has nothing mysterious in its look. It
greatly resembles the thick stumpy end of a magnificent mould, done up
in a coloured card-jacket, and with a small thin wick, that gives just
a point of flame, and no more, by which to light another candle, if
necessary--of admirable service for this and all other purposes of a
common-place bedroom. Eccentric sleepers, who write Greek hexameters,
and fasten on poetic thoughts while the rest of the world are in
rational slumber, might object to the feebleness of this point of
light; but eccentricities need provisions of their own, and comets
have orbits to which the laws of the stars do not apply. For all
ordinary people, this thick candle-end is a delicious substitute for
the ghastly rush-light in its chequered cage, which threw strange
figures on wall and curtain, and gave nervous women the megrims. But
nothing more is known of Belmonts or night-lights; their birthplace,
and the manner of their making, are alike hidden from the outer world;
the uninitiated accept the arcana of tallow only in the positive form.
It is generally presumed that candles, in the abstract, come from some
unknown place in 'the City;' but how they are made, or who is employed
in their making, or how the workmen live in the grease-laden steam of
the factory, not one in a thousand would know if he could certainly
none would give himself any trouble to find out. Neither should we
ourselves have known, had not a little pamphlet, bearing the heading,
_Special Report by the Directors to the Proprietors of Price's Patent
Candle Company_, fallen into our hands. Holding the Report open on the
desk before us, we will now give to our readers the net result of the
moral doings of the factory.

In the winter of 1848, half-a-dozen of the boys employed in the candle
manufactory used to hide themselves behind a bench two or three times
a week, when work and tea were over, to practise writing on useless
scraps of paper picked up anyhow, and with worn-out pens begged from
the counting-house. Encouraged by the foreman of their department, who
begged some rough, movable desks for them, and aided by timely but not
oppressive prizes from the Messrs Wilson, and by the presence of Mr J.
P. Wilson, the little self-constituted school progressed considerably,
until it reached the number of thirty; then a large old building was
cleared out, a rickety wooden staircase taken down, an iron one put up
in its stead, and a lofty school-roo