would conceive these creatures to be next to invincible. The gymnotus is able, by some mysterious agency, to direct the current of electricity whithersoever it wills, so as even to destroy fishes at some distance from itself. Humboldt has given a very spirited account of the only method by which the gymnotus can be taken. The torpedo employs its power chiefly to bewilder its prey.

There can be little doubt that if phosphorescence is in some cases only effectual to betray its possessor, in others it is a safeguard. The fire-fly, lantern-fly, and humble glow-worm may be, and doubtless often are, only glittering baits to some of their dreaded enemies; but it is equally certain that there are others of their foes who fear to attack them, and may be seen running round them half-desirous and half-afraid to do so. An interesting anecdote is related of a combat between a stag-beetle and a glow-worm which demonstrates this. The beetle was seen to be running round and round, tumbling over, and rolling his head in the earth; he had covered himself with some of the phosphorescent matter, and while the glow-worm slowly crept away, its enemy, confused by its own unnatural glare, continued, as it were, chained to the same spot of ground, and endeavouring in vain to rub the luminous matter off. Some creatures defend themselves by intimidation, and will show fight against an enemy however gigantic, either thrusting out their stings, or gnashing their forceps, or expanding their jaws in such a menacing manner, as to make even the stout heart of an entomologist fail. Others rely principally upon some natural, dismal, melancholic, loathsome, or hideous aspect; and to mention the frightful appearance of some of the Saurians, will be enough to convince the reader that it must be a bold enemy who will venture to make an onslaught upon them.

Nor

The emission of unpleasant odours is the well-known resort of others. There are many beetles which exhale a most offensive, rancid odour; the poplar beetle, in particular, has an apparatus of eighteen scent-bags, which, when it is attacked, pour out a milk-like liquid, the smell of which is indescribably suffocating and annoying. All the famous tribe of the polecats, especially the skunk, are pre-eminently distinguished for the insupportable stench they can exhale. must I forget the very curious performances of the little bombardier, or brachinus. When pursued by its enemy the calosoma, it suddenly discharges an explosion of bluish smoke at him, and this seems to surprise the latter so much, that it is some time before he recovers himself. The pursuit renewed, the bombardier fires again, and again, and can discharge its artillery twenty times in succession, making its escape under cover of the smoke. Last of all, I may enumerate the ejection of different fluids as a defence. Many insects, beetles, and ants emit a liquid at their enemies, which is of a powerfully acid or even caustic nature. Some larvae, when touched, bedew themselves all over with a disagreeable liquid. The puss-moth has the remarkable provision of a double syringe, with which it squirts a fluid of a very irritating character at its pursuers.

A few words upon vegetable defences. It is an interesting theme for inquiry, whether the wonderful mimicries of different natural objects serve the vegetable, as in the animal polity, for a defence against the indiscriminate depredation of enemies. For full illustrations, the reader is referred to a paper in a former number of this work.* Whether the remarkable simulations of different insects which occupy the centre of so many of the Orchidea, may have the effect or not of scaring away real insects, the writer cannot undertake to determine. It does not seem improbable. I shall surely be anticipated on the subject of vegetable armour; so that it is not necessary to do more than to call to mind the spines, prickles, stings, thorns, hard envelopes, and husks, which appear to have been given for the protection of different fruits and pleasant flowers. And sometimes there are defences for weaker plants too; for thus a grateful herb,

* Vegetable Mimicry, No. 139.

which would otherwise have been cropped down by the mouth of an animal, is often preserved by growing beneath the arms of some prickly plant, whose sharp weapons repulse the enemy. The odour of vegetables, and flowers in particular, consisting as it generally does of volatile essential oils, which are fatal to insects, may be regarded likewise as a kind of defence. Nor should be forgotten, lastly, those wonderful instances of apparently spontaneous motion, in which the offending insect is either violently hurled off, or crushed to death for his temerity. I may now conclude; and in doing so, let it be remembered that a mere summary is all this paper pretends to offer-even in that being necessarily imperfect, so great is the richness of the Creator's designs, and such the infinite multitude of self-defensory provisions with which he has endowed the works of his hands. If no mention has been made of the defensory provisions of man, it is because they are chiefly mental; and it is an exalting thought, that by their exercise-the employment of his reason, wisdom, experience, and art-he is constituted lord of creation, and immeasurably superior, both in defensive and offensive resources, to the entire mass of the brutes that perish.'

