eyes, and you shouldn't see it, if the gas wasn't lighted. If you look sharp, you can do well with a bag at the railway stations. You takes a big un, as draws up tight with a string; you looks out for a chance in the dark and bustle of a night-train. You've got your bag labelled large with your own address, and you claps it over a good carpet-bag of somebody's, and ties it tight, and then you bothers the porter for your bag, and tips him a tizzy because you are in a hurry: he brings a light, and looks out for a blue bag with Mr Pike's address upon it, and hands it over to you, while the yokel what owns it is alooking on. That dodge aint so good now as it used to be, because it have been rather overdone; but very few people knows how 'tis managed. I've been in prison for one thing and another more than a dozen times, but nothing of any account. They can't prove anything against me now, and I shall get off for a month or two, do what they will. This voluble worthy prophesied truly. Nothing was proved against him upon trial, and he is again at large, and in all probability engaged in stuffing his bag.

John Jenkins, aged twelve, says: 'I was born and brought up in Westminster. I've been on the town, one way or other, ever since I can remember. The first thing I can rek'lect is a-crying with cold in the streets along with a woman a-leading me and a lot more young uns, and a-singing psalms. She wasn't my mother: my mother worked in the river among the coal-barges, a picking up at low-water. If I had a father, I never knowed him. I never went to no school 'cept in prison. I can read now a little. When I got biggish, I wouldn't go out on the chant no more. They gives nothing for it but your wittles, and not much o' that; so I cut it. Then mother said, I must get my own livin'; she gave me very little but my lodgings. I used to sleep along of her. Sometimes she come home drunk and savage, and turned me out in the middle of the night; so I left her, and went to live along wi' Brown Jem. Brown Jem gave me plenty of wittles and drink too, and a glass of gin at times, and shoes

and stockins, and set me right, all dry and comfortable. I done the sneak for Brown Jem. This is how you does it you sees when a shopkeeper goes into the parlour for his tea or supper, then Jem he stans with his back to the shop-door, a-lookin' on up and down the road, and you crawls in, and takes what's wanted, and creeps out agin under Jem's long-tailed coat, and you cuts away. If they comes arter you, you runs for it; and when you turns a corner, you plants what you got, and Jem comes up arter the chase is done, and swags it. There aint no chase once in twenty times, and when there is, Brown Jem is first in the hunt, and puts 'em on the wrong scent. Jem had five boys altogether; he wasn't the father of none on 'em, but he lodged 'em, and gave 'em what they wanted. "Doey" was one of Jem's boys; he could run as fast as a dog. Sometimes when Doey was agreeable, we would do the snatch. 'Tis done in this way: I looks about among the shops, and finds out where there's plenty o' money in the till. When the shopkeeper goes into his tea, Doey slips in after him, reaches over, and grabs the till, and shoves it into a sack, and starts like the wind. We waits round the corner with a string stretched across the road. Doey runs over it, and when the shopman comes a-rushin' arter him, we tightens the string, and trips him up; and arter that we picks him up, and takes pity on him; and when he's much hurt, we axes him where he lives, and takes him home. There are many dodges I could tell. I've a laid snug in a shop under the window, along with the shutters, a whole arternoon afore now, and heerd the man count his money arter the customers was gone, and then I've took the lot, all but the coppers. I've been in prison seven times afore; I've been whipped twice. I never sees nothin' of Jem when I'm in trouble; I'm sure to find him somewheres when I gets out. I can do a little shoemakin'; I learned it in prison. I don't mind work, but I don't like it much. I'm in now on a charge of shopliftin'. I shan't say nothin' about it. I don't know how long I shall get. They won't transport me, I reckon; I aint old enough.'

