credited, refuse to sympathize with a parent whose helplessness compelled him to witness, with unavailing anguish, the poignant miseries of the offspring he had hoped, by his honest exertions, to have supported and reared, without submitting to the galling necessity of soliciting that aid which nothing but the most absolute destitution could reconcile him to implore. A _military lady_ announced herself as the widow of color-sergeant Robert Maffett, who having served faithfully for twenty-three years, the four last having been in India, had been severely wounded in a decisive battle in Scinde, and when invalided and pensioned, was unfortunately drowned at Blackwall, in consequence of the boat which was conveying him ashore being accidentally upset. That she and her eight poor orphans had no resource on reaching her native city, where she found that all her relations had died or emigrated, and where she was friendless and alone, but to throw herself upon the charitable feelings of one whose character emboldened her to hope that the humble appeal of the soldier's widow, for herself and her poor orphans, would not be unavailing. These and a thousand other _slums_ were manufactured in Bridgefoot Street, alias Dirty Lane, not an unsuitable name for the locale of such proceedings, and they were invariably accompanied by lists of subscriptions, and magisterial or municipal attestations, admirably got up in the first style of forgery. In the first case to which I have adverted, the "hapless widow" succeeded in getting five pounds from the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland (Pennefather). In the instance of the "military widow," Lady Blakeney was lightened of three pounds. Another _slum_ was circulated by a scoundrel who represented himself to be the son of a gentleman in the south of Ireland, of an old family, and of the pristine faith; that he had been educated at Louvain, had an ardent wish to become a Catholic clergyman, and that one of the most distinguished dignitaries of that church was inclined to ordain him, but his father had died in debt, without leaving him the means of providing even the most humble outfit for such a vocation. One of his missives produced the effect of relieving an alderman's lady of five pounds sterling, which the excellent and worthy matron piously suggested might be useful in providing the embryo priest _with vestments_. This confederacy was not confined to Dublin. Its branches extended through Leinster, Connaught, Munster, and in almost every important town in England its connections were established. It is, however, very curious that the Scots and our Northern countrymen were left comparatively free from its attacks. Why? Is it because the rascally crew conceived the natives of Scotland and Ulster to be more cautious or less benevolent than their respective Southern neighbours? The reader may judge for himself; but swindlers are not, in general, very wrong in their estimate of character or disposition.