man, offering" to lend, on good security, two or three thousand pounds to any firm who would procure the advertiser the place of light warehouseman, or any other decent employment." Here, thought I to myself, now, is a man who, if he were unfortunately born in Ireland, would have horses, guns, and dogs, go to gambling-houses, and race-courses, ride steeple-chaces, and, conducting himself to all outward appearance like a blackguard, would shoot through the head, without ceremony, any body who denied that he was a gentleman -God help them-God mend them! I was forcibly struck with the case of a master tailor at the west end of the town, who announced himself in want of a first-rate cutter,-salary, with constant employment, five guineas per week. Heavens! what do the graduates in honours of Oxford and Cambridge, and the Fellows of the College of Physicians, say to that?-look on this picture and on this-the remuneration that attends a life of study, and the prospects held out to a first-rate cutter! And now-for I see no reason that a man who has done no good for himself, ought not, nevertheless, to do good for others-if I have nothing else to bestow, I can be munificent in advice; and the experience which has cost me the prime of my life, and all my money, under my hand and seal, I here present to your worship for nothing. I say, if there be in all England one elderly gentleman-in Ireland they are as plenty as blackberries -one man to whom years have not brought experience, nor grey hairs wisdom-who, to gratify a senile vanity, spends his little all upon giving to his sons lofty professions, towards success in which they have neither capital, patrons, nor connexions, and then turns them out upon a heartless world, with their pride and profession to sustain, in genteel poverty and reluctant idleness, the burden of a break ing heart-if there be one father of a family about to sacrifice his son at the shrine of his own fantastic vanity, let me assure him, in sober sadness, that a good trade is a good thing-that professions are a drug in the market of society-that the fruit of his loins will never turn out Lord High Chancellor or Archbishop of Canterbury, whatever he may think to the contrary-that his goslings will never grow up into swans-and that he himself, with reverence be it spoken, is neither more nor less than an old fool! Finding nothing in the leading morning journals to suit me every one there advertising for employment being prepared to give douceurs to any amount, and persons who had employments to bestow putting them up for sale-I turned my weary steps towards an office in which I was informed good livelihoods were advertised; a livelihood was a living, and, as Goldsmith said of himself in circumstances hardly dissimilar, "all my ambition was how to live." But I found it here as elsewhere-every thing at its full value, and nothing for nothing. An active lad, who could command fifty pounds to put into the business, might, I observed, be permanently employed as pot-boy; and a gentleman's servant, or man and his wife, with eight or nine hundred pounds, might be introduced (well they might!) into a right good living. There were a few advertisements for light-porters and bar-men, with a to me highly gratifying postscript, to the effect that no emerald need apply! There was also a requisition from the vestry-clerk of the parish of Mary-le-bone, for a number of labourers to scour out a sewer that polluted the neighbourhood; to this there was no sentence of exclusion against Irishmen attached, for obvious reasons. But why fatigue the reader with the minutiae of my unsuccessful exertions? Suffice it to say that for ten daysduring which time the benevolent fruiteress, with that overflowing kindliness of heart which is the distinguishing characteristic of the poorest class of Irish towards one another, gave me share of what she idiomatically termed "her bite and her sup"-I tried for employment everywhere, and was everywhere repulsed. One informed me, that he wouldn't take an Irishman if he was paid for keeping him; another demanded to know if I had a two years' character; a third wished me to understand, before entering into particulars, that I would be expected to "come down" with a fifty-pound "flimsey," as security for the trust reposed; while a Hebrew in Houndsditch, who wanted a buyer in his rag store, peremptorily declared, "dat he couldn't give no monish, by Gosh, to no buyer fat hadn't a 'spectable connexion in de ragsh bishness!" In short, nobody would take me for nothing now, because nobody had enjoyed my services previously at the same price; and it appeared that I was fit for nothing in time to come, because I had, unfortunately, been unable to get anything in times gone by. The five shillings given me as I lay on the ground, by the drunken sailor, had long been exhausted; hope was oozing out of my broken-hearted carcase, like Bob Acres's courage at the tips of his fingers, and despondency and despair looked out at either eye, like a couple of jail-birds peeping from their respective cells in Cold-bath-fields prison. It was as