the sworn foes of gravity, the perpetual disturbers of one's dignity and philosophy.

Although too discursive a theme for my present design, no doubt a history of streetboys from the earliest times, judiciously illustrated by extracts from ancient and modern authors, would be highly curious and instructive. I am morally certain the race flourished vigorously in old Nineveh ; and cracked unseemly and irreverent jokes upon the salient features of those wondrous sculptures which now grace our Museum. Comparatively modern authors contain many allusions to the species; and I especially remember that Cervantes has immortalized it in his delectable history. The charming description of Don Quixote's return to his native village would have lost half its truth and humour, had the proceedings of the boys been omitted, how they made sport of the grotesque misery, and incongruous equipments of paladin and squire, and how they escorted home the knight in ironical triumph. Again, when the Flower of Chivalry enters Barcelona, where he is doomed to be finally overthrown before the lance of Carrasco, the rogues are introduced as facetiously applying an ingenious stimulant of furze to Dapple and Rozinante. From "tawny Spain" also, I doubt not, Armado the Fantastical brought that "handful of wit," Moth, to the delight and mystification of honest Costard.

The

But I must resist the temptation to digress, and limit myself to the modes in which boys manifest themselves in London, A. D. 1855. They were especially jocund and sportive one terrible evening last February, and considerably enlivened my usual walk from the city to the outskirts. cold was intense. Everything susceptible of frost was hard as marble. The snow fell heavily in big flakes, and was ruthlessly driven into every vulnerable crevice by a bitter north-easter. The cabman, manycaped, and much-enduring,-" for all his feathers, was a-cold,"—and inglorious, fled away before the blast. Policemen were not; postmen ran for dear life. The teeth chattered dismally in every adult head, and men drew the breath of their nostrils in fitful gasps. Yet, amid this battle of elements, when all mature, well-regulated humanity confessed itself vanquished, and beat incontinent retreat, how did the boys comport themselves? Why, with the most insolent, exuberant hilarity. In defiance of the law of nations, they cut out unlimited slides upon the footways;

and when remonstrated with by their elders (and consequently their betters), ironically pleaded the slipperiness of the pavement as sufficient excuse. Grave city gents, working painfully and precariously homeward, furious at the disappearance of cab and omnibus, and contorted horribly by unwonted gymnastics, muttered anathema through their set teeth, yet wisely refrained from more articulate objurgation. Wisely, I say, for what grave city gent, with "a certain dignity of manner to maintain, driving before wind and weather over frozen snow, can hold his own against the Bedouins of the streets? In fact, on that and some other nights of the past winter, London was utterly, helplessly in the hands of the boys. They might have sacked the town, and revelled unmolested in the spoils of her torpid citizens, wreaking upon respectability, in one night, vengeance for years of contumely. To their immortal honour, they scorned to abuse their power. They gener

ously limited themselves to sarcasm and snowballs; and we owe them undying gratitude for their moderation and magnanimity in that hour of triumph.

Street-boys, indeed, are a distinct species of the human family. In the severest weather, when all civilized mankind confess by look and gait that they are mere nipped, pinched, shrunken, subjugated wretches, the indomitable boys assert their birthright: then is their mirth most insolently uproa rious, then are they most fleet of foot and ready of tongue.

But it is not in winter that the lawless and erratic propensities of street-boys may be best studied, albeit neither frost nor snow, nor shower, ever hinders them from following the sports which seem good unto them. These pastimes-as I am painfully taught by the regular occurrence of their attendant perils to my person,-have their set seasons, and seem to be enjoined by traditions known to, and binding upon, all generations of urchins. When the days wax long, and the London sunshine gilds pleasantly the London smoke, the boys gather together in formidable bands, to pursue these appointed games, and to carry on a determined guerilla warfare with policemen, square-keepers, beadles, livery-servants, shopkeepers, and all other constitutional and respectable institutions. Vainly do the executive, as represented by policeman and beadle, enter into alliance, offensive and

defensive, against their diminutive foes: the flying squadrons harass and defy those persecuted functionaries, "till the livelong daylight fail." Supposing the scene of action to be a square, this will be something like the programme : The square-keeper or beadle, entering the locality which he (quite nominally) "rules as his demesne," finds its gentility profaned by horrid shouts, and outcries incident to some vulgar game, and the boys occupying the ground in great force. Oppressed by an exaggerated sense of the responsibilities of his office, and feeling his honour and his laced livery alike tarnished by inaction in presence of the illegal tumult, he rashly determines to give instant battle. He probably commences hostilities by peremptorily commanding the assembled rebels to disperse-which edict is invariably treated with most mortifying contempt. Exasperated by failure, he

makes a sudden rush at one of the most prominent rioters, who, evading the attack by rapid dodging, falls warily back, along with the main body, upon some strategical position-commonly a corner whence several streets diverge.

