an equivocal welcome-for he knew it was not always a pleasant thing to be thus appealed to-had resolved to call in person upon all the inhabitants whose circumstances enabled them to contribute, and to endeavour to enlist their co-operation on behalf of these poor benighted heathen. He must say it was a burdensome, and, in some respects, a humiliating commission to undertake; but still he found a pleasure in it, from the consciousness of the good which, under the blessing of Providence, might result from his feeble endeavours.

What this sleek, silver-tongued, and self-sacrificing individual scraped together on behalf of the benighted Africans, we had no opportunity of ascertaining; but a brief commentary upon his proceedings from the lips of the preacher at the close of the promised sermon on the following Sunday morning effectually put to flight the satisfaction that any of us might have entertained from the consciousness of having charitably interfered to effect their reformation. The reverend gentleman denounced their eloquent advocate as a plundering impostor, and gave us regretfully to understand, that we had parted with our money to augment the ill-gotten gains of an unprincipled and godless deceiver. Thus did a son of Mother Church stigmatise a full-blown professor of the precatory science-who, on his part, modest man, returned not railing for railing, but, with characteristic humility, forbore to emerge from his placid retirement, even for the vindication of his good name.

We forget exactly how long it is ago since we were favoured with a visit from the honorary secretary of the Cramp Hospital, or something of the kind—a gentlemanlywhiskered man of five-and-forty, who in a most confident and persevering manner enforced upon our attention the claims of that most useful institution. He was armed with printed documents in the shape of begging-circulars, and some copies of a column apparently cut from a London

newspaper, recommending the hospital, now languishing for lack of funds, to the generous sympathies of the public. Happening to be intimate with the locality in which the hospital was said to exist, and having no recollection of any building that could possibly subserve such a purpose, we put off the honorary secretary to a future day, promising to make inquiries, and act according to the information we received. Our suspicions in this case turned out well founded. On investigation, it proved that no hospital of the kind, or indeed of any kind, had existed in the neighbourhood within the memory of man. The begging-circulars, signed with names purporting to be those of the trustees, resident surgeon, &c., were a pure invention; and the newspaper column, we have little doubt, was equally so. The hospital, with all its wards and patients, nurses and medical men, was nothing more than the stock-in-trade of the soi-disant honorary secretary, an independent member of the Precatory Order, who in this instance lost his labour, and deprived us of the pleasure of bestowing upon him a substantial token of regard, by not calling to receive it.

When Grace Darling performed the heroic exploit which rendered her name familiar to the whole kingdom, the members of the Precatory Order took up her cause, and boldly canvassed the country in various directions, with the praiseworthy object of collecting a substantial testimonial of the public regard. When the news of the imprisonment of the Madiai was first brought to England, they did the same in behalf of the persecuted prisoners of the Grand Duke. They make it a matter of conscience to "improve" every public event which is of sufficient magnitude to be talked about, and capable of being used as an incentive to a contributory purpose. Shocking calamities, heroic deeds, unmerited sufferings, or visitations of Providence-all are manageable materials in their industrious hands, and all are texts on which they build their instructive homilies to teach the

world the obligations of charity and sympathy. We might add to the examples we have already cited of their ingenuity and perseverance, by the narration of many others; but we have probably said enough to acquaint the reader with the merits of this disinterested school of practical philosophers. They are the living embodiments, in forms ever changing, and with which it is difficult, therefore, to become familiar, of a spirit which has been always prevalent with a not very distinguished or distinguishable order of humanity. It would almost appear that there is a certain and settled amount of the precatory faculty ever existing in all social communities, which it is impossible, by legislative or other means, to suppress or to transmute into any other kind of energy. Acts of parliament may shut up the unsightly ragged pauper in the workhouse, and drive the tattered professional mendicant from our streets-but they touch not the ladies and gentlemen of the Precatory Order. These, in the garb of gentility, and under the gentle aspect of angels of charity and mercy, penetrate to our parlours and firesides, and awakening our tenderest emotions, give us lessons of virtue in the abstract, lest our sympathies should decline from want of exercise, and we should forget the duties of compassion towards our humbler neighbours. In the accomplishment of their instructive mission they display a most remarkable ingenuity, and avail themselves of all the ills and calamities that flesh is heir to, to arouse the general benevolence. Does the cholera smite its victims ?—the precatory professor brings you the news, and summons you to aid in withstanding the grim destroyer. Does a terrible inundation desolate a whole valley ?-he comes at the heels of the inundation, demanding your sorrows and compassion for the sufferers. Does a fearful conflagration destroy life and property, overwhelming both rich and poor in one desolation ?-he is as alert as the fire-brigade to secure your benevolent co-operation in alleviating their woes. True,

the sufferers never know anything of his enthusiastic labours in their cause. But what of that? They get your pity, and he gets your pay; and thus the proceeds are equitably divided, at least according to the regulations of the Order. When real misfortunes are wanting on which to found a valid claim upon your sensibilities, they condescend to the department of fiction to furnish it—and, as we have shown above, are extremely happy and fertile in such resources. Because their mission must be accomplished-the genial current of human affections must not be allowed to stagnate. They have devoted their lives to the purpose of keeping it in constant and active circulation; and if some of them occasionally become martyrs to their calling, and incur the opprobrium of a class incapable of appreciating it, their merit is none the less.

Occasionally a member of this Order will dispense with the formality of knocking at your door, and introducing himself to your family; he will generously pick you up in the highway, and this mostly happens at the soothing hour of twilight, or when darkness has settled down upon the stony-hearted streets of London. Perhaps he will request the liberty of a moment's speech with you-he does not wish to detain you-but as you walk along. It is demonstrably a gentleman that accosts you, and you do not think of objecting. He pours a tale of woe into your ear, a touching and pathetic romance. You hear that he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, perhaps that he was intended. for a learned profession-but that, seduced by the charms of black bright eyes, he married secretly while yet a studentaffronted his guardians and relatives by the step, who cast him upon the world and upon his own resources—that he maintained himself and wife by his literary talents, writing for one of the Dublin papers in the patriotic interest which exploded in the rebellion of 1848, when the journal was stopped, and he of course lost his engagement. After this

he came to London, where for the last four or five years he has led a struggling life, enduring the most abject poverty and deprivation while obliged to maintain a respectable appearance, without which he would fall into utter destitution, now unhappily impending over him through a change in the proprietorship of a periodical from which he has latterly derived a small weekly payment of a few shillings. His wife and three small children are at the present moment in a most wretched garret, where they await his return. He hopes by your benevolence to be enabled to carry them a meal, if it be but of dry bread, to allay the pangs of hunger. Such, at least, in substance was the burden of the last precatory professor who condescendingly favoured us with his company during an evening walk. What effect it might have had upon us under ordinary circumstances, there is no knowing; but the voice seemed not altogether strange to our ears, and the sudden flash of a gas-lamp upon the speaker's face revealed to us features known any day these ten years upon the same beat. We gave him to understand as much—when he vanished "just like a bullet from a gun" -doubtless from the sheer force of modesty.

We cannot prolong this humble oration; but we trust the few remarks and illustrations we have given above will assist in drawing the attention of the charitable part of society to these devoted missionaries of benevolence, and secure for their universal sympathies a more profound and discriminating appreciation than as yet has been awarded them.