a careworn class of tramp this, mostly; with a
certain stiffness of neck, occasioned by much anxious
balancing of baskets; and also with a long
Chinese sort of eye, which an overweighted forehead
would seem to have squeezed into that form.

On the hot dusty roads near seaport towns
and great rivers, behold the tramping Soldier.
And if you should happen never to have asked
yourself whether his uniform is suited to his
work, perhaps the poor fellow's appearance as
he comes distressfully towards you, with his
absurdly tight jacket unbuttoned, his neck-gear
in his hand, and his legs well chafed by his
trousers of baize, may suggest the personal
inquiry, how you think you would like it. Much
better the tramping Sailor, although his cloth
is somewhat too thick for land service. But why
the tramping merchant-mate should put on a
black velvet waistcoat, for a chalky country in
the dog-days, is one of the great secrets of
nature that will never be discovered.

I have my eye upon a piece of Kentish road,
bordered on either side by a wood, and having
on one hand, between the road-dust and the
trees, a skirting patch of grass. Wild flowers
grow in abundance on this spot, and it lies high
and airy, with the distant river stealing steadily
away to the ocean, like a man's life. To gain
the milestone here, which the moss, primroses,
violets, blue-bells, and wild roses, would soon
render illegible but for peering travellers pushing
them aside with their sticks, you must come
up a steep bill, come which way you may. So,
all the tramps with carts or caravans —- the
Gipsy-tramp, the Show-tramp, the Cheap Jack
—- find it impossible to resist the temptations of
the place, and all turn the horse loose when
they come to it, and boil the pot. Bless the
place, I love the ashes of the vagabond fires
that have scorched its grass! What tramp
children do I see here, attired in a handful of
rags, making a gymnasium of the shafts of the
cart, making a feather-bed of the flints and
brambles, making a toy of the hobbled old horse
who is not much more like a horse than any
cheap toy would be! Here, do I encounter
the cart of mats and brooms and baskets —- with
all thoughts of business given to the evening
wind —- with the stew made and being served out
—- with Cheap Jack and Dear Jill striking soft
music out of the plates that are rattled like
warlike cymbals when put up for auction at fairs
and markets—- their minds so influenced (no
doubt) by the melody of the nightingales as they
begin to sing in the woods behind them, that if
I were to propose to deal, they would sell me
anything at cost price. On this hallowed ground
has it been my happy privilege (let me whisper
it), to behold the White-haired Lady with the
pink eyes, eating meat-pie with the Giant: while,
by the hedge-side, on the box of blankets which
I knew contained the snakes, were set forth the
cups and saucers and the teapot. It was on an
evening in August, that I chanced upon this
ravishing spectacle, and I noticed that, whereas
the Giant reclined half concealed beneath the
overhanging boughs and seemed indifferent to
Nature, the white hair of the gracious Lady
streamed free in the breath of evening, and her
pink eyes found pleasure in the landscape. I
heard only a single sentence of her uttering, yet
it bespoke a talent for modest repartee. The
ill-mannered Giant—- accursed be his evil race !
—- had interrupted the Lady in some remark,
and, as I passed that enchanted corner of the
wood, she gently reproved him, with the words,
"Now, Cobby;" Cobby! so short a name!—-
" ain't one fool enough to talk at a time ?"

Within appropriate distance of this magic
ground, though not so near it as that the song
trolled from tap or bench at door, can invade its
woodland silence, is a little hostelry which no
man possessed of a penny was ever known to
pass in warm weather. Before its entrance, are
certain pleasant trimmed limes: likewise, a cool
well, with so musical a bucket-handle that its
fall upon the bucket rim will make a horse prick
up its ears and neigh, upon the droughty road
half a mile off. This is a house of great resort
for haymaking tramps and harvest tramps,
insomuch that as they sit within, drinking their
mugs of beer, their relinquished scythes and reaping-
hooks glare out of the open windows, as if the
whole establishment were a family war-coach of
Ancient Britons. Later in the season, the whole
country-side, for miles and miles, will swarm with
hopping tramps. They come in families, men,
women, and children, every family provided with
a bundle of bedding, an iron pot, a number of
babies, and too often with some poor sick crea-
ture quite unfit for the rough life, for whom
they suppose the smell of the fresh hop to be a
sovereign remedy. Many of these hoppers are
Irish, but many come from London. They
crowd all the roads, and camp under all the
hedges and on all the scraps of common-land,
and live among and upon the hops until they are
all picked, and the hop-gardens, so beautiful
through the summer, look as if they had been
laid waste by an invading army. Then, there is
a vast exodus of tramps out of the county; and
if you ride or drive round any turn of any road,
at more than a foot pace, you will be bewildered
to find that you have charged into the bosom of
fifty families, and that there are splashing up
all around you, in the utmost prodigality of
confusion, bundles of bedding, babies, iron pots,
and a good-humoured multitude of both sexes
and all ages, equally divided between perspiration
and intoxication.

ARTICLES OF UNBELIEF.

MY mind, I dare say, is as richly stored with
fallacies and crotchets as the mind of any one of my
neighbours. But I am happy to say that my
experience of the world has enabled me to filter off
many vulgar errors, and for the benefit of that
world I here publish some results of the filtration :

1. I do not believe that any one ever liked
Banbury cakes or thick gingerbread after the
age of fifteen. Neither do I believe that any
one ever tasted more than once in his life certain
crinkly comfits that are made in the shape of