* “Cast our nabs and cares away,-- This is Beggars' Holiday; In the world look out and see Who's so happy a king as he? At the crowning of our king, Thus we ever dance and sing. Where's the nation lives so free And so merry as do we? Be it peace, or be it war, Here at liberty we are. Hang all Harmanbccks! we cry, And the Cuffinquiers, too, by. We enjoy our ease and rest, To the fields we are not press'd; When the subsidy's increas'd, We are not a penny cost; Nor are we called into town To be troubled with a gown; Nor will any go to law With a beggar for a straw. All which happiness he brags He doth owe unto his rags!” Of all the mad rascals that belong to this fraternity, the _Abraham-Man_ is the most fantastic. He calls himself by the name of _Poor Tom_, and, coming near to any one, cries out “Poor Tom's a-cold!” Some are exceedingly merry, and do nothing but sing songs, fashioned out of their own brains; some will dance; others will do nothing but laugh or weep; others are dogged, and so sullen, both in look and speech, that, spying but small company in a house, they boldly enter, compelling the servants, through fear, to give them what they demand, which is commonly something that will yield ready money. The “_Upright Man_” (who in ancient times was, next to the king and those “o' th' blood,” in dignity,) is not a more terrible enemy to the farmer's poultry than Poor Tom. How finely has Shakspeare spiritualized this strange character in the part of Edgar in King Lear! The middle aisle of old St. Paul's was a great resort for beggars. “In Paul's Church, by a pillar, Sometimes ye have me stand, sir, With a writ that shews What care and woes I pass by sea and land, sir. With a seeming bursten belly, I look like one half dead, sir, Or else I beg With a wooden leg, And with a night-cap on my head, sir.” Blind Beggars Song. Wit and Drollery. Jovial Poems. 1682. Mendicity is a monarchy; it is governed by peculiar laws, and has a language of its own. Reform has waged war to the knife with it. The _soap-eater_, whose ingenious calling was practised in the streets of London as far back as Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth, is admonished to apply the raw material of his trade to an exterior use; * and the tatterdemalions of the Beggar's Opera no longer enjoy the privileges that belonged to their ancestors three centuries ago, when the Barbican, Turnmill Street, and Houndsditch, rang with their nocturnal orgies; and where not unfrequently “an alderman hung in chains” gratified their delicate appetites; as in more recent times,