamping in the impotence of drunkenness and rage, at

that stone-faced policeman; now tumbling, dead as a carcase, in the mire, and weeping maudlin tears of gin and vengeance! And why is this? What has worked this grievous transformation? What has effected this awful, this disgusting change? Alas! some ten-nine -seven- -years ago, temptation shewed its thousand gifts-apples of seeming gold, with ashes at the core-to the poor Dress-Maker ; proffered life-long ease, all the happiness and luxury enjoyed by her high-born sisters; and, to assist temptation, there was a yearning of love—a faith, an easy credence in the woman's heart, that made her not altogether selfish, calculating; whilst, on the other hand, there were incessant labour, and pinching economy, and-and-but the story is the story of hundreds; she fell, and

"The once-fallen woman must for ever fall!"

The modest, virgin flower is become the scoff of the multitude, the mockery of a mob.

Let us, however, leave this picture-the more terrible as it is from the life-to dwell upon the trials and annoyances of the Milliner's Girl in her daily vocation. What bursts of temper has she to meet, and, if she can, vanquish by smiling meekness! What arrogance what heartlessness of wealth, has she to encounter with placid, yea, with appealing looks, for faults-or fancied faults-not one of them her own! We own it; we have sometimes felt enraged at the coldblooded insolence with which women-most respectable people, too! -have rated their humbler sisters. In the other sex, a spirit of gallantry is apt to soften censure; but for a woman—a dress-maker, for instance- —a bonnet-maker-a lady's maid- —a housemaid, or a female cook-to be mercilessly scolded-to be abused with a seeming forgetfulness of all the charities of life, takes nothing short of a woman herself. Men are beaten out of the field by the force of feminine vituperation. ("Hard words," says the lady reader: "Hard, ma'am, but very true.")

Among many of the most annoying trials of life, the trial of a new dress by a wayward, aristocratic customer, or what is infinitely worse, by purse-proud ignorance, is not the least to the poor Dress-Maker's Girl, who may be commissioned to take the garment home. If there be a failing in a flounce, the slightest error in a sleeve, if a cuff be a hair's breadth too broad, or a thread too narrow, down will come a shower of hard words—and that, sometimes, from the prettiest, and seemingly the meekest of mouths-about the astounded head of the Dress-Maker, who with helpless looks for the omission of others, or, what is equally likely, for the forgetfulness or new whim of the