plain as the nose on Lord Morpeth's face-a figure intelligible to the meanest capacity that I had nothing for it but to embrace the military profession, to escape experienc ing for the second, and probably last time, the agonies of hunger; to save my life by perilling it in the service of his Majesty; to sell myself, body and soul, to my country, for an unlimited term of service, for a glass of grog and a shilling! I think I told the reader that Westminster, in the olden time, was a horrid nest of monks and other profligates. The monks are gone, but all the other vagabonds remain in full force and effect, as the law-makers call it, to this very day. Westminster is the emporium of crimps, recruiting sharks, Sergeant Kites, and the haunt of their desperate and hopeless victims-the last refuge of the destitute in London. Every neighbourhood in the metropolis has its character-an individuality about it; all are, to be sure, composed alike of bricks, mortar, blue-moulded stucco, and bad taste. Yet each locality is as different in nature, and as far removed in the social scale from its fellows, as if, instead of being part and parcel of one enormous whole, it was removed half the earth's diameter from its neighbour. Thus, for example, Arlington Street is aristocratic; Park Lane, particular; Stafford Place, suspicious; and the Albany, rakish. Russell Square, again, as every body knows, is very middling indeed; while the New Road is out of all question. Mary-le-bone is mixed; Pentonville, low cockney; and Clerkenwell, abominable. Spitalfields is starved; Southwark, stupid; Somerstown, refugee; Bayswater, genteel; Kensington Gore, ditto; Wandsworth and Vauxhall, shabby ditto; Kingsland and Hoxton, beastly; but Westminsterlet me see-yes, Westminster is-I have hit upon the very word-Westminster is rascally! A man has no right to libel a neighbourhood, any more than a neighbour; and, therefore, when I say Westminster is rascally, I beg to be understood to limit my reprobation to that part of it which lies between the Broad Sanctuary and Pimlico, thence extending south and west, and not to extend, or be construed to extend, to Belgrave Square, Eaton Square, and parts thereunto adjacent. If you happen to be passing along Tothill Street late at night-a proceeding I would recommend you to avoid as you value an integral skullyou find numbers of hulking fellows in smock frocks, and every possible variety of costume, loitering about; every second house is a gin-palace, filled choke-full with low prostitutes and their pals; while, from the premises in the rear, there issue obscure sounds of clandestine music and surreptitious dancing. There are some few eating-houses in this neighbourhood, too; but they are usually empty - - Westminster generally dining from home, and the eating there bearing about the same proportion to the drinking, as Falstaff's halfpennyworth of bread to his two gallons of sack. It was to this classic region, then, that I betook myself, when hunger had in. spired me with the martial fire of the God of war himself; and, pausing opposite one of the most densely populated spirituous pandemoniums, I was attracted by two tawdry prints in the window, the one representing six or seven gallant warriors in red coats, spatch-cocking, with their united bayonets, a half-naked native of Hindostan; the other depicting, with equally graphic effect, the scarlet warriors distributing the spoils of the native aforesaid, deceased. Underneath, in large letters, was the following attractive announcement : "Bringers of good men, five feet seven, twelve shillings-five feet six, six shillings, cash down, on passing the doctor." Now, I happen to be five feet eleven, or thereabouts, and calculating myself, bones and offal included, at six shillings an inch-that being the rate of human flesh in these days for military purposes, I determined that, if a man five feet seven gave a bounty to the crimps of twelve shillings, a fellow five feet eleven was fairly entitled to just four times six shillings more; whereupon I strutted into the gin palace, determined to have value for every extra inch, and to be my own bringer. The place was crammed so full of crimps, bringers, recruiting sergeants, watchmen, raw recruits, and gentlemen like myself, intending to embrace the heroic line, that I had leisure to retreat into the back premises where the votaries of Terpsichore were engaged, in what some classic author, with equal tenderness and taste, calls "sweating the boards." An old man, blind, rolling about his sightless orbs, as if in search of light, his head thrown back on his shoulders, and his mouth habitually open, to receive the drink of all kinds which the customers poured liberally down his throat, thundered away, upon a cracked grand piano, something like a strathspey or jig, to which time was beat by a couple of ladies in black eyes, and a corresponding number of gentlemen, with sticking plaster upon the bridges of their respective nosesthe apartment reeking with tobacco, beer, foul breath, onions, and garlic, I sate down on a bench in the farthest corner of this