DECEMBER. 313 



but I mean all those who, being of the poor, are 

 " never to cease from the land ;" and whom, 

 whether we be seated at our tables, circling our 

 fires in social mirth, or quietly laid in our beds, 

 we may be sure are scattered in a thousand 

 places on our great roads, be it summer or win- 

 ter, day or night, as plodding, as full of trouble, 

 as weary, and as picturesque as ever. 



Poor honest souls ! their very misery, their 

 age, their poverty, their ruggedness, their stoop- 

 ing figures, and ragged array, make pleasant 

 pictures to the eye ; and if not for their suffering 

 humanity, yet for the variety they give to our 

 journeyings, we ought to spare them a little 

 sympathy. I must confess that when I have 

 been shut up in a great town for some months, 

 and again issuing into the country, behold the 

 same figures, the same groups, come streaming 

 along our principal roads, that we have encoun- 

 tered there through all the days of our lives, 

 and that Bewick has depicted in his living 

 sketches, I have a most internal satisfaction in 

 the inexhaustible vagabonds. 



There is one class of them that I freely 

 give up, although the rogues have a spice of 

 romance about them, the vagabonds par excel- 

 lence, — those clever, able, and eloquent fellows, 

 that can lose a limb, or even an eye at will ; sai- 

 lors who never saw the sea ; decayed tradesmen 



