_Boy._ I knows how to sweep the crossing. _Ald. H._ And that's all? _Boy._ That's all. I sweeps the crossing. The Alderman said he, of course, could not take the evidence of a creature who knew nothing whatever of the obligation to tell the truth. It was to cope with this sort of destitution that the Ragged Schools movement had been started several years before. From the first _Punch_ lent it his hearty support, though in his first notice, in 1846, he was unable to resist the opportunity of combining his approval with a dig at the aristocracy:-- WHAT RAGGED SCHOOLS MAY COME TO It is with peculiar satisfaction that we view the establishment of Ragged Schools in various parts of the Metropolis. We speak advisedly when we describe our satisfaction as peculiar. For it is not merely that we are rejoiced at the idea of a number of youthful mendicants being prevented from becoming thieves and pickpockets, taught to earn an honest livelihood, and rescued from vice and misery through the instrumentality of these seminaries. No; our views are much higher than such plebeian considerations as these, and they also extend far beyond the present time. We have an eye to the benefit of our posterity and to that of the superior classes generally. When we consider that Eton was established for the reception of poor and indigent scholars, and that Winchester and most of our other public schools were, at their first foundation, charities, we may not unreasonably indulge the hope that the Ragged Schools, originally, like them, destined for the instruction of the tag-rag-and-bobtail, may ultimately become gratuitous institutions for the education of the children of the aristocracy. Yet it was an aristocrat of the "old nobility" who started and devoted his best energies to the furtherance of the Ragged Schools movement, as all the world knows. His name is not even mentioned here, and when it is mentioned in these years is too often coupled with tasteless gibes at Lord Shaftesbury's proclivities and Sabbatarianism. _Punch_ could not forgive Lord Shaftesbury for his association with Exeter Hall (which to _Punch_ meant fireside philanthropy and Jellybyism) and his support of laws which enabled magistrates to fine boys fifteen shillings or a fortnight's wages each for playing cricket on Sunday. Sir Robert Peel had to die before _Punch_ did him justice. Lord Shaftesbury was more fortunate, for thirty years before he died _Punch_ made the _amende_ in "The Earl King, or the Earl of Shaftesbury and the Juvenile Mendicant." [Sidenote: _The Distressed Author_]