We saw the relieving-officer performing his round of duties. The poor were assembled at the cottage door. Two classes of applicants were then given. We must now, however, look deeper into human nature. The destitute consist of the virtuous and the vicious, the vulgar and the refined. There stands an able-bodied man with his able-bodied wife, and his large healthy family. His weekly wages amount to nine shillings per week. If he loses a week's work he is destitute. He is now making an application to the relieving-officer. But it is useless. He must walk to the Union, and become an inmate, where his dinner awaits him. The man who now approaches the officer is like the last, able-bodied and out of work; but, unlike him, he has an idle, unthrifty, drunken wife. He is always trembling on the confines of destitution; and the instant he is without work he is on the brink of starvation. His spirit is broken. His children are dirty and ragged, and appear emaciated without disease. He, too, must enter the Union. The next is a hard-featured man;-- "A savage wildness round him hung As of a dweller out of doors; In his whole figure, and his mien, A savage character was seen Of mountains and of dreary moors." He does not seem to care whether relief is granted or not; and we may hear him say, "I don't want relief for myself, I can get my living somehow or other--but my wife and child musn't starve. I shan't go to the Union--I shall be off--and catch me who can."--In the cottage, a woman is seated with her children, whose husband has done that which the other has threatened to do. She may be industrious or idle, but she cannot support herself, thus suddenly thrown upon her own resources. Let us hope that she is allowed the benefit of the amended order.--There is the man whose children are approaching the state of womanhood or manhood. He has work to do, and he does it. He could manage to eke out a subsistence for himself--for his habits are simple and frugal; but his children are now a sore trial to him. His daughter has returned to his cottage with a child of shame. She has erred, but she cannot be turned from his door. She has tried to make the father contribute to the support of the child, but without success. Poor ignorant creature, instead of taking a competent witness with her, when she asked the man to assist her, she was too anxious to hide her shame. Instead of putting questions to him, in order "to get up" the corroborative evidence, she was too apt to spoil all by passionate upbraidings. And then, when she appeared before their worships the justices, she was too much abashed or excited, to enable her to develope those latent powers of examination and cross-examination which the law supposes her to possess. Those who have witnessed those humiliating proceedings in our petty courts of justice, and seen the magistrate at one moment kindly acting as counsel for the girl, then falling back to his position as judge, and observed