with them more than the roar of battle in
such songs as—

         Lord Cornwallis was a brave commander !
         Lord Cornwallis was a brave commander !
         He conducts us over the plain
         As brave as Alexander.
         Make ready —present !
         Gentlemen, fire !
                    (Every man raps his hardest on the table)
         Lord Cornwallis, &c.

It was a comfort to think that there was
less noise on a Sunday morning; when the
church-wardens went round to see that no
tavern was open during hours of service, but
winked amiably at the little parties that at
such hours had retired to the bar-parlour.

Pedlars, of course, were numerous in all the
smaller hostelries. Such men dealt largely
in horn-spectacles and great shagreen tobacco-
boxes. There came also to Dulminster
travelling teamen, whose vilest congou cost
eight shillings a pound; and these persons
also carried little packs of fine linen and silk.
Most of our own tradesmen marched
through the streets, on their respective
saints' days, carrying in procession masterpieces
of their art. Every day, also, women
were to be seen carrying on trades not
altogether feminine. There were among us
many female bricklayers, who went up and
down ladders all day long, carrying hods of
bricks or mortar to their lords or masters.
Women also bore on their backs heavy loads
of meat out of the slaughter-houses to the
butchers' shops, supported by a strap round
their forehead. It was by women, also, that
the heavy loads of sand to be used in house-
cleaning, or for strewing upon floors, were
carried about.

Our Dulminster police consisted, I think, of
twelve sergeants and one sergeant-major. A
higher functionary there was, who must
have been in some manner connected with
the sheriff. The next of the force was
denoted by the painted boards to be seen in
various small streets, inscribed N. or M.,
Constable; N. or M. was a shoemaker or tailor,
or a member of some other sedentary trade,
likely to be at home if wanted, and glad to
turn a penny by defending law and order
to his latest days. If there was a fight in
any street or other breach of order, men
ran for a constable, as now in case of
accident they would run for a surgeon;
knocked at the first constable's house, and if
they wanted him to follow them, gave him a
shilling. Then, if constable N. thought the
chance of damage or discomfort to himself,
not greater than a shilling would make
good, he went. If he foresaw a case of
difficulty, he pleaded some good reason for
sticking to his shoemaking or tailoring, and
directed them the shortest way to the house
of Constable M.

The town-sergeants were a higher class of
men, who walked before his lordship the judge
at assizes wearing cocked-hat and purple
gown, and with a huge bouquet fixed
in a richly chased silver-gilt holder of
King Charles's time, carefully fastened upon
each official bosom. They were pretty
well conducted men, who knew how much
depended upon their deportment and proper
maintenance of the high dignity of their
position. The mayor, through his sergeant,
licensed every show and entertainment coming
to the town; and we were sometimes edified by
a sharp contest between the mayor's sergeant
and some unlicensed Merry Andrew glib of
tongue. Glib as he might be he was always
crushed under the bulk of beadledom, brought
down upon him for his summary suppression.

The night-watch was a very feeble force,
composed of old men fat and old men lean,
of old men short and old men tall, of old men
squeaky, old men gruff, who were required to
prove their wakefulness to the inhabitants
by calling out the hours and half- hours
of the night. Remarkably short nights
used to be in Dulminster, if there were no
more hours in them than the night-watch
owned to.

From these functionaries the mind passes
without much of a jolt to the town idiots. These
poor creatures, now confined within the
workhouse bounds, used, in my early days, to
be allowed to roam about the streets of
Dulminster, well-known to all the boys and all
the dogs. I cannot dwell on these afflictions.
There was a poor fellow, called Captain
Starkey, who wore a cocked-hat, bowed with
profuse courtesy to any decent persons whom
he met, and gave them promissory notes, of
his own manufacture, in exchange for half-
pence. There was another poor creature who
gloried in the print-shop, and would explain
such pictures as he understood —chiefly the
Bible prints, for which he gave chapter and
verse —to any boy or boys who came about
him. We had a blind idiot, too,—Blind
Willie—who had a presence something like
that ascribed to Doctor Johnson, and whose
joy it was for meat and drink and money to
sing at the inns, and play upon his dear
companion, the fiddle. There were persons in
the parish-house, at which he slept, who
shared the money profit of fiddling. One
day, in a quarrel among themselves over
poor Willie's coppers, one of them turning
upon Willie, broke his fiddle across his official
knee, and then stamped it to pieces. From
that day Blind Willie sang his songs without
accompaniment, but he took more beer than
he formerly cared for; and, though he lived for
many years after and died old, the workhouse-
nurse, who tended him, said, that he died
with a fiddle on his mind.