Arrived upon this vantageground, the boys reassemble, and receive their hereditary foe with derisive cheers, mingled with piquant personalities; or they irritate and gall him by a vigorous chorus of allusive doggerel. Should he continue to approach, they retreat to another convenient point, and repeat the process till he is fairly "winded" and wearied, or until the necessity of eating or sleeping causes them to break off their sports. Frequently, however, a fresh troop advances from some other quarter during the contest. This acts as an army of relief, incessantly annoying the common enemy in flank and rear, until he is provoked to face about and repel his new tormentors, who ultimately defeat him by a series of similar tactics.

In their collisions with the police my young friends evince greater caution, confining themselves to desultory skirmishing at respectful distance, and seldom coming to close quarters. Yet, despite their salutary dread, the policeman is no match-and he knows it for these enfans terribles. Swift as the wind, ubiquitous, innumerable, they outrage law and order beneath his very nose, and vanish ere he can realize the atrocity, scudding to their respective burrows like so many rabbits in a warren. He is wiser in his generation than the beadle, and declines

to render himself ludicrous in the eyes of mankind by unsuccessful chases after "such small deer." He issues no mandates, makes no demonstrations, till he is sure of his boy, and listens with philosophic indifference to those popular witticisms which satirize the occasional lapses of "the force." And when he captures his boy, and carries him off stationhouse-ward amid the distant insults of all the other boys, he will very probably temper justice with mercy, and, when clear of the crowd and the neighbourhood, dismiss his captive, thoroughly frighted, with a quiet and laconic admonition. By this judicious policy he preserves a comparative authority among the boys, though of course nothing on earth can entirely restrain them from obeying their natural instinct of defying him whenever they deem it safe.

Let no jovial young fellow set me down as a querulous egotist on account of these remarks. Allow me to say it is no joke for a man of my years and gravity, somewhat stout, and near-sighted to boot, daily to encounter the various hair-breadth 'scapes" which beset the wayfarer in this boy-haunted city. My well-brushed pantaloons are bemired and my shins excoriated by their hoops; my spectacles are dismounted and my eyesight imperilled by their balls, shuttle-cocks, cats, and other yet more deadly missiles; my most susceptible corn is excruciated by their infernal peg-tops; and more cruel still, my airiest fancy or most delicate web of speculation is too often shattered into irrecoverable ruin, and my auditory nerves agonized, by the studied dissonance of their unhallowed noises. Now, I discover that I am serving some young scapegrace as a screen, while he stalks down a playmate, skulking behind me in irritating propinquity to my coat-tails; anon, I am gyrating helplessly in the vortex of a whirl of dodging, yelling urchins, who revolve around me like so many mad planets, or rather comets, round a common sun. one time I am roused from the brownest of studies, to find myself betwixt the deadly fire of two adverse factions vigorously Macadamizing each other; at another, impotently struggling against a stormy current, full fraught with grip and crank, fresh from the enjoyment of Punch's drama or some other open-air entertainment. If I linger a few minutes at a print-shop window, one or two juvenile cognoscenti are certain to make a wriggling progress from end to end of it, edging in perversely between my person and

At

the object of my scrutiny, and staying there while they deliver comment and criticism with playful jocularity. Should I chance to encounter in the street a congenial spirit, and enter into brief discourse with him, ten to one a boy will plant himself hard by, and listen visibly with all the energies of eyes, mouth, and ears. Nay, I cannot even purchase a cigar, or munch a frugal bun in a pastry-cook's, without the accompaniment of a row of flattened noses against the glass, while twice as many vigilant eyes critically follow my every movement. But it is ridiculous to attempt to set forth my grievances. I have already said enough to awaken a thousand aggravating and pathetic memories.

Yet, despite my injuries at their hands, far from me be the selfish and impracticable wish to

"Subjugate

The free republic of the whip-gig state!" I do not write in the exacting spirit of those unfortunates who, never having been really boys, resent all the frolic, freshness, and mischievous waggery of boyhood as criminal. I look back fondly to my own experiences of that golden age, and sympathize with the unbroken spirits who now sport in its sun

shine; but human nature is weak, and my nerves cry out against the young rogues. They are perfectly right to insist upon the full development of their faculties; and juvenile fun will not be stifled even amid the throng and roar of London. Therefore, in kindness to the street-boys, and in consideration of the sufferings endured by myself and other elderly martyrs, I would respectfully suggest to influential men that space for exercise and pastime is a prime essential to the health of the young; and that henceforth, whenever an opportunity occurs, such space ought to be secured in densely-populated neighbourhoods. Honest and industrious parents, if poor, are now compelled to chose between two evils. They must either mew up their children in unhealthy rooms, or turn them loose upon the street to obtain air and exercise, in defiance of police-law, at the risk of moral contamination, and to the needless terror and irritation of elderly citizens. Were space for play-grounds provided, I am convinced that, considering our present wear and tear of nerve, continual apprehension, and occasional bodily injury, there would result a clear addition of six months to the average duration of life in the metropolis.