SHUTTING UP OF THE HIGHLAND GLENS. A VERY large portion of the north-west of Scotland consists of wild mountain tracts, full of picturesque beauty, little intersected by roads, and for the most part many miles distant from any of the Lowland towns. A hundred years ago this Alpine region afforded subsistence to a thinly-scattered Celtic population; but modern improvements have for the most part sent the home in Canada, where they are infinitely more comHighlanders adrift, and many of them have found a fortable than in the sterile glens of their forefathers. In the place of a human, a sheep population has been generally introduced into the Highlands; and where this is found not to pay-that being the great thing now-a-days-a population of deer, grouse, blackcock, and other game has been cultivated, for the sake of autumnal sportsmen. An English or Scottish Lowland estate usually consists of a few thousand acres, laid out in well-fenced fields. A Highland estate extends probably over twenty miles of country, and includes many tall frowning hills, deep valleys and ravines, lakes, waterfalls, and brown heathy moors-the whole unenclosed, and lying pretty much in the condition it has done ever since the creation. In the old times, these wastes were the domain of the chiefs of clans - Macdonnells, Macleods, Macgregors, Mackays, Grants, and so forth. In some cases, descendants of these heroes still possess and draw a rental from them; and in others they have passed, by purchase or inheritance, into the hands of English noblemen and gentlemen. There has latterly been something like a mania among Englishmen for buying Highland properties; and if it continue much longer, the lairds of the old stock will be as much adrift as their expatriated clansmen.

The cause of the odd-looking mania to which we refer is a love of 'sport;' for which, as is well known, Englishmen will go great lengths, and do very mad things. Satiated with shooting pheasants and other half-civilised game in English preserves, and longing for novelty, off set troops of wealthy southerns to buy, or at least rent, Highland estates, where battues can be carried on upon a great and enlivening scale. Such old Highland lairds as still call their estates their own, are usually glad to have dealings with these wanderersat least their Edinburgh agents are-and bargains are made of a kind which would very much astonish the Fergus M'Ivors of former days. It is stated that in Perthshire alone shootings are let to the extent of L.10,000 annually, and altogether the money squandered every year on game rents in the Highlands is probably L.40,000. While this traffic is gratifying to

the lairds, it is equally satisfactory to the scattered sheep farmers and hangers-on of the wilderness; for they contrive to pick up considerable sums of money from the sportsmen - tenants for petty services and provisions. With all this, however, no one can find any fault, and it is only to be lamented that a number of these settlers from the south so conduct themselves, as to render their tenantries a nuisance to the country. Their insatiable and selfish love of sport is the source of the disquietude. Accustomed to consider a park or woodland preserve as a tabooed district, into which no unauthorised visitant shall set his foot, the renter of the Highland domain imagines that his wild mountains and moors should be equally sacred from intrusion. The fancy of shutting up vast tracts of country from the tourist and pedestrian-tracts without a house, tree, or bush for miles, and which even, when bounded by the common road, are altogether without fences-seems to the Scotch generally a very unjustifiable stretch of territorial title. Yet this is done on the plea of sport-the necessity of not disturbing the game. This word sport requires a little qualification: it is employed to cover a good deal of sound business. When shootings are taken at a pretty high rent, it would appear to be deemed necessary that they turn out fair speculations in a commercial sense. On reaching the clachan or village, near which are situated the quarters of the principal 'sportsmen,' the tourist need not be surprised to see an establishment for making deal boxes, and transmitting them full of game to the London market. Sent down the country by cart, gig, or stage-coach, these boxes are shipped at Dundee, Aberdeen, or Inverness, by steamer to the metropolis; and they may be known at once for what they are, by their direction on the lid to certain game butchers at the 'west end.' The traffic of this nature is now becoming a rival to that of the ordinary dead meat' freights. The London shops, in short, are now supplied with game by noblemen in the same way that they are supplied with meat by carcass butchers. To help them to kill for their customers, the sportsmen-tenants invite numbers of young noblemen, foreign dukes, military officers, and others, to enjoy a few days' or weeks' shooting; and the Highlands, accordingly, swarm with these visitants in the latter months of the year.

