and pricked him with their swords. After three or four such chases they returned to the club and entertained their amiable friends with exaggerated narratives of their adventures. The knocking down the old watchmen in the Regent's time seems quite a playful amusement after such ferocity.

In a chapel at the corner of Lincoln'sinn-fields, that harlequin preacher and clever quack of Pope's time, Orator Henley, set up his gilt tub." Before this he had wooed for three years the butchers of Newport Market. Pope talks of Henley's butchers, and in the Dunciad feathers him with his poisoned arrows, every one sent full and straight at the noisy impostor.

Still break the benches, Henley, with thy strain,
While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson preach in vain;
O worthy thou of Egypt's wise abodes,

A decent priest where monkeys were the gods;
But fate with butchers placed thy priestly stall,
Meek modern faith to murder, hack, and maul.

Hogarth, or one of his imitators, had his gird at Henley, introducing his sly leering face at a christening; and in another place showing him mounted on a scaffold, with a monkey by his side, perhaps in allusion to Pope's lines.

Orator Henley was the son of a Leicestershire vicar, and had been well educated. On leaving Cambridge he returned home, opened a school, wrote a poem called Esther, and began a Universal Grammar in ten languages, before he yet knew his own. Driven from the country by some scandal, he hurried to London, and for a short time did duty in a chapel in Bedford-row. Under the Earl of Macclesfield's patronage he translated Pliny's Epistles and several French works. Still restless and ambitious, Henley competed for a lectureship in Bloomsbury, but the parishioners complained that he threw himself about too much in the pulpit. This drove the orator almost out of his senses, for "regular action" was what he considered the first requisite for a great preacher.

66

66

able

Blockheads,' " he shouted to the astonished vestrymen, are you qualified to judge of the degree of action necessary for a preacher of God's Word? Were you to read, or had got sufficient sense, you sorry knaves, to understand the renowned orator of antiquity, he would tell you almost the only requisite of a public speaker was action, action, ACTION. But I despise and defy you, provoco ad populum; the public shall decide between us."

So saying he cast the dust off his feet

against the men of Bloomsbury, and rushed eastward to establish a religion of his own. The learned Whiston trying to dissuade Henley from leaving the Church of Eng. land, Henley warned him not to enter his room in Newport Market at his peril. The orator preached his absurd sermons on Sundays, and lectured on general subjects on Wednesdays and Fridays. He also wrote pamphlets, satirised all public persons, and issued a weekly periodical called the HypDoctor, for which Sir Robert Walpole, never very scrupulous about the means he used, is said to have subsidised him. The subjects of this half-madman's sermons were eccentric enough. Among others, we find discourses on Lot's Wife, What Language Our Saviour will use on the Last Day, the Tears of Magdalen, St. Paul's Cloak, and the Last Wills of the Patriarchs. He is described as leaping into the pulpit through a sort of spring door, and falling to work with hands, arms, legs, and head, all at once. The attack on the Essay of Man he answered by a lecture on Whether Mr. Pope be a Man of Sense in one Argument-Whatever is, is Right. On one occasion he filled his room with ladies by advertising an Oration on Marriage. He began by shaking his head impudently at the fair audience, and telling them he was afraid 'they oftener came to church to get husbands than to hear the preacher. Another time he drew together a crowd of shoemakers by announcing that he could teach a method of making shoes with extraordinary facility. The secret consisted, however, merely in cutting the tops off old boots. His impudence, indeed, was boundless, and the butchers carried him through many scrapes, hustling away and threatening aggressive intruders. Once the government stretched out a claw towards him, and he was, in 1745, cited before the Privy Council for ridiculing Herring, the Archbishop of York, who had armed his clergy to face the Pretender. Henley, vigorous, cool, with strong voice and strange gestures, baffled the lords, saying he thought there was no harm in cracking a joke on a red herring. "My lords, I must live."

"I don't see the necessity," replied the Earl of Chesterfield.

"That is a good thing," said Henley, "but it has been said before," and this quelled the rising laugh. The man had some wit, for when accused of doing all for lucre, he replied sharply, "Well, some do nothing for it." During one sermon he publicly rebuked a Bloomsbury vestry

66

man, whom he spied out among the audience : "You see, sir," he roared, there are a few sensible persons in the world who consider me as not totally unqualified for the office I have undertaken." Henley, however, sometimes met his match, for once challenging two Oxford men, they came with such a strong escort of cudgels, that the butchers shunned the contest, and Henley stole away through the theatrical spring door. The orator used to boast that no one dared answer his challenges, that he could study twelve hours a day, and write three dissertations a week, without help.

In spite of his talent, and satire, and the patronage of the butchers, Orator Henley gradually grew coarse and drunken, and died in obscurity in 1756, aged sixtyfour. It is reported that he died mad. He left behind him six hundred manuscripts, which he valued at a guinea apiece, and one hundred and fifty volumes of notes. The whole were sold for less than one

hundred pounds. The orator has gone, but the butchers still flourish. As Henley once said, "One must live;" and people, though they can perhaps do without oratory, heresy, or satire, still require their chop and steak.

