from which the horse-half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan controversy.  He moved on, as if he could have made shift with yet half of the body-portion which was left him.  The os sublime was not wanting; and he threw out yet a jolly countenance upon the heavens.  Forty-and-two years had he driven this out of door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled in the service, but his good spirits no way impaired, because he is not content to exchange his free air and exercise for the restraints of a poor-house, he is expiating his contumacy in one of those houses (ironically christened) of Correction.

Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nuisance, which called for legal interference to remove? or not rather a salutary and a touching object, to the passers-by in a great city?  Among her shows, her museums, and supplies for ever-gaping curiosity (and what else but an accumulation of sights—­endless sights—­is a great city; or for what else is it desirable?) was there not room for one Lusus (not Naturae, indeed, but) Accidentium?  What if in forty-and-two years’ going about, the man had scraped together enough to give a portion to his child (as the rumour ran) of a few hundreds—­whom had he injured?—­whom had he imposed upon?  The contributors had enjoyed their sight for their pennies.  What if after being exposed all day to the heats, the rains, and the frosts of heaven—­shuffling his ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and painful motion—­he was enabled to retire at night to enjoy himself at a club of his fellow cripples over a dish of hot meat and vegetables, as the charge was gravely brought against him by a clergyman deposing before a House of Commons’ Committee—­was this, or was his truly paternal consideration, which (if a fact) deserved a statue rather than a whipping-post, and is inconsistent at least with the exaggeration of nocturnal orgies which he has been slandered with—­a reason that he should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay edifying, way of life, and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy vagabond?—­

There was a Yorick once, whom it would not have shamed to have sate down at the cripples’ feast, and to have thrown in his benediction, ay, and his mite too, for a companionable symbol.  “Age, thou hast lost thy breed.”—­

Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes made by begging are (I verily believe) misers’ calumnies.  One was much talked of in the public papers some time since, and the usual charitable inferences deduced.  A clerk in the Bank was surprised with the announcement of a five hundred pound legacy left him by a person whose name he was a stranger to.  It seems that in his daily morning walks from Peckham (or some village thereabouts) where he lived, to his office, it had been his practice for the last twenty years to drop his half-penny duly into the hat of some blind Bartimeus, that sate begging alms by the way-side in the Borough.  The good old beggar recognised his daily benefactor by the voice only; and, when he died, left all the amassings of his alms (that had been half a century perhaps in the accumulating) to his old Bank friend.  Was this a story to purse up people’s hearts, and pennies, against giving an alms to the blind?—­or not rather a beautiful moral of well-directed charity on the one part, and noble gratitude upon the other?