It will be observed that this is a different thing from the old-fashioned and gentlemanly Highland way of conducting field-sports, by which a few acquaintances are collected on the 12th of August at a shootingbox, and a number of pairs of grouse are despatched as presents to friends. Neither is it exactly the modern deer-stalking, in which patience and a high degree of skill are concerned: it is very much a wholesale system of slaughtering, like that of the battues in southern preserves, it being a main object to kill a certain quantity of animals, if not for the glory of killing, at all events for the sake of the cash the animals are worth. Be this, however, as it may, we should not be inclined to speak disparagingly of the practice, were it not fruitful of certain unpleasant consequences. Let the noble lessees in question fire away, kill, and sell as long as they have a mind. All that we and others care about, is their attempting to exclude the very harmless order of tourists and scene hunters, who frequent the Highlands, from walking about to see waterfalls and precipices, from taking short cuts across the hills, or from visiting the loftiest and grandest of the Alpine peaks. So many cases of this kind have lately occurred, that it has excited the indignation of the Lowland Scotch in no small degree. We are sorry for this. We desire to see Englishmen respected and rendered happy in Scotland, and detest all sorts of national jealousies. The new settlers, however, are clearly in the wrong; and they, as well as the native noblemen who imitate them in their exclusiveness, must hasten to recall their orders. There is no law of trespass in Scotland, as far as regards unenclosed lands. A person may walk to the top of an open hill, or across an open moor, subject to no other

legal restraint than an action of damages. And to lead evidence of injury done to a peat-moss, or a bleak hill-side, would be somewhat troublesome. Of course, if a traveller seriously disturb sheep, that is a different matter. But who in his senses does so? We see that some of the Scottish newspapers recommend pedestrians in the Highlands not to turn back when ordered; but to leave the sportsmen-tenants to prosecute-which they will not do. The magazines, too, consider forcible exclusion to be unjustifiable. Blackwood remarks as follows:- We have observed with great pain that a far too exclusive spirit has of late manifested itself in certain high places, and among persons whom we regard too much to be wholly indifferent to their conduct. This very summer the public press has been indignant in its denunciation of the Dukes of Athole and Leeds-the one having, as it is alleged, attempted to shut up a servitude road through Glen Tilt, and the other established a cordon for many miles around the skirts of Ben Macdhui, our highest Scottish mountain. We are not fully acquainted with the particulars; but from what we have heard, it would appear that this wholesale exclusion from a vast tract of territory is intended to secure the solitude of two deer-forests. Now, we are not going to argue the matter upon legal grounds, although, knowing something of law, we have a shrewd suspicion that both noble lords are in utter misconception of their rights, and are usurping a sovereignty which is not to be found in their charters, and which was never claimed or exercised even by the Scottish kings. But the churlishness of the step is undeniable, and we cannot but hope that it has proceeded far more from thoughtlessness than from intention. The day has been when any clansman, or even any stranger, might have taken a deer from the forest, a tree from the hill, or a salmon from the river, without leave asked or obtained; and though that state of society has long since passed away, we never till now have heard that the free air of the mountains, and their heather ranges, are not open to him who seeks them. Is it indeed come to this, that in bonny Scotland the tourist, the botanist, or the painter, is to be debarred from visiting the loveliest spots which nature ever planted in the heart of a wilderness, on pretence that he disturbs the deer? In a few years we suppose Ben Lomond will be preserved, and the summit of Ben Nevis remain as unvisited by the foot of the traveller as the icy peak of the Jungfrau. Not so, assuredly, would have acted the race of Tullibardine of yore. Royal were their hunting gatherings, and magnificent the driving of the Tinchel; but over all their large territory of Athole the stranger might have wandered unquestioned, except to know if he required hospitality. It is not now that the gate is shut, but the moor; and that not against the depredator, but against the peaceful wayfaring man. Nor can we, as sportsmen, admit even the relevancy of the reasons which have been assigned for this wholesale exclusion. convinced that in each season not above thirty or forty tourists essay the ascent of Ben Macdhui, and of that number, in all probability, not one has either met or startled a red-deer. Very few men would venture to strike out a devious path for themselves over the mountains near Loch Aven, which, in fact, constitute the wildest district of the island. Nothing but enthusiasm will carry a man through the intricacies of Glen Lui, the property of Lord Fife, to whom it was granted at no very distant period of time out of the forfeited Mar estates, and which is presently rented by the Duke of Leeds; and nothing more absurd can be supposed, than that the entry of a single wanderer into that immense domain can have the effect of scaring the deer from the limits of so large a range. This is an absurd and empty excuse, as every deer-stalker must know. A stag is not so easily frightened, nor will he fly the country from terror at the apparition of the Cockney. For a few moments he will regard the Doudney-clad wanderer of the wilds, not in fear, but in surprise; and

We are

then snuffing the air, which conveys to his nostrils an unaccustomed flavour of bergamot and lavender, he will trot away over the shoulder of the hill, move further up the nearest corrie, and in a quarter of an hour will be lying down amidst his hinds in the thick brackens that border the course of the lonely burn.

