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the great patron saint of mendicants, being rarely able to get past him with out contributing to his wants. It would not surprise us to learn that these trembling gentlemen have a luxurious clubhouse of their own, where they all meet, after shivering hours, and where they pass the night in performing Nil Darpan, and cursing their British persecutors in a grateful and becoming manner.

From this servile, crawling, grovelling wretch, we turn, by a natural transition, to the cheerful and familiar beggar; a tremendous impostor, too, but of a different sort.

It is not long since that I was crossing over the road not far from Lumbagoterrace, Regent's-park, when I saw advancing to meet me at the other end of the crossing two persons, a man and a woman, who wore so gay and joyous an aspect at my approach, that I thought they knew me. The man was dressed in a snowy smock-frock, and wore tanleather leggings; the woman was arrayed in a clean cotton gown, and a neat straw bonnet. I was beginning to think whether they were tenants of some country friend who remembered me, though I had forgotten them; for how else could I account for their being apparently so glad to see me? I was puzzling myself, I say, in this manner, when my friend, the model peasant, suddenly burst out with these remarkable words :—

"You haven't got," he said, grinning from ear to ear, and with a jovial roll of his head-" you haven't got such a thing as a copper for a poor fellow, have you? we're in wants of as much as will pay for a night's lodging."

After following me a short distance, and entering into the details of an excursion into "Daarsetshire," which he had in contemplation, and which he discussed in a loud and cheery tone, my agricultural friend gave me up, with a soft sigh and a genial "thank'ee all the same, sir," of terrific power, and fell back to his female accomplice. I have met this couple about continually since, and the man always smiles and touches his hat to me in a jaunty manner, without, how

on my thinking to myself, that "there really is something remarkable about this fellow," and then he imagines that I shall turn back and get into converstation with him. No, no, my friend, your smock-frock is too white, and your leather-leggings are too clean, and your get up altogether is too intensely agricultural, for me to imagine that you are acquainted with any other fields than those of Spital, or of still more sinister Tothill.

Perhaps, however, I should have fallen a victim to this honest fellow, if it had not happened that, only a day or two before I made his acquaintance, a middleaged lady, with a reticule and a red nose, stopped suddenly directly before me in the street, and said, in a calm clear tone, "Will you give me a penny, if you please?

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Before this accomplished artist, who may be called the unexpected beggar, I fell. She was too much for me, and, doubtless, my weakness in this case helped to give me force in the other instance.

While mentioning this matter of the unexpected beggar, and the difficulty of resisting her, I am reminded of another kind of unexpected Beggar, without mention of whom this category would be incomplete.

You are upstairs in your study, on the second floor. Your study is on that floor that you may be quiet, and, possibly, because you would be in the way on the dining-room, or drawingroom stages. You are engaged in study no matter of what nature-how to make both ends meet, perhaps. Presently, a handmaid taps at your door, and informs you that Mr. Jarvis is below, and wishes to speak with you. He will not detain you five minutes. You don't exactly remember the name, but no doubt it is somebody on business. You impress him by a brief delay, and descend.

On entering your drawing-room, you observe a gentleman seated with his back towards you. He waits till you are well into the room, and then rising, discloses himself to your regard, as a

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Foreigner of distinction. I am praoud and 'appy to make your acquaintance, That work does you honour. It woot be goot that it should be translate.

Man of genius (internally). Ah, ha! Foreigner of distinction. You are also the author of the "New Golconde, or Wealts at Weel."

Man of genius. The "New Golconda, or Wealth at Will"-yes, indeed, I am.

Foreigner of distinction. Those works should be known by raights, wherever civilaisation ritches. I am indeed praoud and 'appy to know so distinguish a colleague, for I too am man of letters, as you shall know, no daout.

poblish abaout 'is affairs. Since then I 'ave not prosper. I come to England. England, I say, is a great nation. The English man of letters is not jealous. I see a French actor come over 'ere. He shows the English that they do not knaow 'ow to act their own plays. I will show them too, that they do not knaow the meaning of their own leeterature. It is a great work this, but I most 'ave support whaile it is in progress. What am I to do? I turn naturally to the forst men of the country in which I faind myself for help. I think immediate of the renown Mr. Startles -to him I apply myself without reserve, without daout.

In short, M. Charvet is a beggar, and, when he pulls out a volume of his collected works from his pocket, and offers them to you for ten shillings, it is twenty to one that, on the first occasion of such a visit at any rate, you will return to your studies in the art of making both ends meet, finding both those ends farther apart by the distance of half-asovereign than they were when you last considered the subject.

