They sit and lie before the work-houses, at such times, huddled almost upon one another, and forming such groups of hungry, squalid, and degraded human beings, as no painter would venture to transfer from life to canvas. Of the number that apply for admission, one half will be rejected, who must shelter themselves under the dry arches of the bridges, or creep into hidden doorways, up narrow alleys, where the police are not likely to find them. For if found, they would be seized and taken before a magistrate, to be punished for being homeless and without food. Many of them do not dread this punishment, but will seek to deserve it by more criminal conditions than enforced indigence and helpless hunger. They will break street-lamps and tradesmen's windows, to get a month's imprisonment, with food, and rest, and shelter for that period. Others, and the majority, have a prouder spirit. They will escape a prison, with the help of God. Their number is very great. There are fifty thousand, it is said, in London, who rise every morning without knowing where to procure a breakfast. God be with them! But all the want, and all the sin produced by want, in London, it would take all the volumes of the _Conversations-Lexicon_ to recount. The streets--every street--is filled with it. Survey the thoroughfares at night. If any modest person is occasionally shocked at the exhibitions in Broadway, what would he say to Regent street, the Haymarket, the Strand, Fleet street, Cheapside, or fifty other streets in London? I have reckoned nearly three hundred unfortunate females, as they call themselves, in the space of one mile, on one side of the street alone, from Charing Cross to Temple Bar. These girls, as records testify, were mostly starved into the life of their adoption. They will tell you, if you converse with them in their serious moments--for they have such--that but for the mad excitement drawn from gin, they could not live. The river that flows sullenly along--what a catalogue of woes, what shame and frenzied despair, it has ended! I was crossing Waterloo Bridge one night when there was suddenly a shout and a rush of people. A girl had thrown herself off the parapet, and was struggling in the water. The moon shone brightly down, and her figure was distinctly visible as she wrestled with the tide that was bearing her away. She was the third that had jumped into the river within twelve days; the average of such suicides in London being one in eight days. A vain effort was made to save her. Her body drifted down the river to be cast up at Greenwich or Woolwich, or perhaps the tide swept it out to sea, never to be found. I searched the newspapers for many days afterward, but saw no record of the poor creature's miserable end. These things happen so frequently in London, that the press seldom records them, unless they offer some peculiar features of interest.