CHAPTER XIX.

ANOTHER RUNAWAY.

MR. BOSHER was not the only one of our dramatis persone who mysteriously disappeared at the moment when the verdict was given in the great case of Bennoch v. Littlegood. Peg Todd was also found absent without leave; though, certainly, Peg was not flying from her creditors, for it is doubtful whether she could have procured credit for a penny loaf, nor was she running away in consequence of any little rogueries committed by her. Nevertheless, Mr. Weazel, all elated as he was at his grand success, was vexed to a degree that surprised himself, when he discovered the flight of his little

Continued from page 284.

handmaiden. He first made a complete search through the house to ascertain that Peg was not hidden in any mysterious corner or cupboard. He even shook his coats and trowsers, and peeped under the covers of the vegetable dishes, as if it were possible for Peg to be concealed in either. Having satisfied himself that she had really gone, his suspicions were next excited lest she should have robbed him, and so he took another survey of all his goods and chattels, but found everything in its place. Indeed, it appeared certain that Peg had walked off with only the clothes she had on her back, and about half of a very stale loaf of bread.

There was really no mystery in the matter, and though Mr. Weazel considered it a most extraordinary and unaccountable thing that

the girl should leave his hospitable roof, Peg thought otherwise. Sick of ill-treatment, bad fare, worse clothes, and eternal taunts and threats, it occurred to the little creature to run away, without the least notion of whither she should go, or how she should exist on her way. She deliberated for a short time whether she should help herself to the remains of the stale loaf or not, for Peg was not exactly a rogue at heart; but she naturally came to the conclusion that as Weazel had done his best to starve her for the last year or two, it would be no great crime to help herself to a bit of his bread without leave. So Peg cut the loaf into slices and stowed them away in mysterious parts of her scanty garments, and putting her dirty, paste-board coal-scuttle (which she naïvely imagined to be a bonnet) on her head, she left the house and ran through a dozen different streets before she had thought of which way to steer her

course.

When Weazel came home, whistling with delight at his triumph-and Weazel's oldest friend never suspected him of being able to whistle before, he was much surprised and disgusted to find his eternal pulls at the bell, and thumps at the knocker entirely unheeded, especially as he had gone out without his latch-key. At length, after imprecating all beggarly girls together, and Peg Todd in particular, Mr. Weazel was compelled to climb over his own area railings, in doing which he was seized by a policeman as a housebreaker, and only released on producing two neighbours to prove that he was entering his own premises. Getting in at the kitchen window, he found that Peg had gone, but it was not till a late hour of the night that he could persuade himself of the possibility of her not returning. In the evening he indulged in rum-and-water to an unprecedented extent, and made the nearest approach to intoxication that he ever ventured on for Mr. Weazel was too cautious a fellow to get drunk, and even in this present little excess, he took care to be completely alone.

Meantime, Peg wandered on through unknown streets, thinking the great city endless; for, like every one running away, she was anxious to get out of London, though, in case of pursuit, the town itself offers a thousand advantages for concealment over the open country. Her little legs were pretty well tired when she at length found

herself toiling up a long, steep road that bore some traces of a country aspect, but Peg did not know that she was ascending Highgate Hill, and was on what used to be the great high-road to the North, before railways supplanted mail-coaches.

A beggar-girl (and Peg looked like one) is no very remarkable object, thanks to our civilization, so that her appearance excited no one's attention. Once a passer-by, having an inconvenient copper weighing down the pocket of his paletôt, bestowed it on Peg, and thought he had done an act of charity. The girl took the coin, which she had not asked for, in surprise, and never thanked the donor. It put a new idea into her head, however, which was that she would turn professional beggar, and try to pick up a livelihood along the road. Henceforth, therefore, she bobbed a curtsy to every one she met, and held out her hand, and so successful was she, that, by the time darkness began to overtake her she found herself possessed of the magnificent sum of eight-pence halfpenny. Visions of hot suppers and pints of beer actually began to flit across her brain ; for Peg had no very correct notion of the value of money, Mr. Weazel having taken excellent care never to send her to market for the smallest trifle, lest she should cheat him some day of a halfpenny.

