But this is not the worst part of the business. Were any person to be admitted into the “elaboratorical pandemonium” of a pastry-cook or a confectioner—were he to see the disgusting appearance of the vessels in which they manufacture their articles—many of them containing the ingredients with perfect rims of cupreous matter surrounding them—were he to regale his eyes with the sight of the most rancid butter bleaching for the purpose of making pastry, as I have seen, I am sure that he would hold the productions of the confectioner and pastry-cook’s shop in abhorrence, and would not consider Dr. Paris’s denunciation of them, in his useful work on Diet, p. 247, as “an abomination.” A lady with whom I am acquainted, and who lodged at different times in the houses of confectioners and pastry-cooks, had so good an opportunity of witnessing _the cleanliness and wholesomeness_ of their operations, that for many years she has not tasted any commodity that comes out of their manufactories; and I verily believe that she would die of hunger before she could induce herself to allow a scrap of their _delicacies_ to enter her mouth. But these “artists” not only endanger the health and lives of their customers by the carelessness and nastiness of their conduct in their compositions, but they employ preparations of copper, and also of red lead in colouring their fancy sweet-meats. In the preparations of sugar-plumbs, comfits, and other kinds of confectionary, especially those sweat-meats of inferior quality, frequently exposed to sale in the open-streets, for the allurement of children, Mr. Accum, p. 288, informs us, that the greatest abuses are committed by means of powerful poisons. The white comfits, called sugar-peas, are chiefly composed of a mixture of sugar, starch and Cornish clay (a species of very white pipe-clay); and the red sugar drops are usually coloured with the inferior kinds of vermillion or sap green, and often, instead of those pigments, with red lead and copper. As a yellow colour, cromate of lead is used, and prussiate of iron as a blue. The stuff called “_hard rock_,” “_hard bake_,” “_white lollypop_,” and other baby attracting names, is of an equally deleterious quality. Nor are the ginger-bread or sweet cakes of the ginger-baker less injurious to the health of children, especially the “gilt ginger-bread” as it is termed, which is covered with Dutch leaf,—a composition consisting of an alloy of copper and zinc, or brass and copper. Indeed, all parents should, as the author of “THE ORACLE OF HEALTH AND LONG LIFE” observes, anxiously instruct their children never to buy any thing offered for sale in the streets: among my acquaintance more instances than one have occurred in which lamentable results would have been the consequence had not timely aid been afforded the little sufferers. And for the same reason it seems necessary to caution parents never to give painted toys