of this human ant's-nest, renders us, not 'callous,' but disposed to condense our charity into the shilling given in the street, or the check sent to the 'Society.'
"The sight alluded to by your correspondent 'unmans' 'Pater-familias' more than other people. But though 'the father' softens, the merchant, the stockbroker 'is fixed,* and must not lose his appointment in the City; and so the half-crown hurriedly bestowed, though imparting a genial glow Co the giver, often carries a curse to the receiver, aiding and confirming a course of deceit and crime, helping the pretty face of the child to trade upon the better sympathies of humanity till it is eligible to minister to its grosser vices.
"I remain. Sir,
"Your obedient Servant,
W. D. B.
March 22.
So it is. These two simple letters exhibit the cruel thing of London juvenile vagrancy as it exists, the prolific cause of the thing, and its only effectual remedy. God be praised for ragged schools, and for an active benevolence in high places like Lord Shaftesbury's! Let no one think that the pictures they sometimes see of systematised juvenile mendicancy are overdrawn. One Sunday afternoon I was walking with Thomas Carlyle from Chelsea to Grosvenor-square, when, as one nearly always is, I was accosted by a begging child. I gave the child a sixpence, which called forth a rebuke from the stern philosopher at my side. "The other