HOW WE MAKE THIEVES.

Two ladies-an old and a young onewalking at their ease along a certain fashionable thoroughfare in the extreme west of the great metropolis, find themselves suddenly in the midst of a small gang of urchins, varying between the ages of six and twelve years, and characterised by an almost inconceivable raggedness and squalor of "get up." Perhaps among them -they number some half-dozen - they may boast five shoes, a cap and a half, and various detached portions of other articles of wearing apparel, no complete garment, however, being found in possession of any one of them. The professional engagements of these youths are various. One or two of them appear to have embarked their capital in the match or cigar-light trade; one is a purveyor of literary food, and has a bundle of Echoes under his arm; another carries a fragment of a broom, with which he makes a great show of sweeping the path in front of any special wayfarer whom he happens to have selected as the recipient of his attentions. One or two have no stock-in-trade at all, trusting to open and

undisguised begging as a means of extracting halfpence from the lieges.

Our two ladies are not long in being besieged. The venders of cigar-lights and the purveyors of Echoes indeed allow them to pass undisturbed, but the others-the proprietor of the fragmentary broom especially-are clamorous and pressing in their attentions. Likely victims, no doubt, both these ladies, as far as appearances go. The elder of the two, a comfortable-looking personage, about sixty-five years old, has a kind and sensible face, with something of a nervous, anxious look about it, which forbids the notion of a phlegmatic or crabbed nature. The younger looks pretty and good-natured, and is quite unable to repress a smile as the small urchin already alluded to runs in front of her and her companion, sweeping vigorously right and left, as he scuttles along, without being at all influenced by the fact that there is nothing whatever to sweep.

"I really must give him something," says the younger lady.

Her companion shook her head. "It sounds uncharitable and hard, I know," she said, "but I do most earnestly beg that you won't."

"It seems so unkind," urged the other; "look at his little bare feet on the ground."

"What you give him-for I see there's no hindering you-will not keep his feet. from the ground, my dear, of that you may be very sure. Indeed, those bare feet are, I suspect, a part of his stock-in-trade." "I can't help it-and then he looks so delightfully impudent. Just this once, I must."

"Well, just this once, I suppose you must, especially as he has heard every word we are saying, and sees you getting out your purse; but when we get home I'll tell you a story of something that happened to myself, which will enable you to understand how it happens that I am so hard-hearted, as I am sure you believe me to be."

"Time was, my dear," the old lady went on, when she and her companion were afterwards seated at work in a comfortable drawing-room at Kensington"time was, and that not so very long ago, when I used to talk and feel very much as you do, thinking it harsh and unfeeling to turn a deaf ear to such an appeal as that which we have just heard, and to which you have, in spite of my entreaties, responded; but not very long ago something happened which I will tell you about, and

which materially affected my views as to questions of this sort, and, indeed, as to matters of sentiment generally.

"Some years ago-fifteen or eighteen, I should say, at least-I was living-an old maid then, as I am now-in the immediate neighbourhood of Sloane-street. I was very much then what I am now. I was fond of the society of my friends, fond of having things comfortable and neat about me, particular about my tea, much more sentimental than I am now, rather addicted to routine, but very fairly happy, as I believe a prodigious number of old maids-when once they have made up their minds to accept the situation-are. I have said that I was living in the neighbourhood of Sloane-street, and I confess I do not see why I should not state at once that the exact locality in which I had taken up my abode was that queer, old-fashioned, inconsistent, half-secluded, half-frequented bit of the world which goes by the name of Hans-place. Not far from this particular thoroughfare, there was a certain corner which I passed at least twice every day of my life, and sometimes much oftener, and here, my dear, there used generally to be assembled a little group of street urchins, very much like those from whom we have just escaped, and who, like them, depended for a living on what is generally called popular benevolence. There were no Echoes to sell in those days, but there were matches and cigar-lights, and there were sometimes horses to be held-much oftener for some reason than seems to be the case nowand then there were omnibuses travelling up and down Sloane-street, alongside of which it was quite competent for these little creatures to run, turning somersaults, and converting themselves temporarily into catharine-wheels, with a view of inducing those who were riding outside to fling any loose coppers they might have to spare into the road; besides which, it was always possible to get hold of the stump of a broom, and pretend to sweep a crossing, like your little friend just now.

Well, my dear, there was one special little ragamuffin belonging to this gang of which I have been speaking, of whom, whenever I went out, I used almost invariably to take some sort of notice. He was a pretty little rascal, neatly and well made, uncommonly nimble and active, with bright mischievous blue eyes, and a face which we instinctively set down as belong. ing to the Irish type. In addition to all which he was, as you said just now, 'most

delightfully impudent.' But the most remarkable thing about this small protégé of mine was decidedly his hair. It was in a tangled mass all over his head, and not very familiar with comb or brush, but it was of a colour so exceedingly rich and uncommon that it was impossible not to be struck by its beauty. The artists who were in the habit of coming to see me always used to rave about the child's hair, saying that it was of that particular hue which is a modification of red without being actually red, and which Titian and Giorgione loved to paint. I must confess that I believe that this Giorgione tint had a great deal to do with my patronage of the little rascal, and not only with mine, but with that of a great many ladies, old and young both, who lived about the neighbourhood.

