We Entered
Several Of These Wynds, And Passed Down One Of Them, Between Houses Of
Vast Height, Story Piled Upon Story, Till We Came To The Deep Hollow Of
The Cowgate.
Children were swarming in the way, all of them, bred in that
close and impure atmosphere, of a sickly appearance, and the aspect of
premature age in some of them, which were carried in arms, was absolutely
frightful.
"Here is misery," said a Scotch gentleman, who was my
conductor. I asked him how large a proportion of the people of Edinbugh
belonged to that wretched and squalid class which I saw before me. "More
than half," was his reply. I will not vouch for the accuracy of his
statistics. Of course his estimate was but a conjecture.
In the midst of this population is a House of Refuge for the Destitute,
established by charitable individuals for the relief of those who may be
found in a state of absolute destitution of the necessaries of life. Here
they are employed in menial services, lodged and fed until they can be
sent to their friends, or employment found for them. We went over the
building, a spacious structure, in the Canongate, of the plainest Puritan
architecture, with wide low rooms, which, at the time of the union of
Scotland with England, served as the mansion of the Duke of Queensbury.
The accommodations of course are of the humblest kind. We were shown into
the sewing-room, were we saw several healthy-looking young women at work,
some of them barefooted.
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