We could say a great deal more upon this subject, but we hope that expansion is unnecessary. Throughout all Europe, the right of passage over waste and uncultivated land, where there never were, and never can be enclosures, appears to be universally conceded. What would his Grace of Leeds say, if he were told that the Bernese Alps were shut up, and the liberty of crossing them denied, because some Swiss seigneur had taken it into his head to establish a chamois preserve? The idea of preserving deer in the way now attempted is completely modern, and we hope will be immediately abandoned. It must not, for the sake of our country, be said that in Scotland not only the enclosures, but the wilds and the mountains, are shut out from the foot of man; and that where no highway exists, he is debarred from the privilege of the heather. Whatever may be the abstract legal rights of the aristocracy, we protest against the policy and propriety of a system which would leave Ben Cruachan to the eagles, and render Loch Ericht and Loch Aven as inaccessible as those mighty lakes which are said to exist in Central Africa, somewhere about the sources of the Niger.' Referring to the same subject, a writer in Tait's Magazine makes a remark, with which we conclude. 'If any bill, perhaps in the form of an act, " to interpret" some game act, should be brought in to extend the law of trespass to such new exigencies, we hope the public will be on their guard to defeat it.'

ANATOMY OF VAGRANCY. In a recent number, we gave an account of a class of the people destitute of all regular means of living, and yet not necessarily dishonest.* We now propose to lay before our readers a general view of the various tribes of more formidable vagabonds, who, whether working separately or in concert, devote themselves to distinct branches of their unrighteous profession. This body of information, we ought to say, is mainly the contribution of a gentleman whose official functions have laid open to him peculiar sources of knowledge.

The dishonest classes are chiefly found among the lower classes; partly because education is not so general among these, but principally for the simple reason that they form the great mass of the people. It must be observed also that the crimes of the higher orders are frequently of a kind which cannot be reached by the law, as it exists at present; although it would be absurd to suppose that this is the consequence of any feeling of partiality. The victims of such crimes are not the poor, but persons in the same rank as the criminal, who are as unwilling to be fleeced as any other portion of the community. The notorious Joseph Ady, for instance, preys exclusively upon his own middle rank, and disdains any booty that does not amount to a pound sterling. A survey of the affairs of the 'genteel' would be highly curious; and if sufficient materials come in our way, we shall not be disinclined to undertake it. At present, however, our plan requires us to be satisfied with a single glance at the Corinthian capital of crime.

Marriage is a grand engine of the high-class sharpers, and is resorted to when all ordinary means of 'living by their wits' have failed.† Some of these are well born

*The Supernumerary Class,' Journal, No. 157.

+ Crime reduces all rogues to a level. Each class has its own professional name, which we shall give as a curiosity, only confin

and well educated, but have passed their lives in discreditable or dangerous expedients, rather than apply to honourable industry. They at length either find their family of sons (idle, of course, like themselves) an intolerable burthen, or else, in the failure of their usual resources, they are driven to look to them for assistance. The emergency is critical. They are no longer at a time of life when they can take the world as it comes; and they determine upon a coup d'etât. Some unceremoniously assume a "title," if they have it not;' but others take the trouble of seeking out a certain colour for the assumption in family history. Among the extinct titles formerly annexed to the surname they really possess, or have thought fit to adopt, there is one to which no property is attached; and their claim to this barren honour being undisputed, it is gladly recognised in the proper quarters-on their paying the fees. My lord now hurries to London, with the honourable mister, his eldest son; and by means of a careful inspection of the wills in Doctors' Commons (which costs them only a shilling each time), they have little difficulty in discovering some wealthy heiress. The addresses of an honourable, backed by a baron, are irresistible; the lady does not presume to verify so ancient a rent-roll; and presently her hand and fortune become the prey of the noble swindler and his harpy family. In this case the title acts in the same way as the lying rags of a humbler class of impostors. To one, the heiress gives a tear and a shilling-to the other, a smile and her all.

