Staunton spectator, and general advertiser. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 183?-1849, 1846-09-10

CHI. PARLoE MAGAZINE.
was constantly meeting in London evidences Of
the miserable condition of the poor Though there
Is law torbddlDg street begging, it prevent
the poor wretches from asking for bread | was
struck with the character of many of the beggars,
that accosted me, unlike those had been accus-
TONED to meet. had just come from Italy, where
the whining tone, pitinul look, and drawing e.me
miserable !" '.fnne!" ''per carita!'' and the os-
tentatlous display of deformed limbs, had rendered
me somewhat hardened to all such appeals. But
here it was quite different. Men of stout frames,
upright bearing, manly voices, would tell me in a
few plain words that they were out OF work, and
that their families starving!
One pleasant afternoon, as | was strollinr M
Ludgate Hill, filled with the multitude, saw a
sight shall never forget; it even arrested the Lon
doners, accustomed as they to all kinds of mise
ry, and Il group was collected on the walk Two
children, boy and girl, the latter should Judge
about eight, and the former five six years of age
sat on the Tagging pressed close against the wall
wholly unconscious of the passing multitude. In
their dress, appearance, and all, they seemed to
| have been just taken from damp, dark cellar
where they had been for months deprived of LIGHT.
and almost of sustenance. Their clothes were in
rags, black, damp, and ready to drop from their
crouchng bodies; their checks were perfectly CO.
lorless, as II beached for long time in the dews Of
dungeon, and the little boy was evidently DIVING
How they came there one could tell /; but there
sat the sister struggling eebly to sustain her sink
ing brother. The poor little fellow sat with his
head waving to and fro, and his eyes closed, while
his sister, to whom some one had given a morseI of
bread, was crowding the food into his mouth con-
scious that famine was the cause Of his illness The
spectators, moved by the touching spectacle rained
money into her lap but she did not even degn to
pick 1t up, or thank them, but, with her pale face
bent III the deepest anxiety on her brother kept
forcing the bread into his mouth. The tears came
unbldden to my eyes, and also threw nv mite of
charity into her lap and FASTENED away. OH how
strange it is that men will! roll in wealth and every
day throw away what would make hundreds happy
and yet feel no rcproaches of conscience for their
acts! We hear much now-a days of the horrors of
war; but there is battlefield which exhibits
such woe, and suffering, and mortality, as the
streets, and lanes, and cellars of London Even
our preachers are the wrong track in their efforts
to ameliorate the condition of our race. 1t is not
war, nor ambition, nor nemperance, nor any of
the great vices openly condemned that lies at the
bottom of human misery 1t is coyctousncss-th
thirst FOR gold, which fills the church too much as it
does the world-aye, much that it cannot be
touched by the hand Of dlsciplino-that makes our
| earth place Of tears. Those very vices, against
which such anathemas are hurled, grow out OF this
very coveousneSs, that is treated imperlection
rather than crime. The place that Christ cave it
no one dare give it, and man is left to mourn
II povertv and want and all the hateful passions of
the wrcched left to rise up in rebellion and scofn
against the heartless religion that condemns their
vices and urges them to repentance, while it leaves
them and their children to starye .sThe Ch,,rcb
par excellence, of England may treble her prelates
and her Incomes build countless cahedrals and pray
for the salvation of the world till doomsday; but so
long she roos the poor and neglects the physical
condition Of the suffering. she will pray to deaf
God. "To visit the widow and the fatherless in
their distress" is ono of the chief duties Of religion
4 L ID
the contrary, she sends the 1.-THE collector in her
| place.