choice assembly-room, and scanned curiously the extraordinary groups of human life that filled every table. Here, a parcel of guardsmen, having succeeded in making an old watchman beastly drunk, were engaged in dissecting his rattle-there, a lady lay against the wall, rather "overcome," insensible, apparently, to the delicate attentions of a couple of raw recruits, who were engaged, with the assistance of soot mixed with beer, in converting her visage to the complexion of Othello-close to a wall, whereto was attached a machine like a magnified shoe-maker's rule, but which was, in fact, a standard of measurement for recruiting purposes, stood a pale young man, of rather gentlemanly appearance, dressed in a suit of hungry black, and looking every whit as hungry as his dress. A recruiting sergeant, in full uniform, his cap overshadowed with ribbons of every con ceivable colour, stooped down to examine the calves of the gentlemanlike young man's legs, who stood under the standard craning his neck, and elevating himself on tip toe, as if by taking thought he could add a cubit to his stature. "Do you think I'll do?" said the gentlemanlike young man, with a face as long as if his life depended (which it probably did) on his receiving a favourable answer. "Do I think you'll do?--not I, by my soul, unless you pull out like a pocket spy-glass," was the unsatisfactory reply. "Let me have a look at him," said another of the recruiting sergeants, pressing forwards, seizing upon the gentlemanlike young man, turning him round and round, feeling his arms, legs, and ribs, like a South Carolina slave-buyer at a Yankee "free and independent" Nigger-market. "I'm not as fat as I was," said the gentlemanlike young man-" I've been three years usher at a select school for young gentlemen." "Usher!" said one of the recruiting sergeants, with a scornful laugh-"blast you, if you had served the king three years like a gentleman, your ribs wouldn't be sticking through your pelt, blast me! You might have been a lauce corporal by this time, blast me!" "Could you get me passed?" en- * quired the usher, despondingly, "Me! The doctor will pass you, if you're all sound, and no corns on your toes: hold out your hand, blast you!" said serjeant Kite, exhibiting, as he said it, a shilling between his finger and thumb. "You consent to serve his Majesty, take notice, for an unlimited period, by land and sea, in peace and war-to be subject to the mutiny act and the articles of war-and to behave in all things as becomes an honourable man and a good soldier?" said Sergeant Kite, grasping the extended palm of the usher, and suspending in air the shilling, "I do," was the reply. The music stopped the dancers gave over, joining the rest of the room in crowding round the young man, who stood under the standard leaning against the wall, one hand grasped in the hand of Sergeant Kite, while the other tremulously sustained a glass of wine to be quaffed off, the moment he was enlisted, to his Majesty's health. hat one after the other. I could see him refer continually to a scrap of dirty paper before him, which was covered with blots and scratches of the pen, to me altogether unintelligible, but which seemed to serve the haggard man as the storehouse of his ideas, upon whatever topic he was at that moment scribbling with such railroad rapidity. The noise, tumult, oaths, dancing, piano-playing, and blackguardism going on, appeared to give this gentleman no manner of uneasiness: he scribbled and scribbled away, without so much as looking about him, his sole relaxation being the frequent entombment of his face in the recesses of the pot before him, and a silent gesture to the dirty pot-boy, to "How happy the soldier who lives on his intimate his desire of having the empty pot refilled. pay, And spends half-a-crown out of sixpence a day!" said, or rather sung, a tallow-faced man as he entered the room, advancing to a table where a haggard look ing man was scribbling away in a black leather note-book, and invited the haggard gentleman to drink of his (the tallow-faced man's) pot of beer to his Majesty's health. The haggard man was below the middle size, and apparently about forty-five years of age-he might be no more than thirty, for his face was one of those faces where toil has anticipated time-his mouth and chin were enveloped in a shabby cotton shawlhis dress was poor and slovenly; but his forehead was large and intellectual; thin flakes of hair negligently strayed over it, and looking as if they had been parched by the continual working of the brain beneath. I saw at a glance that he was a man habitually engaged in mental labour of some sort, and looked at him with reverence; for knowing that in London literary persons were abjectly poor, and, of course, held by every body, from the baron to the bag-man, in great and deserved contempt, I concluded he might be an author. In his left hand he grasped a small portable ink-bottle, a quiver of arrows in the shape of pens lay before him, a pot of beer at his elbow, and a pen in his fingers, with which he rattled over the paper with the rapidity of lightning, tearing out the leaves as he completed each, and flinging them into his After vain attempts to induce the haggard man to leave off his penmanship, for the purpose of drinking to his Majesty's health, the crimp (for such was the tallow-faced man) honoured me with a similar invitation, the which, being ready to drop down dead with thirst, I readily accepted. "Perhaps," said the crimp, "you might be inclined to serve his Majesty as well as drink to him?" 66 bounty be good." "You're a likely young chap," remarked the crimp, approvingly. 