But the high-flyer has other resources besides marriage; for his honourable title-frequently his own by right is capable of duping more than heiresses. The history of the late railway mania would afford many curious instances of the 'magic of a name.' A scheme, however wildly absurd, required nothing more than a well-sounding list of chairmen and provincial committeemen: lords, baronets, esquires, F.R.S.'s, A double S's'captains and colonels, and knights-at-arms.' It did not need even the ingenuity of the begging-letter concoctor; for it was not the document that was looked to, but the titles that adorned it; not the feasibility of the falsehood, but the appearance of the impostor. All this, however, has worked for good, and society thrives on the ruin of its simpler members. A railway project now would require more than 'honourable' projectors; and in like manner a thief in a draper's shop no longer escapes suspicion or arrest because she is a 'lady.'

Passing over for the present the gamester, and other congenial tribes, we shall descend at once to find a counterpart of the vices of the upper classes among the poor, with whom the cause of dishonesty is frequently the very same—a disinclination to regular industry, although its excuse may be greater, in the more immediate pressure of want, and the results of a neglected or wholly omitted education. Vagrancy has two classes, higher and lower, and the members of the former are technically distinguished as 'silver beggars.'* They are well-dressed, clean, and respectable-looking. They resort to no clamour-no demonstrations of distress; but, on the contrary, are quiet, unassuming, nay, retiring. Their melancholy story is contained in a brief, authenticated by the signature of clergymen and magistrates, and, when necessary, by that of a consul at some foreign port. You are welcome to read it, for that will

ing it to its due place-the bottom of the page. The worthy now alluded to is called by his brother vagabonds the knowing cove,' and gentleman high-flyer.'

* In the rogue's language they are 'lurkers.'

do you no harm. You may relieve them if you will. If you do, they will be grateful, but not servile; and if you do not, you need not fear their reproaches. God help them, they are too much accustomed to disappointment for that! They are aware of the many appeals that must be made to your kindly nature; for this is a bitter world-a bitter, bitter world-and for themselves they are nobody, they are strangers, and alone. Surely you cannot stand that! If you do, you relent before the man is round the corner. We have known an apoplectic servant grow black in the face with running after a silver beggar with a shilling.

One of these unfortunates has been persecuted by fire -it may be for twenty years at a stretch. He has been burnt out of house and home, as you may see by the testimony of more than one magistrate: the devouring element paying not the slightest regard even to the respectability of his character, vouched for though it be by several clergymen. But, fortunately for the victim of this chronic conflagration, there are still humane and charitable persons in the world; and he is proud to carry a book in which their names are registered. Some are down for a donation of L.5, while others could afford only L.3, or L.2, or L.1. Nay, there are modest signatures which descend so low as to ten shillings or half-a-crown: you may choose which example your pride or your circumstances will. This is a lucrative branch of the profession, and clever practitioners have been known to realise handsome incomes for a long series of years.

Water is another great persecutor of artists of this description; but, like fire, it eventually enriches the victim it has ruined. He appears in the likeness of a rude and boisterous captain of the sea,' whose animal spirits have been depressed by misfortune; and this result is not wonderful, since his whole property, and his whole crew, all but one man, have been swallowed up by the relentless waves. The catastrophe took place somewhere abroad, as is shown by a certificate from one of our foreign consuls, and likewise by an order from the same functionary providing the two survivors with funds or a free passage to Cork or Liverpool; for to one or other of these ports it is always their pleasure to be conveyed. There is also another certificate, old and well-worn in appearance, though probably just out of the manufacturer's hands, beginning Port of Liverpool to wit,' and signed by two magistrates, with the signature and seal of the consul in the corner; but to make assurance doubly sure, the unfortunate captain has still round his neck the identical gold chain he happened to wear at the moment of his shipwreck. These captains are never less than fifty in number; and being men of education and address originally either supercargoes or lawyers' clerks discharged for drunkenness they make a snug little income of some L.300 per annum each.

