It might have afforded a fine treat to the searcher after life and manners, to have observed the rough and ragged scene that was now before us. The kitchen at times was crowded to excess; and, amid the clattering of plates, fuss of cooking, and confusion of tongues, men, women, and children, feasting, drinking, singing, and card-playing, while some two or three might be seen wiling away the painful effects of an empty pocket by a soothing whiff from the favourite cutty, occasionally a half naked brute, in the shape of a man or a woman, would stagger in, their heads nodding on their shoulders, like the equally sensible and oblivious looking pate of a Chinese figure in a grocer's window; and if there was space enough, would reel a step or two, and then measure their length upon the floor, muttering sundry threatening sounds. These, of course, were soon picked up, and in their attempts to play at _a la Randall_, had their arms carefully pinioned, their bodies placed upon a seat, and laid against the wall; or, if there was room enough, were accommodated with a stretch upon the form, to snooze themselves fresh again--dreaming of the sweets of gin, and the joys of a begging life. But perhaps a sketch or so of those strange beings, with a little of their interesting slang, will be the better way to describe such a group. By the bye, this is the place for character--the cadging house is the very spot for the pourtrayer of life, who wishes to lay claim to any thing like originality;--here Nature has her full scope, and affectation rarely shows her face. As we were sitting, noting the various particulars that were continually passing before our eyes, and as the Poet says, catching "the manners living as they rise," a thumping step was heard coming along the passage. The door opened, and a wooden-legged weather-beaten seaman, past the meridian, with a pot of beer in one hand and a bag in the other, showed his phiz. He was dressed in the usual sailor's garb, jacket and trousers, with a black handkerchief slung round his neck, and a low-crowned glazed hat on his head. The immense breadth of his shoulders, solidity of chest, with a neck like the "lord of the pasture," gave him the weighty bearing and bold front of an eighty-four, while his open, bluff, and manly countenance at once proclaimed him to be the true man-of-war's man, and tar of old England. Jack's story is soon told:--besides being a King George's man, he had been a bold smuggler, and had his starboard leg carried away in an affray with the Custom sharks. We were struck with something like admiration at beholding such a model of the favourite class of this country, and very naturally followed his motions, taking an interest in every little peculiarity, they being exactly what have been represented by Smollett, and other naval sketchers, as the characteristics of a tar of the old school.