pute, or gossip. All this going and coming of buyers and sellers is noiseless. Many bakers ride about London in vehicles so rapid, elastic, and elegant, that an Italian dandy would not disdain to appear in one of them at the Corso. The butchers may be frequently met with, conveying the meat to their distant customers, mounted on fiery steeds, and dashing along at full gallop. A system like this requires inviolable order, and a scrupulous division of time. For this reason there are clocks and watches everywhere,-on every steeple, and sometimes on all the four sides of a steeple; in the pocket of every one; in the kitchen of the lowest journeyman. This is a nation working to the stroke of the clock, like an orchestra playing to the "time" of the leader, or a regiment marching to the sound of the drum. Nothing can be more ingenious than the various ways in which the English contrive to mark the division of time. In some machines, for example, at every certain number of strokes, the machine rings a bell to inform the workmen of the fact. The tread-mill, introduced for a punishment and an employment in the houses of correction, also rings a bell every time it makes a certain number of revolutions. In the wool-carding manufactory at Manchester there is a species of clock to ascertain if the watchman, whose duty it is to guard against fire, has kept awake all the night. If, every quarter of an hour, he omits to pull a rope which hangs from the wall outside, the clock within notes down. and reveals his negligence in the morning. One shopman, therefore, in London, supplies the place of forty or fifty servants : the shops may be distant, and remotely situated, without any inconvenience. The shopkeepers themselves do not remain idle, and, instead of men, in some places lads or children are employed. The newspapers are circulated from house to house at a penny an hour; the carrier is a boy of ten or twelve years old, active as a sprite, exact as time, who brings them and takes them away. By this system, the servants remain at home, with nothing to divert them from their occupations. The servant maids, especially, very seldom go out during all the week, until the arrival of Sunday sets them at liberty for three or four hours. It follows, also, that an English family has no need of keeping any great store of provisions in the house; there is in con 44 ITALIAN EXILE IN ENGLAND. sequence less occupation of room, and less occasion for capital, less care, less waste, less smell, and less wear and tear. TEA GARDENS. Sunday-Amusement-Parochial and other Schools-Newspapers-Taverns-Politics-Love of Flowers-Tea Gardens -Religion-Swearing-Mechanics-Gymnastics - Bravery of Artificers-Division of Labour-Libraries-Knowledge among the People - Domestic Comfort-Steam Engines Competition with Manual Labour. "The seventh day this, the jubilee of man, London! right well thou know'st the day of prayer, And smug apprentice, gulp their weekly air; How to get through the supremely dull and wearisome English Sunday is always a |