list very greatly, by pointing your eyes to paragraphs of a later date; but the subject is a very unpleasant one, and I at present forbear. ‘My poverty, but not my will consents’ may do in a play; but it is a sad excuse for the editor of a daily publication: and it is _criminal_, Sir, when we consider how many young minds may thus be empoisoned.” We trust this letter will be taken as evidence that we have in the preceding chapter by no means selected the worst specimens of the style which pervaded advertisements at the close of the last century and beginning of the present. The believers in vested interests may see by an advertisement of the year 1804, that proprietorial rights were respected in those days even among beggars:-- TO be disposed of for the benefit of the poor widow a Blind Man’s WALK in a charitable neighbourhood, the comings-in between twenty-five and twenty-six shillings a week, with a dog well drilled, and a staff in good repair. A handsome premium will be expected. For further particulars, inquire at No. 40, Chiswell Street. The halcyon days of cadgers and crossing-sweepers are over, and we no longer hear of members of either profession leaving fortunes. It has often been source of wonder to us how a right was maintained in any particular crossing or walk. It is presumable, of course, that no action would lie in the event of one man taking another’s favourite corner; yet, if story-tellers are to be depended upon, the “good-wills” of these places in days gone by were worth not hundreds alone, but thousands of pounds. The new police and the mendicity societies have considerably disturbed such sinecures, and even those affectionate parents that of late years lived on the earnings of their young, who pretended to sell cigar-lights and newspapers, but who in reality begged freely, have been driven to earn their own meals by the officers of the various school-boards. So passes away the glory of free trade from this over-legislated and effete old country, where no one is allowed to do as he likes if it at all interferes with the comfort of his neighbours--except, of course, when he is rich and the neighbour is poor. Passing on to 1811, we come upon a quaint request for a servant in the _Morning Post_ of December 4:--