each their peculiar
funeral ceremonies in the exhumation, ~28~~sacrifices, and orations
performed on such occasions; and much of the present customs of the
Romish church are, no doubt, derivable from and to be traced to these
last-mentioned nations. In the present times, no race of people are
more superstitious in their veneration for the ancient customs of their
country and funeral rites, than the lower orders of the Irish, and that
folly is often carried to a greater height during their domicile in this
country than when residing at home.

It was about nine o'clock at night when Eglantine, Transit, and myself
sallied forth to St. Giles's in search of the wake, or, as Bob called
it, on a crusade to the holy land. Formerly, such a visit would have
been attended with great danger to the parties making the attempt, from
the number of desperate characters who inhabited the back-slums lying
in the rear of Broad-street: where used to be congregated together,
the most notorious thieves, beggars, and bunters of the metropolis,
amalgamated with the poverty and wretchedness of every country, but more
particularly the lower classes of Irish, who still continue to exist
in great numbers in the neighbourhood. Here was formerly held in a
night-cellar, the celebrated Beggars' Club, at which the dissolute Lord
Barrymore and Colonel George Hanger, afterwards Lord Coleraine, are said
to have often officiated as president and vice-president, attended by
their profligate companions, and surrounded by the most extraordinary
characters of the times; the portraits and biography of whom may be seen
in Smith's 'Vagabondiana,' a very clever and highly entertaining work.
It was on this spot that George Parker collected his materials for
'Life's Painter of Variegated Characters,' and among its varieties, that
Grose and others obtained the flash and patter which form the cream of
their humorous works. Formerly, the Beggars' ordinary, held in a cellar
was a scene worthy ~29~~of the pencil of a Hogarth or a Cruikshank;
notorious impostors, professional paupers, ballad-singers, and blind
fiddlers might here be witnessed carousing on the profits of mistaken
charity, and laughing in their cups at the credulity of mankind; but
the police have now disturbed their nightly orgies, and the Mendicant
Society ruined their lucrative calling. The long table, where the
trenchers consisted of so many round holes turned out in the plank, and
the knives, forks, sp