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WHAT Will the reader expect from such a title as this. The Beggar's Legacy! What can a beggar have to leave? It is a subject for a novel, or a play. Tragedy, or comedy! It may convey a grave moral· - a beggar's curse, or a beggar's blessing. reader who thus speculates, is admitting all I require for the matter of my subject - that a beggar is an awful personage. In spite of his position, in the world and not of it, he is more than an arbiter, if he deals out his benisons or maledictions as he wills, and they are regarded or feared. There is a superstition in his favour, and he knows it. The unbelieving authorities have tried to put him down, but they cannot, he is more potent than the Pope, for he maintains his title, and his ground-and none laugh at his anathema. Is not a beggar awful? Is there not a mystery in him, that he should be above the world or below it; and above it by being below it? He is on firm ground, who can fall no lower; the low becomes his height-he takes it as his own, his choice, more fixed than a king's throne. He is neither the Stoic nor the Cynic, a little more of the Epicurean; but he is an epitome, a personification of every philosophy. He, and he alone, can perfectly endure, despise, and enjoy. It is all very well for you, reader, to complain that the beggar molests you in the street or at your door -but, notwithstanding, you fear to

VOL. LXXVII.-NO. CCCCLXXIII.

give him an ill word. Think not of any individual wretched figure that may have crossed your sight in the day-but think of the beggar in the abstract. With all the rest of the world you have something in common; you have ties with them, in affection, or in business-the beggar alone stands out of the circle of your experiences-you have nothing, and no one to whom, or with whom, to compare him—and this, your ignorance respecting him, makes a kind of reverence for him. He is not one to know, but to speculate upon; and therefore, as I said, a mystery, a myth to you. And what is he with regard to yourself? If you are superstitious, you can have his benediction for a farthing; you can therefore separate yourself from the fear of him. He will not go to law with you, you are sure of it. Though twenty attor neys pass between you and him, he will not engage one against you; he will not even give you in false charge to a policeman. From whom on earth can you expect such privilege of exemption? You see in him a great Innocent-you begin to respect him. His very rags assume a dignity—they also demand your wonder. Where does he get them? are they handworked; or is he clad as are the lilies of the field? And think not the beggar's garb without its glory. Go to a painter's studio, and see how they who have acquired taste, and

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know what beauty is, in all its shapes and colours, appreciate the manypatched, picturesque drapery. And think you there is no meaning in those patches? they are the hieroglyphic language of the profession. Knowing this, they will be in your sight venerable as the untranslatable arrow-headed characters. Imagine that they contain records of the race from the beginning that they show the pedigrees of dynasties and beggar kings. A true beggar looks antiquity. In his own person, he holds the past and present. Did you ever know one who looked like a fool? It is said that "Wisdom crieth in the streets, and no man regardeth," so busy are the emmetpopulation, all going their own caremaking ways; the beggar alone has time at his command, and leisure, and it is he hath shaken hands with Wisdom in the streets. Knowledge is in his look, with a consciousness of a mastery over it, and a contempt of it. Wise, and above the wise, he is unmoved by hopes, and fears. He is ever cap in hand, with a sublime humility and independence, not like the courtier, who, bare-headed, makes a leg for favours in expectation, and is bound to present slavery. He promotes a tone of charity, by seeking charity-and thus improves the benevolence of mankind. He is ever openhanded; but with a modesty, leaves the greater part of the blessing to his betters, and accepts the inferior of receiving. Remembering that it is more blessed to give than to receive, he yields with a submission that ennobles him. Yet will he raise himself in honour of his profession. In that, he would style himself the SolicitorGeneral, nor would a Prohibition-ofTitle-bill disturb him; no one doubts his claim, and least of all himself. His revenue comes to him without trouble; all the world are his tenants, as it were, and make no deductions for repairs. He never hears complaints of failing crops, and a murrain among the cattle. Every man is his contributor; thus is he the universal creditor, and no man's debtor. He is not obliged to keep books. He disdains the intricacies of arithmetic; delivers in no accounts in a bankruptcy court. He troubles not himself to inquire the price of stocks-the only stocks that