"All the time that I lived in Hans-place, I used to pass this small urchin's crossing two or three times a day, and generally, I think, gave him something-any halfpence I might have got in change from the tradespeople-or sometimes even a threepennybit or a sixpence. Not unfrequently, too, I would direct the servants to give him some broken victuals on the door-step, and he was even, on one or two occasions, admitted inside the house to partake of a good meal; but that was when I was making a picture of the Infant St. John the Baptist, for which I made him sit to me, but which, somehow or other, I never could finish quite to my satisfaction.

"It was no doubt a bad thing for 'little Mike'-that was the name he went bywhen the time came for my breaking up my abode in Hans-place. The move made a great change in all my arrangements, and one difference which it caused was that I rarely set eyes on my young St. John the Baptist. At last I went abroad for a considerable time, and when I came back to London, after being away the best part of two years, I found that he had disappeared altogether, and that nobody could tell me anything about him.

"You must suppose now, my dear, that a considerable time-some years, in factwent by. Of course it was not likely that such a lapse of time could take place without bringing about all sorts of changes, both in the small events of my somewhat monotonous life, and in the opinions and feelings to which these events gave birth. With regard to the first-the circumstances of my life during this interval-I need not trouble you, more especially as they are in

the main known to you already; while as to the last the changes of opinion which those circumstances brought about-I need only mention one: a strong conviction, namely, of the enormous importance of training in very early life, and of the organisation of some system for the rescuing of young children from the bad influences to which, when left to go adrift in the London streets, they must necessarily be exposed. This impression was one which every day's experience served to confirm and strengthen; and a certain incident, the telling of which will bring this narration to a conclusion, was all that was wanting to convert strong impressions into absolute conviction.

"One day, my dear, something less than a year ago, it was on the occasion of the queen's opening the Royal Albert HallI left my sister's home at Brompton about eleven o'clock in the forenoon, intending to take my accustomed stroll in Kensington Gardens. I was not alone, for my sailor nephew, Sam, who happened to be in town for a short time, on leave from his ship at Devonport, had come out with me to smoke his cigar, intending to give me the advantage of his escort as far as the gates of the gardens. Our line of route from Brompton lay along one of those great new thoroughfares which lie on each side of the Horticultural Gardens, and it very soon brought us into the midst of the crowd which had assembled in the neighbourhood of the Albert Hall, with a view of seeing all that might be seen of the day's pageant from the road outside the amphitheatre.

"I have a great dread of a crowd, and as soon as I saw we were becoming involved in one, was for turning back, but my nephew would not hear of it, and pledged himself to bring me through it safely, and so he did, as far as my personal security was concerned.

"Well, my dear, we had not been long fighting our way through the mob-for it was nothing less-when, just as all eyes were directed to the Queen's carriage, which was passing at the moment, I felt a distinct tug at my watch-chain, and looking round saw a very ill-looking fellow, who had been standing close beside me, making off with my watch in his hand. The involuntary exclamation which burst from me attracted my nephew's attention, and he, catching sight of the thief almost at the same moment that I did, dashed off after him, and had collared him, and handed him over to one of the numerous

policemen who stood about, in less time than it takes me to relate what happened. "I need not tell you, who know me so well, how much I was disturbed and agitated by this unpleasant affair. I was not used to adventures, and this one might have upset anybody much more accustomed to stirring incidents than I was. I was horribly upset, and should have given in altogether but for my nephew, who, however, could not stay with me. All he could do was to see me safely out of the crowd, after which he went off to attend to the entering of the charge at the police station. When he came back I found, to my horror, that it would be necessary for me, as well as my nephew, to appear at the magistrate's court next day to give my evidence.

66

'Now, if there is one thing that I dread more than another in this world, it is coming forward in public and making myself conspicuous in any way whatsoever. That night I did not sleep a single wink for thinking what was in store for me, and when I came down in the morning I had almost made up my mind that I would let the whole thing pass and not appear to give evidence in the case at all. If I had known what was coming I am quite certain that I should have stopped away; but I didn't know, and when I began to hint at my feelings at breakfast time, I was met by such a volley of arguments from my sister and her son, that I was fairly beaten at the first onslaught, and constrained to give in, and face what was before me with what courage I might. Both my sister and my nephew were very strong on its being a public duty, this that I had to perform, and both said that if I neglected it, I should be guilty of nothing less than a gross offence against the public, and I don't know what besides. I have always felt that I have been much too indifferent about what are called public matters, public losses, public gains, public rejoicings, and so on, limiting my interest too much to my own small circle and its belongings, so now I thought to myself that I was going to suffer for my selfishness, and that here was an opportunity of making amends in a sort of way. I didn't like the prospect before me a bit better after coming to this conclusion, I must confess.

"How any one is got to accept the post of magistrate, and to sit in a police court all day long examining into the dreadful cases which come up for trial, is more than I am able to conceive. There were one or two other cases to be disposed of before