treatment of a
man and a brother--and a gentleman to boot. This sort of exhibition
never lasts long, it being a kind of standing-dish for which the
public have very little relish in this practical age. The 'swell'
sweeper generally subsides in a week or two, and vanishes from the
stage, on which, however ornamental, he is of very little use.

The occasional sweeper is much oftener a poor countryman, who has
wandered to London in search of employment, and, finding nothing else,
has spent his last fourpence in the purchase of a besom, with which he
hopes to earn a crust. Here his want of experience in town is very
much against him. You may know him instantly from the old _habitue_ of
the streets: he plants himself in the very thick and throng of the
most crowded thoroughfare--the rapids, so to speak, of the human
current--where he is of no earthly use, but, on the contrary, very
much in the way, and where, while everybody wishes him at Jericho, he
wonders that nobody gives him a copper; or he undertakes impossible
things, such as the sweeping of the whole width of Charing Cross from
east to west, between the equestrian statue and Nelson's Pillar,
where, if he sweep the whole, he can't collect, and if he collect, he
can't sweep, and he breaks his heart and his back too in a fruitless
vocation. He picks up experience in time; but he is pretty sure to
find a better trade before he has learned to cultivate that of a
crossing-sweeper to perfection.--Many of these occasional hands are
Hindoos, Lascars, or Orientals of some sort, whose dark skins,
contrasted with their white and scarlet drapery, render them
conspicuous objects in a crowd; and from this cause they probably
derive an extra profit, as they can scarcely be passed by without
notice. The sudden promotion of one of this class, who was hailed by
the Nepaulese ambassador as he stood, broom in hand, in St Paul's
Churchyard, and engaged as dragoman to the embassy, will be in the
recollection of the reader. It would be impossible to embrace in our
category even a tithe of the various characters who figure in London
as occasional sweepers. A broom is the last resort of neglected and
unemployed industry, as well as of sudden and unfriended
ill-fortune--the sanctuary to which a thousand victims fly from the
fiends of want and starvation. The broken-down tradesman, the artisan
out of work, the decayed gentleman, the ruined gambler, the starving
scholar--each and all we have i