Leaving the weaver's cottage, the rain came on, and we sat a few minutes with a young shoemaker, who was busy at his bench, doing a cobbling job. His wife was lying ill upstairs. He had been so short of work for some time past that he had been compelled to apply for relief. He complained that the cheap gutta percha shoes were hurting his trade. He said a pair of men's gutta percha shoes could be bought for 5s. 6d., whilst it would cost him 7s. 6d. for the materials alone to make a pair of men's shoes of. When the rain was over, we left his house, and as we went along I saw in a cottage window a printed paper containing these words, "Bitter beer. This beer is made of herbs and roots of the native country." I know that there are many poor people yet in Lancashire who use decoctions of herbs instead of tea--mint and balm are the favourite herbs for this purpose; but I could not imagine what this herb beer could be, at a halfpenny a bottle, unless it was made of nettles. At the cottage door there was about four-pennyworth of mauled garden stuff upon an old tray. There was nobody inside but a little ragged lass, who could not tell us what the beer was made of. She had only one drinking glass in the place, and that had a snip out of the rim. The beer was exceedingly bitter. We drank as we could, and then went into Pump Street, to the house of a "core-maker," a kind of labourer for moulders. The core-maker's wife was in. They had four children. The whole six had lived for thirteen weeks on 3s. 6d. a week. When work first began to fall off, the husband told the visitors who came to inquire into their condition, that he had a little money saved up, and he could manage a while. The family lived upon their savings as long as they lasted, and then were compelled to apply for relief, or "clem." It was not quite noon when we left this house, and my friend proposed that before we went farther we should call upon Mrs G_, an interesting old woman, in Cunliffe Street. We turned back to the place, and there we found "In lowly shed, and mean attire, A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name, Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame." In a small room fronting the street, the mild old woman sat, with her bed in one corner, and her simple vassals ranged upon the forms around. Here, "with quaint arts," she swayed the giddy crowd of little imprisoned elves, whilst they fretted away their irksome schooltime, and unconsciously played their innocent prelude to the serious drama of life. As we approach the open door-- "The noises intermix'd, which thence resound, Do learning's little tenement betray; Where sits the dame disguised in look profound, And eyes her fairy throng, and turns her wheel around."