ity permit the populace to be tempted to any
outbreak. Once, in a time of dearth, I noticed a ballad-singer going
through the street hoarsely chanting some discordant strain in a
provincial dialect, of which I could only make out that it addressed the
sensibilities of the auditors on the score of starvation; but by his side
stalked the policeman, offering no interference, but watchful to hear what
this rough minstrel said or sang, and silence him, if his effusion
threatened to prove too soul-stirring. In my judgment, however, there is
little or no danger of that kind: they starve patiently, sicken patiently,
die patiently, not through resignation, but a diseased flaccidity of hope.
If ever they should do mischief to those above them, it will probably be
by the communication of some destructive pestilence; for, so the medical
men affirm, they suffer all the ordinary diseases with a degree of
virulence elsewhere unknown, and keep among themselves traditionary
plagues that have long ceased to afflict more fortunate societies. Charity
herself gathers her robe about her to avoid their contact. It would be a
dire revenge, indeed, if they were to prove their claims to be reckoned of
one blood and nature with the noblest and wealthiest by compelling them to
inhale death through the spread of their own poverty-poisoned atmosphere.

A true Englishman is a kind man at heart, but has an unconquerable dislike
to poverty and beggary. Beggars have heretofore been so strange to an
American that he is apt to become their prey, being recognized through his
national peculiarities, and beset by them in the streets. The English
smile at him, and say that there are ample public arrangements for every
pauper's possible need, that street-charity promotes idleness and vice,
and that yonder personification of misery on the pavement will lay up a
good day's profit, besides supping more luxuriously than the dupe who
gives him a shilling. By-and-by the stranger adopts their theory and
begins to practise upon it, much to his own temporary freedom from
annoyance, but not entirely without moral detriment or sometimes a too
late contrition. Years afterwards, it may be, his memory is still haunted
by some vindictive wretch whose cheeks were pale and hunger-pinched, whose
rags fluttered in the east-wind, whose right arm was paralyzed and his
left leg shrivelled into a mere nerveless stick, but whom he passed by
remorselessly because an Englishman chose to