The beggar, who is kind enough to wait upon you at your own house, appears under many forms. Sometimes, as in the case of our friend just mentioned, he is an author, sometimes an artist, sometimes an inventor, while not unfrequently he comes to represent the wants of others, when he is more difficult to resist than ever.

Beware of the French gentleman who,

Man of genius. (Indistinct acquie- addressing you in his native tongue in scence.)

Foreigner of distinction. For the Revue Ricaneuse I have much written, my own books not succeeding, I write savage revues of those of others. I get together small news of personal kainds, and poblish domestic matters belonging to distinguished families.

Man of genius. (Indistinct disapproval.)

Foreigner of distinction. But I'ave 'ad ill-lock. I'ave not socceed. An enemy of maine, jealous of me, 'ave threatened the Revue Ricaneuse with law, if I was

the public streets, asks you to direct him to a street, the name of which he has got inscribed upon a little scrap of dirty paper. When he asks you for an explanation of that direction, or requests you to inform him where the "Société de Bienfaisance" is located, give him a wide berth, for he means begging, and will bring the conversation round to that interesting topic in no time. is the common practice of this kind of mendicant to address himself to young gentlemen, who appear to his serpentlike wisdom as if they would be flat

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Such youths cannot resist answering in such French as they have at command, and from the moment when they thus consent to enter into conversation, they are lost.

Beware, again, how your sympathies are enlisted in behalf of a little innocentlooking boy who is crying bitterly over the fragments of a broken plate or jug, which has tumbled out of his hand. He has been sent to fetch something which the plate or jug was intended to contain; it has tumbled out of his hand and been broken into many atoms. The child is in an agony of grief, and dilates between his sobs upon the cruel consequences that will ensue when he returns home with the story of the broken plate. Now this would be all very well, and you would be doing quite right in contributing towards a new plate, if only you were quite sure that this was the first and only occasion on which our young friend has appeared with his knuckles screwed into his eyes, and a collection of fragments of the willow pattern at his feet. But what if all this which happens to-day at the corner of Baker-street, occurred yesterday opposite the Foundling, and will be repeated till further notice every day next week in divers parts of the metropolis?

This last-mentioned little mendicant is very difficult to harden oneself against. The same may be said of the woful elderly beggar, who addresses you only for a moment, on a wet night, just turning half round as you pass, and uttering one or two spiritless and broken words, abandoning his suit directly if it is not encouraged. Are there any who read these words, who have gone back a hundred or two of yards to relieve, not so much the beggar himself, as that more importunate mendicant who was pulling and dragging at the softer fibres of their hearts, pleading the cause of that drenched and lonely old man? Somehow I cannot class this sort of beggar with the rest, nor steel myself entirely against his claims.

But, in revenge, against the spouting beggar I can harden myself with ease. This is he who, advancing with slow

street, holding a baby in his arms, and followed by a woman and other children, gives out his wrongs to the public ear in a loud and oratorical manner, beginning, "Hi ham a pore weaver,' and interspersing his statement with many asides of a threatening character, addressed in a husky whisper to his wife and children. This group will occasionally awaken the echoes of Charlottestreet, Fitzroy-square, which is is a favourite beggar-preserve, with the strain of the Old Hundredth, which is commonly interrupted with even more clinkings of halfpence on the pavement, thrown from upper windows, than is elicited by the weaver's narration of his own wrongs and sufferings. This is the same man who, when unable to afford the hire of a wife and family for choral psalm-singing and spouting purposes, lurks about our suburbs and lies in wait for ladies who are obliged to go out alone while their husbands are at business, and makes their walk so unpleasant to them with half-threatening, halfwhining importunities, that they are glad enough to give him an alms to be rid of him. He is an intimate ally too of the man who does a mackerel, a moonlight, a mutton chop, and a head from Carlo Dolci on the pavement in crayons, and is well known to the sailor with no legs, who unrolls a painting of a shipwreck and stretches it out by his side, close to that blank-wall on the wrong side of Oxford-street, which communicates by gates with Hanover-square.

From these particular and distinct classifications of the different tribes of beggars, we turn naturally to a consideration of the subject in its broader and more general aspects.

In England, a beggar is always religious, and nearly always clean. Besides the hymns which we have seen that our Indian beggar is fond of retailing, there are little tracts which such personages commonly have on sale, and which, purporting to interest you in a dramatic story, soon make a digression into more theological matters, revealing how wonderfully a certain innocent

and how he prospered afterwards in a certain colony, and acquired a territory, and a house, and cattle and horses, and how he was taken into the confidence of the Missionaries, and became Treasurer to the Evening School Fund, and was interested with all sorts of other Funds as well, because he had said that "um "poor Sambo nebber cared for gold "and silver, only lub im church and school;" at which point history drops the curtain, the historian being, doubtless, afraid of injuring his effect, which, indeed, might possibly have been done by dwelling any longer on Sambo's

career.

