r assessment, in
order to have their streets and houses cleansed, at the rate of 10_d._
in the pound.

A week previously, the SCOTCHMAN states, the Haddingtonians had devoted
a day to fasting and humiliation in the hope that the pestilence might
be averted from them.

Fasting involves self-denial. The Haddington fasters cannot deny
themselves to the amount of 10_d._ in the pound. They cannot fling that
tenpence into the gutter, to sweep it, although the gutter is poisoning
their poor neighbours, and may poison themselves too.

Christians are supposed to wash their faces when they fast. Whether the
Haddington housekeepers accompany their fasting with any ablution may be
doubted, since they refuse to pay 10_d._ in the pound for washing their
town. By preference, for cheapness sake, they would rather perhaps fast
in sackcloth and ashes; but as all sackcloth is now used up in sacks,
whilst ashes are carted away for manure, their fasting possibly consists
in wearing their usual clothes, and sitting still in their usual filth,
and doing nothing. Whether they abstain from anything else--from haggis
or sheep's head, or collops, or whiskey-toddy--in addition to abstinence
from wholesome exertion--we do not know.

As to the Scotch Lion playing second fiddle in the Royal Arms, he may
bless the sometime DUKE OF ARGYLE and his stars, and be contented to
have any place there to fiddle in at all. By all heraldic right he ought
to be ousted altogether, and his place should be occupied by the more
appropriate emblem of a Pig; a whining, grunting, odoriferous Hog
Rampant, sprawling in the filth of towns.

* * * * *

GARE LA GAROTTE.

Our friend and contemporary the _Sunday Times_ (whose zeal for the
spread of Democracy, for the non-suppression of Betting Houses, and for
the purification of the Turf and the Church, we gladly recognise), in
commenting upon an excellent article in which the daily _Times_
dissuades the charitable from encouraging street mendicancy, has the
following startling remarks:--

"While on this part of the subject, we would suggest the impolicy of
withholding from the metropolitan mendicants, whether impostors or
not, the scanty means of support....We would counsel the old ladies
and gentlemen _not to hold their hands_, lest the sturdy vagabond,
who now contents himself with extracting pence from their humanity
by whining, _should take to strangling the