repeating the draught in a very quack-like
style, was continually snoring o' nights in
street kennels. I need not dwell on the
instances of beggars having bequeathed
fortunes (one, as a token of gratitude, left a
legacy to a bank-clerk, who was good for
a penny a-day); and one begging negro
retired, rich, to the West Indies, the English
climate being cold and insalubrious. Neither
have I time to tell of women-beggars who
really outdid the men; and, after the manner
of such women, did not fail to tell them
of it.

Beggary (in which word I include simply
begging) rallied a few years back. Certain
legionaries, in faded uniforms, paraded the
streets, announcing their sufferings for Queen
Christina in Spain. Great was their success.
"Why, we had, sir," one of the batch of street-
professionals said, " wine when we liked, and
hot giblet pies for supper! " Inferior vagrants
cleaned these men's boots. But legionaries
sprung up like a crop from dragons' teeth,
and the " lurk "—such is the technicality—
was demolished by the police. The man
whose words I have cited has begged from
his infancy upwards.

There were also the " distressed tradesman"
and the " clean " lurk; but they were little
better than revivals.

Where, I repeat, is there an old-school
beggar in London? Nowhere. Have, then,
mendicancy and vagrancy left the streets and
highways of London to the ten thousand
wheels of commerce; to gents in Hansoms,
and ladies in Broughams; to rich and reading
professionals, and M.P.s, whose carriages are
vehicular " studies;" and to the race of
aristocratic loungers and shoppers, in chariots
heavy with armorial bearings; as well as to
the host of pedestrians upon pocket-
compulsion? Not so: vagrancy is rife through
the kingdom; but mendicancy—able and most
special-pleading mendicancy, which once

"— Flew, like night, from land to land,
Which had strange powers of speech—"

pure mendicancy—is gathered to the fathers
and mothers of whom I have just presented
a simple record. There was once a pride of
art which bore the beggar bravely on; but
now, even the veriest singing beggar is
(comparatively) as silent as Memnon's statue, the
poets notwithstanding. If these beggars
chance to sing, they also strive to sell; they
are not of the true blood of beggary; not of
the breed which could assume the simple and
timid look at will; they are, like Lear and
his friends and fool, " sophisticated;" the
byegone beggars were, like Mad Tom, " the thing
itself."

There is, however, a covert mendicancy in
our day. Aged and infirm people go from
door to door with small stocks of lucifer-
match boxes, or stay and boot laces, or
memorandum-books or almanacks, and under shelter
of this array of small traffic, they— beg. The
children, little girls especially, beg under the
odour of violets, " only a penny a bunch,"
even in winter. They profess no
mendicancy; but their dress, their look, their
tone, their straggling hair and protruding
toes, are all mendicants' pleas, and they
sometimes beg directly. Sorely, I have been
told by two young sisters, have they
sometimes been snubbed by fine, but not very
young ladies, because the children refused
a halfpenny for the nosegay, which was
about its cost, by the dozen bunches, at
daybreak, in Covent Garden market in the bleak
frost.

Then there are Irish beggars. Some are
old men, tottering to a pauper's grave,
who sell match-boxes, and when a civil
word or a pitiful look encourages them, beg
eloquently.

"Well thin, sir," said a grey-headed feeble
Irishman, whom I questioned, " I was a
locksmith, and came, in my prime, yer honner, to
mend myself in this country. But sorra the
file can I hold now, for it has plazed God to
fail my fingers and hands with the rheumatics.
Ah! it's a match-box I can scarce
hold now. Ay, and indeed, yer honner, you
may say, ' sad changes.' The streets get
cowlder and cowlder, sir, and people gets
crosser and crosser wid an old man like me.
But," brightening up a little, " I have a
daughter that's immigrated. The Lord
fasten the life in the good lady that helped
her, though it almost broke my heart. But
she'll help me, will my daughter, sure; and I
must go on as I do now, till thin."

The street beggar's vocation is, therefore,
not entirely gone from among us. It lingers,
and is found here and there, like the smallpox;
but it is fast disappearing, or has
assumed strange guises, of which I have not
now space to tell. Bethnal Green shall have
no more legends; and no King Cophetua
could now find a beggar-maid beseemingly to
woo. The "jovial beggar," too, of Burns's
lay is not. In fact, I have had opportunities
to observe that your beggar, if he be a cripple,
and must beg or pine in a workhouse, is an
exceeding dull fellow. In our age an idle
heavy lad who must yet be a runaway and
scorn restraint, sinks into a beggar; the more
quick-witted young vagrant (for, in such cases,
a common lodging-house is a hot-house, a
forcing-house) soon blooms a thief.

There is another and a remarkable change
portending to this matter. In other days the
vagabond, or the beggar, seems to have been,
as Blackstone calls seamen, " favourites of the
law; " or rather, perhaps, of London magistrates.
The man was, perhaps, sent off into
the next street to beg, after bowing to an
injunction to " look out for honest work; " a
frequent consequence, and always to the
disgust of the reproved and now (in such
functions) superseded beadle, who had
captured the beggar " in the act." Now the
conviction is summary.