is a
philanthropist. I don't like it. I love a little eccentricity. I
respect honest prejudices. I admire foolish enthusiasm in a young head
better than a wise scepticism. It is high time, it seems to me, that a
moral game-law were passed for the preservation of the wild and vagrant
feelings of human nature.

I have advertised myself to speak of _vagabonds_, and I must explain
what I mean by the term. We all know what was the doom of the first
child born of man, and it is needless for me to say that I do not wish
the spirit of Cain more widely diffused amongst my fellow-creatures.
By vagabonds, I do not mean a tramp or a gipsy, or a thimble-rigger, or
a brawler who is brought up with a black eye before a magistrate in the
morning. The vagabond as I have him in my mind's eye, and whom I
dearly love, comes out of quite a different mould. The man I speak of,
seldom, it is true, attains to the dignity of a churchwarden; he is
never found sitting at a reformed town-council board; he has a horror
of public platforms; he never by any chance heads a subscription list
with a donation of fifty pounds. On the other hand, he is very far
from being a "ne'er-do-weel," as the Scotch phrase it, or an imprudent
person. He does not play at "Aunt Sally" on a public race-course, he
does not wrench knockers from the doors of slumbering citizens; he has
never seen the interior of a police-cell. It is quite true, he has a
peculiar way of looking at many things. If, for instance, he is
brought up with cousin Milly, and loves her dearly, and the childish
affection grows up and strengthens in the woman's heart, and there is a
fair chance for them fighting the world side by side, he marries her
without too curiously considering whether his income will permit him to
give dinner-parties, and otherwise fashionably see his friends. Very
imprudent, no doubt. But you cannot convince my vagabond. With the
strangest logical twist, which seems natural to him, he conceives that
he marries for his own sake, and not for the sake of his acquaintances,
and that the possession of a loving heart and a conscience void of
reproach is worth, at any time an odd sovereign in his pocket. The
vagabond is not a favourite with the respectable classes. He is
particularly feared by mammas who have daughters to dispose of,--not
that he is a bad son, or likely to prove a bad husband or a treacherous
friend; but somehow gold does not stick to his fingers as i