The statements which Sambo and others chalk upon the pavement, or wear round their necks, are commonly interspersed with religious matter, and we have seen that, when Keziah Kadge runs by your side round the crescent, at the top of Portland-place, she is wont to utter words of sacred meaning, and to make professions of religion which cause one to shudder, and hasten more than ever out of ear-shot of such grievous mockery.

Then, as to cleanliness. The beggar who understands his business is always clean. It is not so abroad; sympathy in foreign climes is rather awakened than otherwise by dirt. The brisk movement of a flea attracts attention to the insect's proprietor, and relief may follow; a clean shirt on a beggar would not be understood, and it might turn out, if he wore one, that his linen was in better order than that of the gentleman whom he supplicates for alms. With us it is different. The English beggar thinks that, if he turns out clean, it will be thought that, at any rate, he is doing all he can, and that he is putting a good face upon his poverty, and making the best of it. I believe that there are no aprons known in the civilized world of such extraordinary cleanliness as those worn by Keziah Kadge, and I also believe that there is an especial manufactory of coarse linen carried on expressly with a view to the shirt-fronts of our silent beggars, they being of a

which has something unhallowed and altogether inexplicable about it.

All this tells with the British public. Indeed, the peculiar kind of linen just described, and especially when it is set in, or surrounded by, a suit of seedy black, is well-nigh irresistible. The fact is, that the irresistible class of beggars is a very large one, and it is astonishing how long an adroit and practised mendicant will keep his head above water. The Rev. Elliott Hadlow, for instance, who has recently been much harassed by the mendicity offcers, has been upwards of twenty years "in the profession." This ill-used personage belonged to the noble order of the pavement-chalkers. The autobiographical notice with which he was wont to ornament the foot-way, was a short one. "I am," he used to write a decayed "schoolmaster, the author of eleven works, the last of which went through

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fourth edition." Here was an appeal, which was not likely to be inefficacious. What a delightful sensation for a passing schoolboy to bestow his penny, and feel that he was actually "tipping" a schoolmaster! What a glorious vengeance for the literary character whose works had never attained to a second, or thirdnot to say a first edition, to go and insult this successful author, this public favourite, with a present of a couple of new bronze half-pennies! How villanous that this interesting person's career should be cut short because an officer of the Mendicity Society, with no regard for literature, chooses to denounce the "decayed schoolmaster" as a wellknown impostor, with whose history he (the officer) had been acquainted for twenty-one years! The author of the "eleven works," is on this occasion very candid, acknowledges that "he has been "in the habit of begging, and that he "has been previously brought before a "magistrate for that offence, and that "since that time he has managed to

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eleven works, and his four editions, upon public sympathy, and with the world for his oyster, and a morsel of chalk to open it with, could get on very well if we would but let him alone.

He might even perhaps have got on as well as the great Keziah Kadge herself. This name, which in the earlier part of this notice has been applied to a fictitious character, is, incredible as it seems, a real name, and is after all not more difficult to believe in than the history of the worthy lady who bore it. This brief review of the present condition and prospects of the begging interest, would be so incomplete without the short and simple annals of Keziah Kadge, that I must ask leave to give them entire :

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I am happy to say that this magnificent impostor was merely detained for twenty-one days in the House of Correction, giving her dividends time to accumulate. Let us hope that she may speedily attain to the height of her ambition, and retire on a net income of 50l. per annum.

Seriously speaking, it is a grave question, whether something might not be done to get our streets a little clearer from beggars. Next year, hosts of foreigners, and more especially of our natural critics, the French, will be in London, and it would be well that we should have our streets in as creditable order as may be. Towards carrying out this object, surely, one valuable step would be made if we began by bringing to an immediate termination the careers of our younger practitioners in the art of begging. On the Surrey side of Waterloo Bridge, and in only too many other parts of London, there exist, as the reader has doubtless often remarked, whole hordes of young raggamuffins, who endeavour to extort money from the more good-natured and inconsiderate portion of the community, by running alongside of the omnibuses and cabs, which pass by their beat, and turning summersaults as near the wheels of the vehicles as may be done with security to that safest of all things-a vagabond's life. These youngsters are just entering life, and are entering it by just one of the very worst thoroughfares with which we are acquainted. Would it not be a real charity to them, as well as to the world at large, to lay a merciful hand upon them, and turn them back before they advance further along that grievous

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