Next to these old sea-dogs, we may place the tribe of distressed foreigners who apply to the sympathies of British hearts.* Not that these gentry are always natives of other countries (which, indeed, is the exception rather than the rule), but they are dressed, complexioned, mustached, and imperialised to such an extent, that their own mothers would not know them from Frenchmen, Spaniards, or Poles. In fact the English foreigner is more foreign than the real foreigner, inasmuch as, in addition to the hair on his upper lip, he wears the tuft on the chin, called an imperial, which you rarely see abroad. These personages have been compromised by mixing too freely in the political squabbles of the country they honour by adopting. Some have been loyalists where loyalty has gone to the wall, and others liberals where tyranny has triumphed; but all are victims of one kind or other, and have selected for a place of refuge that noble country which is of all parties, and has money for all comers. The true refugee may be detected by his proud impatience of charity, and his

* The foreigner's lurk.

anxiety to help himself by tuition or other employments fit for a gentleman; but the vagrant scorns every kind of industry but beggary and imposture. This has placed mustaches and imperials in such unamiable odour, that strangers wearing these decorations fall ipso facto under the surveillance of the detective police; and in the great towns, the landladies of furnished apartments, whom they used to terrify on account of their daughters' hearts, are now much more uneasy on the score of their silver spoons. Still this 'commodity of hair' is convenient, as a clip of the scissors metamorphoses the whole man; and the noble foreigner being above carrying certificates and a subscription book, his detection is difficult. These persons have often a military air, having deserted from, or been turned out of, the army; and they can make themselves extremely agreeable in society wherever singing, waltzing, polkaing, and gallopading are in request. This branch of the profession is followed likewise by the fair sex. The female foreigner in distress was originally, in all probability, an English waiting-maid, who married a soldier, went abroad, and picked up language and manner, and who has now returned to live upon her personal, family, and patriotic distresses. She would live much better were it not that the habitual depression consequent on her misfortunes has seduced her into the practice of dram-drinking.

Occasionally, instead of English foreigners preying upon their countrymen at home, our home vagrants betake themselves to foreign travel. A woman known by the name of Meg, who was at Manchester not long ago, and is probably there still, affords a remarkable instance of this. She was born in the middle class, and after her mother's death, was sent to a boarding-school, where she remained till she was seventeen. At this time she suddenly received a letter from her father, informing her that he was now married, which he had never been before, and that the new claims upon his income rendered it imperative upon her to provide for her own support. Meg, strange as it may appear, immediately made her election, and went forth into the world a beggar and impostor. She travelled over a great part of Europe, remaining some time at Rome, and acquired several languages, and picked up a considerable stock of information. Her taste, however, as well as her profession, led her to study the economy of the communities of beggars in the various countries she traversed, and she at length returned to England to practise the lessons she had learned on the continent. In Manchester, when we last heard of her, she was well known to the mendicity officers, and was supposed to be quite independent, occupying a genteel sitting-room and bed-room in a remote corner of the town. From this place, though impelled by no want, she sallied forth regularly to haunt with other beggars, and play off her impostures in damp cellars, and by means of hired children.

We are now rapidly descending in point of rank, and find the lower classes of vagrants, as might be expected, the great majority. The next we summon for review are those who live upon the losses they have sustained in their passage

Thorough brake, thorough brier, Thorough muck, thorough mire, Thorough water, thorough fire.

They depend, in short, upon the chapter of accidents,* and are provided with certificates from magistrates and books of subscription. Floods, storms, and murrains are common calamities of these unfortunates. Some have seen their horse, their only support, drop down dead; and some have been ruined by the too great liveliness of the same animal, which overturned their crockery cart, their only property. If women, their husbands were killed on a railway or in a coal-pit. Their children accompany them, as living evidences of their poverty; and although children have the practice of growing up,

*The accident lurk.

and taking to the accident line on their own account, they can always borrow as many as they want at the cost of sixpence a-day per head. When the inquiries of the compassionate are too embarrassing, they decamp to the next large town, where they are sure of obtaining two nights' lodging gratuitously in the night-asylum; but after this they must resort to the trampers' lodging-house, where the accommodation costs twopence per night. Thus they traverse the whole kingdom, a circulating medium of fraud and beggary, and are always successful, because their faces, if not their stories, are always new.

A more ingenious portion of the same class* figure as sailors or colliers; the one having had his ship struck with lightning in the West Indies, and the other having been blown up with fire-damp in a coal-pit. Some blister salve applied to the arms gives one of the artists all the advantage of a dreadful scald, while his comrade looks wonderfully ghastly by the aid of nothing more than a white linen band across the forehead. Another unfortunate is still more afflicted in the arms, though at less cost of suffering. He stains them with some substance which gives them every appearance of inflammation, and bandages up his fingers towards the wrist with dirty rags. This, you will say, is not much; but the wretch has all the time a piece of fat in his closed hand, which, oozing out, as it melts, through the bandage, makes the stoutest stomach sick, and the hardest head sore. The diseased arms hang helplessly down, but there is an open pouch pinned to the clothes, into which, turning away your head, you make haste to drop your charity. These fellows travel in groups of two or three, and their average gains may be about ten shillings a-day.