could mar his fortune have fallen, never to rise again. His merchandise is all profit, and no loss. Thieves affect him not; he may sing an he like in robbers' presence" Cantabit vacuus coram latrone Viator." He is a philanthropist from experience, for he sees the best part of society-those who give. His mind and temper are kept sweet, feeding on charitable and kind looks. He is not disgusted with hope deferred-the law's delays. He is out of the reach of dishonesty, subject to no petty frauds. Innumerable are his privileges; he may be at a feast, a merry-making, a weddingand is not obliged to put on black at a funeral. Where is most joy, there is his rent day. He glories in his own supremacy, and is never called upon to subscribe to any other. He may hold all heresies with impunity; no archbishop will put him into his Court of Arches. His opinions never will be questioned by privy council; magistrates will not fine him; and as to imprisonment-what is it to him but a temporary retirement to a boarding house, after the fatigue of ubiquitous travel? When he quits it, he need not pay for his board. He leads a merry life among his chosen friends, and does not always wear his professional gravity. When he disappears, nobody knows how or where, with the mystery of Edipus. No undertaker ever looks him in the face, as calculating his exit, and custom. He is above the vanity of tombstone, and carved angels' heads. His memory will never be disgraced by mutilated monument. No politic zeal will ever collect his dust to scatter it to the four winds in contempt; for he never will lose his kingdom, which is in his own mind. He saith with the old song

"My mind to me a kingdom is." No disparaging biographies will be written of him. Doctor's Commons have no eye upon him for probate to his will. He is in the "Long Annuities," for his annuities are as long as he lives-with this difference, that they dwindle not, but rise in value, as he wanes. He makes food, and healthy subsistence, out of complaints and infirmities; and yet need not of necessity have them. He may put them on and off, when he pleases:

thus he lives merrily upon sorrows, which he does not feel. He gratifies the world by his little deceptions; for the world loves to be deceived, and he loves to be accommodating to it. But that he despises the vanity of a Herald's College, he might take out beggars' arms, and choose as his motto, "Qui vult decepi decipiatur." He is ubiquitous, yet at home everywhere; yet has he his own peculiar haunts, which no labyrinthine thread can discover. Thither, if he meet Misfortune in the streets, will he take her, and make her cheerful. He frequents not low pot-houses, but his own clubs-every one of which is "Merrymen's Hall." Nor does he lack befitting fare; and is an honest customer, a prompt payer, caring not to have his name in other men's books. He even has his luxuries, will have a squeeze of lemon to his veal and lamb. Yet is he no profligate to waste his substance in riotous living, and then, when he cannot dig, professes to be ashamed to beg. Him he despises, as throwing disparagement on the honourable profession of beggary. The beggar's half-hour's boast over an after-supper fire and a cordial, may put his pride in better humour with itself, as having historic foundation of longer date, and of continuance, too, than that of king's, emperor's, or the Pope himself. It should seem that real dignity rises not up, but descends-kings have held the stirrup of the Pope, but the Pope hath washed the beggar's feet-cardinals too. Thus are all the cardinal virtues poured out in a flood at his feet. The grandest and most beautiful ladies doing that same service to this day, pay homage to the beggar. Thus, He who would make himself the greatest on earth, hath for his greater title still, that He is "Servus Servorum." Lazarus has more friends than Dives, and happier in having none to envy him, and contrive his ruin. He who would strip a beggar, shall come in for more fleas than halfpence. His person is as sacred as the king's from touch. If there be a kind of divinity that "hedgeth," as Shakespeare says, the royal person-the beggar is as well hedged-for none like to come too near his person. Royal robes are not more exempted from contact than

beggars' rags; they float in the air about his person, his castle, as significantly as the regal standard about the unapproachable tower. He has his body-guard. Kings have made themselves beggars, beggars have never been so unwise as to make themselves kings. It was a royal humour which said "Sometimes I am a king,

