rners of his
eyes; and endeavours to look the picture of injured innocence. The jury
at once find him 'guilty,' and his endeavours to squeeze out a tear or
two are redoubled. The governor of the gaol then states, in reply to an
inquiry from the bench, that the prisoner has been under his care twice
before. This the urchin resolutely denies in some such terms as--'S'elp
me, gen'lm'n, I never vos in trouble afore--indeed, my Lord, I never vos.
It's all a howen to my having a twin brother, vich has wrongfully got
into trouble, and vich is so exactly like me, that no vun ever knows the
difference atween us.'

This representation, like the defence, fails in producing the desired
effect, and the boy is sentenced, perhaps, to seven years'
transportation. Finding it impossible to excite compassion, he gives
vent to his feelings in an imprecation bearing reference to the eyes of
'old big vig!' and as he declines to take the trouble of walking from the
dock, is forthwith carried out, congratulating himself on having
succeeded in giving everybody as much trouble as possible.

CHAPTER XXV--A VISIT TO NEWGATE

'The force of habit' is a trite phrase in everybody's mouth; and it is
not a little remarkable that those who use it most as applied to others,
unconsciously afford in their own persons singular examples of the power
which habit and custom exercise over the minds of men, and of the little
reflection they are apt to bestow on subjects with which every day's
experience has rendered them familiar. If Bedlam could be suddenly
removed like another Aladdin's palace, and set down on the space now
occupied by Newgate, scarcely one man out of a hundred, whose road to
business every morning lies through Newgate-street, or the Old Bailey,
would pass the building without bestowing a hasty glance on its small,
grated windows, and a transient thought upon the condition of the unhappy
beings immured in its dismal cells; and yet these same men, day by day,
and hour by hour, pass and repass this gloomy depository of the guilt and
misery of London, in one perpetual stream of life and bustle, utterly
unmindful of the throng of wretched creatures pent up within it--nay, not
even knowing, or if they do, not heeding, the fact, that as they pass one
particular angle of the massive wall with a light laugh or a merry
whistle, they stand within one yard of a fellow-creature, bound and
helpless, whose hours are numbered, from whom the last