82 NEW CHIMNEY-SWEEPING ACT. 



harm than good. Tantum ne noceas, &c. Let 

 us remember that we are all creatures of habit ; 

 and that custom has been pronounced our second 

 nature. He who has been well trained to 

 labour, feels neither irksomeness nor pain in 

 the performance of his ordinary task \ although 

 the spectator who has been brought up in a 

 different manner, might fancy him to be both 

 weary and miserable. 



We are too often misled by appearances, and 

 too apt to judge of another person's feelings by 

 our own. I know one, who, both in winter and 

 in summer, rises at half-past three o'clock in 

 the morning. He takes his nightly repose in a 

 room not over and above replete with dormitory 

 comforts ; and I have heard him say, that this 

 custom is neither hard nor unpleasant to him. 

 Still, another person, who studies personal 

 comfort, and who likes his feather-bed, would 

 consider it to be any thing but comfortable. 

 So it is with the little chimney-sweep. He has 

 been pitied for imaginary hardships ; and at last 

 driven, by Act of Parliament, out of employ- 

 ment, for supposed miseries to which he had 

 been a stranger. 



To see, begrimed with soot, a pretty face, on 