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Then treason makes me wish myself a beggar." High-flown thoughts are these, it will be said; truly so; but nevertheless not too high for the ingenuity of pride to entertain; and it is natural and befitting that every mind should nourish itself into some sleekness, with the costless food of self-exaltation. The beggar has best leisure for it; pleasant visions bubble in his nightly cup, and exhilarate his brain to exuberant fancies, the more welcome for their rollicking comedy, their apparent absurdity. The laugh that is in them outmocks their unreality; they are indulgences that beget their like, and crowd the beggar's mind, as a theatre for right pleasant vagaries to play in higher to the lower, and lower to the higher;-thought naturally rushes rather to the antipodes, plunges perpendicularly, and embraces its opposite; and so dreams and realities shift their places and names, and for their special hour, kings are beggars, and beggars kings. Am I lifting the beggar too high? No-he is one of degree; many bear the name, of too low a character to be worthy of it: such bring it into disrepute, and, in opinion, rob the profession of its dignity. There be who talk of Robin Hood, who never shot from his bow. Let me be supposed to speak of the higher beggar-the man who by natural disposition is born to it, or by misfortunes has his whole mind overthrown into it, and takes up vitally his second nature. There is the poetical beggar, the imaginative idle-idle as to all the irksome businesses of life, as impossible to him, as would be his idle vagrancy to the gifted with handicraft. He cannot go in the tramroad of life; speculative and erratic, he has wandering feet, and there lies the secret, a wandering brain. The real original beggar, the beggar of dignity, the poetical beggar, poetry

in himself and making poetical, is, and ever was, a trifle crazy. This craziness is his charm, his abandon, his licence, of which none can rob him; it exaggerates his wit, enlivens his humanities, begets his independence, and makes his humility his greatness. These are seldom seen nowadays-a strange civilisation has made inroads upon the race. Edie Ochiltree was one of them; and he perhaps whom Goldsmith speaks of as the "long-remembered"-whom the good parson did not disdain to receive as his guest

"The long-remembered beggar was his guest, Whose beard descending swept his aged breast;"

and he sure to be initiated into the fraternity

"The ruined spendthrift, now, no longer proud,

Claim'd kindred there, and had his claims

allow'd."

A little insanity is like the investiture of an unknown, and therefore awful wisdom; nothing of the outward can make it ridiculous. It ever claims a respect. The barber's basin for Mambrino's helmet raised no laugh on the countenance of Don Quixote; nor did the most extravagant incidents damage the gentleman within him. It was so; the old wandering beggar was of a wandering mind, and it was he that had the virtues of his profession, and a right to its privileges.

I have one at this moment in my recollection, who took it upon him, as a second nature, from a mind unhinged by misfortune. He had been once a man of some substance; farmed his own little estate and rented other lands. He might have been a churchwarden or overseer of the parish, before I knew it. It needs not to say by what circumstances troubles came upon him; some were hard to bear-too hard for the mind, though not for the bodily constitution. In his distresses, his wife died; his two daughters turned out ill-one I saw in the poorhouse in a miserable state. He was an old man when I knew him; he had been utterly ruined. His home gone-his very recollection of a home, a madness to be avoided. He paid the parish a visit

his wanderings, every two or three

years; and, as suddenly as he came, departed. What was singular in him, was his intellectual superiority (notwithstanding this touch of insanity which kindly obliterated or blunted the sense of his miseries) over those of his former grade. He was wellinformed upon most subjects, could converse in good language; his very flightiness clothed itself in ingenious argument. He would have been the amusing_guest of Goldsmith's good Vicar. It was probable that misery had made him put up with Misery's acquaintances. Barring a slight suspicion of this, he was to be preferred to many a sounder man, for a talk with in a green lane. If it be true that all crazed people have a monomania, I never could discover his. He seemed to be under a general un

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settlement of mind. The mirror was jarred, multiplied images, and reflected them awry; the rapidity of his ideas, and the odd turns they would take, were surprising. idea was of permanence. Now, stand apart, and look at the man as a picture-contemplate him in his capabilities. What could you do with him, or for him what could he do for himself? There was no possibility of any fixedness in him. Employment he could have none, he was too restless for any. I doubt if he could know anything continuously for a quarter of an hour. He would have ignored the work which but a few minutes before he had begun, not from any wilfulness, but a perpetual wandering in his fevered brain. Can he be imagined to be anything but a beggar? Such wandering minds, I said, make wandering feet. Their irresistible impulse, locomotion. They must be erratic. Confine such persons in a Union-house-they would become raving maniacs; any one home would revivify the idea of the home lost. Their only self-security is in ubiquity. The beggar of this true original caste confines himself not to one town. Wander-wander ever, that he must do. Some have a wider, some a narrower range; but it is of perpetual change. To send him back to his parish as a vagrant, considering his case, what his parish has been to him, and he to his parish, is the worst cruelty. It is chaining him