tapping at the “spout” that notified to the owner of the gloved hand that a new customer was in attendance? It would have been not very surprising if the Chief Commissioner of Police had been instantly communicated with, and given instructions at once to arrest every man and woman of the fifteen thousand, and hold them in safe keeping until their lordships had resolved on the most efficacious, and at the same time least painful way of exterminating them. Seriously, it is impossible almost to exaggerate the amount of mischief likely to result from such false and inflammatory pictures of an evil that in its naked self is repulsive enough in all conscience. On the one hand, it excites amongst the people panic and unnecessary alarm, and furnishes the undeniable excuse of “self-defence” for any excess of severity we may be led into; and on the other hand, it tends to magnify the thief’s importance in the eyes of the thief, and to invest his melancholy and everlastingly miserable avocations with precisely the same kind of gallows-glory as is preached by the authors of “Tyburn Dick” or the “Boy Highwayman.” Curiously enough at the conclusion of his long and interesting speech, Lord Shaftesbury went a little out of his way to make mention of the literature of the kind just quoted, to remark on its intimate bearing on the crime of the country, and to intimate that shortly the whole question would be brought under their lordships’ consideration. It is doubtful, however, and I say so with extreme regret, knowing as I well do how shocking even the suspicion of such a thing must be to Lord Shaftesbury, if in any dozen “penny numbers” of the pernicious trash in question, the young aspirant for prison fame would find as much stimulative matter as was provided in his lordship’s speech, or rather speeches, on the Habitual Criminal question. No, the affairs of those who affect the criminal walks of life are bad enough in all conscience, but they are much less romantic than his lordship has been led to believe. Shorn of the melo-dramatic “bandit” costume with which they have been temporarily invested they lose nothing in appalling effect. Truly, it is hard to understand, but it is an undoubted fact, that the criminal who in police nomenclature is a “low thief” (to distinguish him, it may be presumed, from “the respectable thief”) is without exception of all men the most comfortless and miserable; and should the reader be so inquisitive as to desire to be informed of the grounds on which I arrive at this conclusion, I beg to assure him that I do not rely on hearsay, neither do I depend on what thieves incarcerated for their offences have told me, holding it to be hardly likely that a prisoner in prison would vaunt his liking for crime and his eagerness to get back to it. I have mixed with thieves at liberty, an unsuspected spy in their camp, more than once. I will quote an example.