establishment. Well, my masters have become
great, rich folk since then; and I, though a
trifle more comfortable than I was twenty years
ago, am substantially little better than when I
started. The mill is vastly improved; work is
lighter; I go to my looms through a filigree
doorway— but I don't get on. Master is
filling his vast granaries, while I am still working
to get enough for the oven at the week's
end. I am nomore than a crank of the
engine. I am part of the mill. I and the devil
that beats the cotton, are on an equality. I
must be pressed to work cheaply, as the cotton
must be got cheaply. Old Fox must sell
cottons for the Indians at the price his neighbour
asks; or, if possible, at a price a little
under that of his neighbour.

Now, in justice to wife and brats, I am bound
to see that the value of my labour is not
depreciated, in order to give Old Fox an advantage
in the market. I and Old Fox are not on speaking
terms; so I turn to my companions, and we
concert together how we shall make our weight
felt. And here we are, a little army looking
jealously, day by day, at your castle. A new
wing is about to be built; terraces are being
raised; the old man is doing well. We, also,
must get a grain or two more, now that the
harvest is abundant. We have no compunction.
Old Fox is not our friend, we take it.

In this fashion, the operative looks out of his
cottage door, and talks at the owner's mansion,
so that in this model mill, with its perfect ventilation
and its wondrous machinery, I perceive
something that is not perfect. The iron, and
coal, and cotton are sound; the straps glide
smoothly enough about the wheels; but there is
a very complex machine at work hereabouts,
that creaks, and jars, and gets out of gear, as, I
think, I shall clearly indicate in future papers.

I am not unmindful, I trust, of my good
host's hospitality, because I peep into his
operatives' cottages, and ask them how it is with
them in the world. I am told that the fathers
of the majority of these great mill-owners
had not a five-pound note when they began
life. And I am told that they are the hardest
masters who were once operatives, because,
when operatives, they regarded masters as their
enemies. Become masters in their turn, they
are alive to the animosity of labour, and they
resent it. All successful men have not the noble
nature that made Stephenson shake hands with
a lady in her carriage, and then with an old
friend who was in her ladyship's livery.

OUR EYE-WITNESS AMONG ThE
STATUES.

IT is not long since that a gentleman of great
legal experience rose in the House of Commons,
and invited the attention of the government to
a certain monumental structure at the lower end
of Waterloo-place, which, consisting of boards
and scaffolding poles only, is calculated to gratify
the beholder with a prospective rather than a
present enjoyment; and which, while rich in
future promise, is, in the matter of immediate
satisfaction, a thought sterile and discouraging.
Reading of this learned member's question, and
of the answer made to it, which —as has
happened occasionally in other matters connected
with government—consisted of an assurance
that it was all right, and that there was nobody
to blame,—reading of these things, it naturally
suggests itself that it would be a good and
interesting thing to examine the comparative merits
of a London scaffolding and a London statue,
with a view to ascertaining whether on the
whole the former is not the more ornamental
structure of the two, and whether the legal
gentleman who put the question spoken of above
had not better have borne those ills he has, in
the shape of boards and poles, than fly to others
that he knows not of, in bronze or marble.

A good scaffolding is a very perfect and
complete work of art. It is a fair specimen of
human ingenuity, and in its admirable adaptation
to the end for which it is used, in its full
achievement of what it professes, is perfectly
satisfactory. Who remembers the structure by
which the Nelson column was placed in its
present position, and will not admit that that
symmetrically balanced composition with its invisible
joints, its wonderful combination of strength
with lightness, and graceful intricacy of spars,
was a much more agreeable object of
contemplation than the inconceivably foolish result
which it was raised to bring into existence?
Yes, a scaffolding is an inferior thing to a good
statue, but it is infinitely superior in beauty to
a bad one. Who would not be grateful to any
combination of boards that would environ and
screen from our miserable eyes the arch at the
top of Constitution-hill and its incredibly terrible
burden? Who would not be glad of anything
behind which the statue of Sir Charles Napier,
or that raised in Cavendish-square to the memory
of my Lord Bentinck, could be secreted? Is the
Jenner monument as good as a statue? Is the
august form of our late sovereign William IV.
(of glorious memory), as it appears in the street
named after him, anything like as beautiful as
the deal boards that might be at this moment
around it?

As a nation, we are admirable at a scaffolding.
There is, perhaps, no country that can beat us
at such erections. Why not, then, as is the
course of sensible men—who find out what they
can do, and do it—why not act thus nationally,
and erect a scaffolding whenever we wish to
commemorate a public event, or to raise a
monument to a public character?— "Subscriptions
will be received at the Bank of Messrs. Hoarding
and Son towards the expenses of raising a
scaffolding to commemorate the late gallant
conduct of Mr. Thomas Sayers. This work of art
will come from the atelier of Mr. Cubitt, and
will be a fine specimen of the ability of that
distinguished artist." Surely such an announcement
would be the signal for the collection of an
enormous fund. What a relief, too, this system
if raising monuments in wood and cordage,
instead of bronze and stone, would be to the