amongst these was a passionate strength of affection, which had never known any legitimate outlet till she found a friend within the walls of our prison, to whom she attached herself vehemently, and through whom she learnt to know the Supreme Object of an adoration that could alone satisfy and subdue her ardent nature. She had received very little religious teaching of any kind in her young days, but she had always had dim instinctive longings for something better and purer than the life she was leading. When the fair vision was shown to her of a Love that for her sake had been stronger than death, she gave herself up to it with a depth of repentance and a fervour of worship, that could not stop short of the utmost limits of self-renunciation. She writes that she has not the smallest desire ever again to leave the silence and monotony of the convent life. Some of the aspects under which death is sought by prisoners for themselves, and even, under certain mournful conditions, for those they love best,1 are too sad to be described in these pages; but there is a passive form of suicide very frequent among the mysterious race of tramps, which is singular enough to be worthy of a few moments' attention.

The tramps who pervade our country from end to end, and often find their way into jail, are emphatically a most mysterious race, as we have just termed them. They lead a life by their own indomitable will and determination, which is more hideously miserable than anything which could be imagined. How it can possibly

be the voluntary choice of numberless men and women of all ages is simply inexplicable. With the one exception that it is a life of freedom, it seems to lack every element of attraction that could exist for a human being. Their only home is the open highway, along which, summer and winter alike, they tramp aimlessly hour after hour, never knowing from one day to another where they are to lay their head at night. Indeed they often are unable to obtain any shelter at all, and they sleep at the roadside or in some open shed, such as was described by a hapless woman in our prison, who found her infant frozen to death in her arms after a night spent in that receptacle. To have begged

or

stolen a few pence, which enables them to get a bed at a public-house or in some low lodging, is the height of felicity for them; and they consider themselves very unfortunate when barli weather obliges them to take their night's rest in the workhouse, with the understanding that they must pay for it by an hour's hard labour at stone-breaking in the morning; but it is only in the depths of winter that they dream of exposing themselves to so great an inconvenience. In the summer an open field or a dry ditch is thought infinitely preferable.

These tramps have no affinity with the gipsy race, which might perhaps have explained their wandering propensities. They are stolid British men and women, with nothing in the least picturesque or romantic about them. Some of them have been born while their parents were leading this life "on the road,"

his sons in the Torre della Fame

VOL. CXLVI.-NO. DCCCLXXXV.

and the force of habit may to some extent account in their case for so strange a mode of existence; but many of them deliberately choose it for themselves, often breaking up a settled home, and going off with wife and children to walk miles upon miles every day with their tired swollen feet, not caring apparently what particular place they may happen to reach, only fully decided never again to sleep under a roof of their own.

The more aristocratic members of this roving community provide themselves with a hawker's licence, and according to their own account, they are enabled to get a sufficient livelihood by the sale of the goods they affect. The women deal largely in nightcaps, which seems to be a favourite article of luxury in country villages; and the men in boot-laces, combs, and tracts of a very fierce and alarming nature. But the truth is, that the hawking business only veils less creditable modes of obtaining moneythe most innocent of which is systematic begging; and tramps who pride themselves on not being thieves, will generally admit freely enough that they depend for their subsistence o. charity alone. No doubt a love of idleness, as well as of freedom, lies at the root of their adoption of so trying a life; but even with that powerful attraction, it is hard to understand how they can voluntarily endure all the suffering it entails. It might be comprehended if they lived in a southern clime, where frost and snow are unknown, and the peasants dine on a handful of olives with a lump of bread; but in this country, where the winter can bring such terrible forces to bear on their homeless condition, it is marvellous that tv should persist

ship. The Emperor Nicholas of Russia is said to have trusted to "General January" to rout the British troops in the Crimea, but our tramps do not hesitate to set that power at defiance. Great efforts are made in our prison to find regular employment for them on their release, and so enable them to abandon their vagabond habits, but they invariably refuse to avail themselves of the opportunity.

We had a singular instance of this in the case of a woman eightyfour years of age, who was imprisoned on a short sentence in the late autumn for some slight misdemeanour. When the time for her release came, she prepared deliberately to encounter an English winter on the road, and it seemed evident from her age and infirmity that if she did, she would simply be found dead in a ditch some day from cold and exposure. The strongest efforts were therefore made to induce her to abandon her intention. A home was secured for her in a charitable institution, where she would have had every comfort, and she was told in the plainest terms that she would not live the winter out if she persisted in braving its inclemency. Her only answer was that which we hear again and again from tramps of all ages-"I prefer the road; I mean to go on the road, and do as I have always done." We could not tie the old woman hand and foot, which would have been the only means of preventing her from taking her own way, and

fested by another lady of mature years, who afforded at the same time a remarkable instance of the mysterious attraction which some persons seem to possess for their fellow-creatures, under the most unfavourable circumstances. She was, without doubt, one of the most hideously ugly women it was possible to see. She had only one eye, and a wooden leg, and her grey hair and wrinkles testified to a very long acquaintance with the vicissitudes of life. Yet she was the beloved of a Frenchman with whom she travelled, and who was supposed, for her sake, to have abandoned his native country and natural ties. Nothing could induce either the one or the other to separate, though they were in no way legitimately united; or to give up their chosen mode of existence - which consisted in wandering from one public-house to another, where they gained a precarious existence by making most discordant music with their cracked voices, for the amusement of the persons drinking there.