Fits, occurring conveniently near the door of a house, are so common, that we must not do more than allude to them. They usually extort a glass of wine, as well as food and money; but it is said that a spoonful of salt stuffed into the mouth is quite a magical cure. Women of this class beg baby-linen, flannel, or calico; and their appearance is such, that the benevolent make haste to comply, thinking the application a little too long deferred. Their husbands are either at home, confined to bed through severe illness, or they were killed six weeks before, in the course of their labours as navigators, colliers, or sailors. Some vagrants are deaf and dumb, and are therefore supposed to be able to tell fortunes, communicating with their customers by means of a slate and pencil. They have before now been cured of this affliction, by some humane person proposing (they, of course, being unconscious of the conversation) to stick them a little with a knife in the back of the neck, a plan which the extempore surgeon heard mentioned as a wonderful restorative of the faculties of speech and hearing. While this business is discussed, the deaf and dumb is anxious and observant; but when at length he sees the gentleman step furtively behind him, with a knife gleaming from his sleeve, he gives a hollo! that alarms the very operator, and bolts out of the house.

shillings for each production. Notwithstanding this handsome payment, however, there is little variety of genius exhibited, the letters usually proceeding in the same form-as thus: 'Sir, or Madam-Hearing of your well-known benevolence, &c. and having lost my all, &c. and having a wife and five helpless children entirely dependent on me for support, and I myself suffering from a grievous and internal disease, &c.' This is a numerous and invariably drunken class.

The shipwrecked sailors choose cold, rainy, and stormy weather for their peregrinations, when they go in groups, bawling their songs through the streets, half naked, and shivering in the blast. They have lost their all, it seems, and only saved their lives by swimming ashore. One of the gang, who is the spokesman, is a real sailor; but if you ask any of the others, as if by way of trying him, whether the timbrel is on the larboard or starboard side of a lugger,' he will betray, by attempting to flounder through an explanation, that he is unconscious of the imaginary nature of the article named. What these naked wretches seek is old apparel, which they sell to the people who are constantly advertising for cast-off clothes.

We close our catalogue with the cadgers, who, with the exception of a few who pretend to sell matches, make no excuse at all, but are genuine sturdy beggars, who depend upon your charity, and anything they can help themselves to at your back-doors or upon your hedges. An infallible way to secure exemption from the visits of cadgers, would be to keep a single little heap of stones before your door, ready to be broken by them at the rate of sixpence per hour. There is a free-masonry throughout the craft, and your house would soon enjoy a general taboo. An Irish gentleman effected the same purpose by having a machine at his gate, with a notice thereon that any person who chose, by turning the handle for one hour, would grind himself out threepence.

Some cadgers sit in the street, writing and sketching with chalk in a beautiful style; proving by this very accomplishment their ability to find regular employment if they desired it. Others sit on the footpath at the entrance of a town with a label stuck on their breasts. But perhaps the most melancholy crew in the whole catalogue are those who have been really ignorant all their lives of every kind of employment but theft and beggary. They are the children of vagrants, as well as vagrants themselves; they have passed most of their time in jail; and they have all a peculiarity in their expression, by which the experienced distinguish them at a glance.

Such are the vagrants of this country; and it will be seen that they form a class hardly second to any in ingenuity, perseverance, hardihood-everything, in short, which is requisite to enable individuals to gain a comfortable subsistence-but honesty. Seventy-two thousand persons in Scotland alone are almost entirely supported by private charity; but the fund is distributed in such a manner, that charity itself becomes a curse. It is a premium to dishonest ingenuity; it tempts poverty into crime; and swells the amount of vagrancy by the very act which is intended to diminish it. Do we then propose to limit private charity? God forbid! It is far too limited already, and we would fain multiply it tenfold. We would merely distinguish between fraud and destitution; we would have the humane bethink themselves that, in pampering vagabonds, they starve the honest poor. If they will not take the trouble of investigating cases themselves, there are almost everywhere societies that will do so for them; and it should be considered that investigation is a

Begging-Letter Writing is a distinct trade in all the large towns, where the scribe charges from five to ten

*The sick lurk.

he will be devoutly grateful. Because we are merciful to the unfortunate, we would have no mercy on pretenders. When the latter extract money from the rich, they really prey upon the poor; and, in the case of dis