the more gracious," and are the more happy in their
ignorance. None of this rhapsody, however, although teeming
with blasphemy and abuse, had any effect on Garrick, and he
would have remained unmoved had she not terminated in the
following manner, which so excited the laughter of the
collected mob, and disconcerted "the soul of Richard,"
that, without another word to say, he hastily took shelter
in the theatre. Putting her arms akimbo, and letting down
each side of her mouth with wonderful expression of
contempt, she exclaimed--"You whipper snapper! you oust me!
You be d-----d! My house is as good as your's--aye, and
better too. I can come into your's whenever I like, and
see the best that you can do for a shilling; but d-----me if
you, or any body else, shall come into mine for less than a
fifteen-penny negus."

~340~~ "This street and neighbourhood was wont to exhibit, nightly,
a melancholy proof of early infamy. Here might be seen a prolonged
succession of juvenile voluptuaries, females, many of them under
fourteen years of age, offering themselves to indiscriminate
prostitution, in a state verging on absolute nudity, alluring the
passengers, by every seductive wile, to the haunts of depravity, from
which retreat was seldom effected without pecuniary exaction, and
frequently accompanied by personal violence. The nuisance has been
partly abated, but entirely to remove it would be a task of more
difficult accomplishment than that of cleansing the Augean stable, and
would baffle all the labours of Hercules!"

"This fact," observed Tallyho, "throws an indelible stain on
metropolitan police."

"Not so," answered his companion, "scarce a day passes without groups of
these unfortunates being held before a magistrate, and humanely disposed
of in various ways, with the view of preventing a recurrence to vicious
habits,--but in vain;--the stain is more attributed to the depraved
nature of man, who first seduces, and then casts off ~341~~ to infamy
and indigence the unhappy victim of credulity. Many of these wretched
girls would, in all probability, gladly have abstained from the career
of vice, if, on their first fall, they had experienced the consoling
protection of parents or friends;--but, shut out from home,--exiled from
humanity,--divested of character, and without resources,--no choice is
left, other than mendicity or prostitution!"{1}

Th