there are many things which the sick man craves which a parochial officer cannot grant, and which a medical man could neither recommend nor allow. The desire is gratified by the sale of a useful and indispensable tool; and thus, by degrees, he exits off his own means of subsistence. Then, like manufacturers of a higher grade, he may mistake the public wants, and the articles he has made may remain unsaleable on his hands, or he may fall into the error of over-production like a Manchester house. Then, in seasons when those commodities which constitute the common diet of the poor are scarce and dear, the persons who deal in them who are unable to buy, or uncertain to sell, are thrown back upon the few shillings which compose their capital. In large cities and towns, and in the neighbourhood of great markets, there are crowds of poor persons who gain their livelihood by the purchase and sale of the articles of daily food, and their combined purchases form a large item in the business of those markets. The costermongers, or costardmongers, consist of various grades. That brisk-looking man, who is riding so proudly in his donkey-cart, with his wife at his elbow, may be a very mean person in the estimation of the passer-by, but, in his world, he is a man of importance. He watches the "turns of the market," and being either in the possession of capital himself, or in a position to command it, he is able to compete with large dealers. He is a money-lender; and, if security be left with him--a poor woman's marriage certificate, or her wedding-ring is sufficient--he will enable her to buy her "little lot." Through him many are able to procure a stock at a trifling expenditure, who otherwise would be unable to buy in sufficient quantities to satisfy the original salesman. This class has its peculiar casualties, and in consequence become chargeable to parishes. Their habits may be irregular and intemperate. Or a poor woman may have expended her last farthing in the purchase of a tempting basket of fish. Her child falls ill, or she herself is unable, from the same cause, or from an accidental injury, to stand the necessary number of hours in the drenching rain; and so her stock is spoiled, and she suffers a greater calamity in her sphere than the brewer whose consignment of ale has turned sour on an India voyage. In the vicinity of cathedrals and abbeys, in districts where dowagers and elderly maiden ladies most do congregate, and in "Those back-streets to peace so dear,"