66 My mother always thought so," replied I. "You're the full standard height?" enquired the tallow-faced man. "More than that by four inches," replied. I "Take another pull,” said the crimp, handing me the half-empty pot. "Here's luck, then," said I, "and more of the best of it." To make a long story short, I was put under the standard, and discovered to be tall enough for any thing in the army-the Household Brigade only excepted; so that, if I did not get a good regiment, it was not for want of plenty of them among which to pick and choose. My ribs, and calves, and arms, were fingered all over; my shoes were pulled off, to see if I had bunions or corns to interfere with a march; and my stockings were pulled down to see if I had varicose veins in my legs, or scars on my shins. My head was carefully looked over for the marks of blows or cuts, and I was desired by Sergeant Kite to cough several times, in order to ascertain whether I might not be in the condition of " bellows to mend." I was put by the tallow-faced man into all sorts of attitudes, for the purpose of ascertaining the state of iny muscular conformation; and, after some demurring to the roundness of my shoulders, and my being cursed small over the hips (which I always considered rather a beauty than a blemish in a man), it was determined that I should be enlisted, subject to the approbation of the doctor, and be permmitted to stand to be shot at in battles wherein I had no earthly concern, for my allowances, prize-money, and sixpence a-day. I was put under the standard, the glass of wine was brought, the ladies and gentlemen gathered round as before-a lady in a black eye was preparing my cockade-Sergeant Kite stood like an auctioneer ready to knock me down to his Majesty for a shilling-the heroic usher, by this time nine parts drunk, standing by to welcome a new companion in arms. "'Tis no use starving," I exclaimed in a loud voice, as I held out my hand, looking round the room wistfully, as if to make my own use of my optics for the last time-" "Tis no use starving." "Not a bit of it-hiccup-I don't like that school-hiccup-the army for ever-hiccup-and confusionhiccup-to select-hiccup-seminaries," hiccuped the heroic instructor of young gentlemen. "You consent to serve his Majesty, take notice," said Kite, commencing his professional harangue, " for an unlimited period in” "I was a gentleman once," said I, with true Hibernian assumption of gentility-a thing, by the way, compounded of beggarly poverty and more beggarly pride_" I was a gen tleman once. "So you are now," said the tallowfaced man; "every soldier is a gentleman." land and sea, to be subject to the mutiny act and the articles of war, and to behave in all things as becomes""Yes," said I, "as I said before, I was a gentleman-a gentleman of the press." The haggard man started up. I looked at him, and observed sticking in one eye a half crown piece, while he transmitted to me a volley of most significant winks with the other. I thought I saw meaning in his wink, and my martial ardour dropped down to zero in a moment. "Cut it short, sergeant," said I, withdrawing my hand, and stuffing it into my breeches pocket for greater security-" Cut it short I shan't enlist this turn." Sergeant Kite, the tallow-faced crimp, and the heroic usher, fell back two paces, each in speechless astonishment at this unlooked-for announcement. "You're too late, my buck," said the crimp—" you can't back out now." "You're enlisted already, by. said the sergeant. "You're enlisted, by-hiccup"echoed the heroic usher. "Excuse me, gentlemen," said I; "but I haven't taken the shilling." Sergeant Kite threw the shilling dexterously at my bosom, in the hope it might stick; but I was too quick for him, and the coin fell on the floor. "You drank his Majesty's beer," said the crimp, black in the face with fury. "You have his Majesty's wine in your cowardly fist," said Sergeant Kite. "You drank my-hiccup"-echoed the heroic usher. "His Majesty," said I, "is too much of a gentlemen to grudge a loyal subject a drop of his beer, or wine either; so here's health and happiness to him, and confusion to all his enemies." Sergeant Kite stumped and roared with rage; the tallow-faced crimp's face was like to burst; and the heroic usher staggered speechlessly about the room. The haggard man, I observed, had put up all his traps, fitted his hat tightly on his head, and turned up the cuffs of his coat rather ominously-I presume he saw how matters would end. "You're enlisted, I tell you," said Kite," and blast me if you stir!" |