The mystery of the ramp's strange taste for a homeless life is rendered deeper by the fact that it does become, as we have said, a passive form of suicide. It is only the very strongest who can long brave with impunity the constant privation and exposure of their existence, many of them die quickly from phthisis and bronchitis, or other maladies incidental to their circumstances. When they succumb to a lengthened illness they generally drift into some workhouse, but there are innumerable cases of death by the roadside.

Only lately a man was found unconscious near a brick - kiln to which he had crept for warmth, and was taken to a hospital, where he lived for two days, but he was never able to speak. No one knew his name, or anything about him, and his pockets were perfectly empty; so he died an unknown stranger, and was buried in a nameless grave: if he had kith or kin on earth, they can never have known his fate in any

way.

Suicide is not too strong a word to apply to the deliberate courting of death which characterises the tramp's career, because they are perfectly well aware that their lives must sooner or later be destroyed by the severity of the strain to which they are subjected. They share to the full the lighthearted willingness to pass out of this world which, as we have shown, is almost invariably felt by prisoners and the class generally from which they are recruited..

Such a state of feeling at first sight appears very unnatural and deplorable, but those who have had opportunities of gauging the unutterable sadness of most of their lives, can hardly regret that these poor people are able to look forward to death as their sure consoler and their truest friend. Their mental condition, and that, indeed, of most of the forlorn beings who drift into the Silent World, renders the problem of their possible permanent improvement, while within its limits, one of the deepest import; and we shall hope to recur to it at some future opportunity.

Is our population to go on increasing at its present rate till some of us are pushed into the sea? Does the amount of emigration make any appreciable or considerable deduction from that increase? Can we by any efforts, public or private, materially increase it?'

It is at least worth while to put the facts, as far as bare figures reveal them, plainly before us. The Board of Trade Tables of Emigration and Immigration, compiled by Mr Giffen, are models of arrangement and compactness, and to any one with imagination enough to put life into the dry bones of figures, are full of interest. What do they tell us?

During last year, 1888, 398,494 persons sailed from ports in the United Kingdom to destinations outside Europe. In 1882 the corresponding number was 413,288; but with this exception, it is the largest number that ever left the ports of the country within a year. There is a small increase of exactly 2000 on the year 1887.

In the thirty-six years from 1853 to 1888 inclusive the total gross emigration was 8,675,475. This gives an average yearly exodus of 240,985.

But from these encouraging gross totals there are heavy deductions to be made before the net British and Irish emigration can be ascertained. First, there are the foreigners. In spite of German Lloyd steamers with their cheap fares, and other foreign lines of steamers sailing from Antwerp, Rotterdam, and other Continental ports, no less than 118,566 of the number quoted for 1888, or nearly three-tenths, were foreigners, using England only as a place of embarkation. Then

there is the return wave of those who come back from places out of Europe to England. No statistical account was taken of this immigration until 1870. In 1888 it amounted to 128,879, of which 34,746 were foreigners; more than three-quarters of the immigration being from the United States. These deductions leave the balance of excess of emigration over immigration of natives of the United Kingdom for the year 1888 at 185,795, or more than 500 a-day.

Of this number, 61 per cent were English, 26 per cent Irish, and 13 per cent Scotch. Of the total gross British and Irish emigration for the last thirty-six years, speaking in round numbers, half were from England, fourtenths from Ireland, and onetenth from Scotland.

According to Mr Giffen's tables, the estimated increase of population in the United Kingdom in 1888 is 364,503, about 1000 a-day. This, but for the drain by emigration, would have been 550,298, or more than 1500 a-day. We may say, therefore, in general terms, that the drain by emigration is a little more than one-third of the natural increase, and that, in order to keep the population stationary, it would have to be nearly trebled.

Taking periods of ten years, emigration shows a progressive increase, in spite of the comparative diminution in the exodus from Ireland. Thus the gross numbers who emigrated during the decennial periods 1856-65, 1866-75, and 187685 respectively, were 1,335,280, 1,823,590, and 2,001,690. there are considerable fluctuations within these periods, the number rising gradually for a succession

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