It was growing very dark, and Peg was tired. She was not hungry also, because she had eaten more bread than usual, so that really the hot supper vision may be regarded as a piece of spontaneous gourmandise on the part of the young traveller; but it was clearly necessary to have some place to lie in during the night.

She stopped there was a country-built public-house by the road-side, one of those cosy, warm, quiet-looking hostelries that really are of genuine English origin. There were two bow windows with red curtains, and between the windows was a doorway, entering which was seen a bar on the right hand side, with a small tap-room in front of it, and on the left the more aristocratic parlour," with its sanded floor, round tables with legs ending in gouty-looking feet, strong Windsor chairs, sporting prints of impossible hunting scenes, when riders wore tails to their own hair and cut off those of their horses; and the inevitable, beforementioned, crimson curtains in the window. Before the house was the sign-post with the swinging sign-board representing George the

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Third in a pigtail as big as that appended to the renowned statue at Charing Cross, and with an appropriate expression of fat imbecility in his face. In front of the signpost again, was a long trough where a wagoner was refreshing his team with water à discretion, and a tantalizingly small portion of hay.

Peg approached the doorway, and seeing the plump-looking landlady inside, she bobbed another curtsy, and held out her hand.

"Go away, go away; don't come begging here," cried the landlady; "or, stay, perhaps you may be hungry, here are some victuals," and she handed Peg a lump of bread and a bit of broken meat, which would certainly have satisfied any girl's appetite, but which seemed to the good-natured woman, who could dispose of a pound of rump-steak for her own supper, to be small enough.

Peg curtsied again, but there was something too imposing in the landlady's appearance for her to venture to ask her for a night's shelter.

Holloa, little 'un !" cried an ostler, who saw her moving away ; "What are you up

to?"

Peg scarcely knew how to answer this lucid question, so she simply said, "She was n't up to nothing," which was at least as intelligible as the question.

"Where do you live when your'e at home?" asked the ostler.

"I haven't got any home, and I don't live anywhere," was the reply.

"Crikey!" cried the ostler, with a peculiar whistle, "why you ain't brown enough for a gipsy, and them's the only folks, except the tramps, that don't live nowhere. You're a young tramp, if you are one."

"I ain't a tramp," said Peg, who did not know the meaning of the word, but conceived it to be a term of reproach of some kind.

"Where are you a-going then?" asked the ostler, with the inquisitiveness of his class.

"Oh, ever so far," answered Peg.
"North ?" asked the ostler.

"Yes," said Peg, who knowing nothing of the points of the compass, thought north would do as well as any other way.

"But where are you going to sleep?" asked the ostler.

This was a puzzler to Peg. "Don't know, I suppose," said the ostler, "thought so. Now look here, there's a loft

where I could give you a shake down for the night if you don't mind a rat or two running about. They wont bite you because they likes corn better, though they ain't always comfortable bed-folks neither. Hows'ever we can't have all as we likes ;" continued the philosophic ostler, "leastways, unless we've got no end of money, and I don't suppose that's your case no more than mine."

Peg was expressing her perfect acquiescence in the last remark of the ostler, when a third person joined them. This was the wagoner, who had been taking a glass of ale in the tap-room.

"What are you a sayin' to the little un, eh, Bill?" asked he. "She's a tiny sort of a body, she is."

"She's a-going ever so far, she says," replied Bill," and she ain't got no place to sleep in, so I was offering her my loft, if she don't mind rats."

"But she do mind rats; in course she do, poor little body," said the wagoner, kindly. "If she's going North she's welcome to a lift in my wagon-there's no rats there and she'll sleep in it like a bed. Would you like to go, little girl?" he asked.

"Yes, please," answered Peg, who somehow or other took an unaccountable fancy to the wagoner from his looks, or his voice, or the kindness of his manner.

"All right then,-No, stay a minute," said the wagoner, when he had lifted the girl into the wagon-"stay a bit," and he lumbered back into the inn, and coming out with a small mug of beer, he handed it to Peg. "Drink that—every drop on it, don't be afeard; it 'll make you sleep nicely.”

A minute or two afterwards the wagoner's whip was cracking, his voice was crying the peculiar "hee-whoop," which is supposed to be most intelligible to the equine race, the wagon was lumbering heavily along the road, and Peg Todd was trying to make herself comfortable for her night's rest. She succeeded so well, that before a quarter of an hour had passed, the child was in a deep slumber.

When Peg awoke in the morning she was surprised to find the wagon stopping, as she at first thought, at the very spot whence they started the night before; but it was not so, though the present road-side inn was very much like the other. Indeed, when she looked round, she saw that she was much farther in the country, as few houses were