Andrew Mills, aged nine, says: "I was born in London; I can't tell where. I've lived in fifty different places; never more than a month or two at a time in one place. I've got a father and mother too. I can't read; I never see father or mother read: they got no books. Big Bob reads the newspaper to father sometimes when he is at work he reads about murders and hangin' of a man, and about the fightin' men in the ring. Father works at makin' shillins and half- crowns; they are made out of tin stuff and pewter-pots. Big Bob brings the stuff, and melts it up together, and helps father when he's busythat's most times of a Sunday. Father makes the shillins, and mother and me smashes 'em. We goes out together, and walks about the town all day; mother carries staylaces, and pincushions, and pins and needles, in a big basket; she don't sell much of that—a little sometimes. She buys hare-skins and rabbit-skins, and gives a new shillin', and haves ninepence or tenpence in change, along of the skin. Whenever we sees a ooman behind a counter, I goes into the shop and buys something, and gives a shillin' or a half-crown, and haves the change. If they says it aint good, I says I'll fetch another, and then I goes away. Sometimes a man comes into the shop, and wants to know where I live, and how I come by the bad shillin', and perhaps he won't let me go; and then mother comes in, in a hurry, and fetches me a slap in the head for staying on errands; and blows up the shopkeeper for keepin' of me, and then she shoves me out; and we go and try it on somewhere else. I has a penny for myself when I does well. I don't know what becomes of half the money as father makes. Big Bob takes most of it away in papers: there is a pound's worth in every paper. Sometimes we haves very bad luck, and don't pass more than two or three shillins in a day. Night-time is the best for it, when the markets is doin' a trade. Mother goes regular to two or three places, where they takes a lot; but they gets it cheap, because they got to smash it theirselves. There's plenty of it about Wapping and Rotherhithe, and along the river side, I know. Mother and I done this for more

than two years, in a many places besides London, all about for twenty miles round. I knows the names of some of the places-not all. We used to go at fair-times and on market-days to Greenwich, and Croydon, and to Barnet, and to Barking and Epping, and to Edgeware and Hampton Court, and lots of places. Mother got too well knowed: she's a big ooman. At last, the pleece dodged us home, and broke in upon us one night, and took father, and mother, and me, and the shillins and half-crowns, and the metal pot and the plaster, and all. Father and mother is to be transported over sea; I don't know what they'll do to me; they says as how I am to learn a trade. I should like working well enough if there aint too much on it. I've never been in prison afore. I've been took to the station-house many a time; but they let me go when they couldn't get nothin' out of me-I was so little.'

Harry Bird, aged thirteen, says: 'I'm a Roman Catholic; I never go to church or chapel. I can read tolerably well, and likes to read a funny book well enough. My father is an Irishman; he can talk Irish. He keeps a house (meaning a house of ill-fame.) I have worked in a mill for a year a'most; but I give it up because I likes my liberty. They calls me a rogue and a vagabond for that. I've been in prison a dozen times a'most. What of that? I can't help it, if they will put me there. They takes me up, and claps me in jail, because other boys as I knows is found out a-pickin' of pockets, and I am found in their company. They never proved nothin' against me. If I choose to walk about the town of a night, or all night long, what odds is it to anybody? I can go in and out when I like. Let 'em prove a charge against me if they can. I'm in for a month; I've had months enough in my time. I shall be out in a little more than a week, and then I shall be a rogue and a vagabond again, I suppose, if I ha'n't lost the use of my limbs.'

This impudent young scoundrel, though only thirteen, is the presiding genius of a juvenile gang of

marauders, most of whom he has seduced to the practice of dishonesty. He has the cunning of the maturest villain, and contrives never to be implicated in the execution of the plans which he concocts for his followers. He has been well trained to this delicate business by his own parents, who are known and experienced fences; and so well skilled in the management of their trade, as to have escaped all contact with the police for seven years together.

The above are a few of the infant voices which cry aloud from the silence of our prison-walls. What is the language which they speak? And what response does it demand? And who shall utter that response, and when?

1

THE LIFE AND POETRY OF KEATS. JOHN KEATS was born, October 29, 1796, of humble parents, who resided in Moorfields, London. While a mere boy at a school in Enfield, he gave such token of the possession of poetical talents, as attracted the attention of his teachers, by whom he was encouraged to compose exercises in verse. At the age of fifteen, he was bound as an apprentice to a surgeon in the metropolis, and in this situation he continued to devote much of his attention to poetry; but it was not till he had completed his twentieth year, that any effort was made by himself or his friends to bring his productions before the world. About the close of the year 1816, a sonnet of his composition having been received into the Examiner newspaper, a friend of the young poet called upon the editor, Mr Leigh Hunt, with a few similar productions, to which the attention of that gentleman was respectfully invited, but without the disclosure of the author's name. According to Mr Hunt's own declaration, he had not been led by experience of such matters to expect much pleasure from the perusal of them; but