rls, three years old, looked
with avidity at the Virgin Mary, three feet high, in gold brocade. The
old verger observing this, led her nearer to it, ascribing her
admiration probably to piety, when, to his horror, she screamed out,
"_Quel jolie poupee_!" Solomon says, "Out of the mouths of babes shall
ye be taught wisdom." The old man dropped her hand, and looked as if he
would have lighted the faggots had she been bound to the stake, as she,
in his opinion, deserved.

The perseverance of Belgian beggars is most remarkable, and equally
annoying. The best way is to take out your purse, and pretend to throw
something over their heads; they turn back to look for it; and if you
keep pointing farther off, you distance them. On the whole, I consider
that it is much more advisable not to give to beggars, than to relieve
them. Begging is demoralising, and should be discountenanced in every
country. If children are brought up to whine, cry, and humiliate
themselves as in Belgium, that feeling of pride and independence in
early youth, which leads to industry in after life, is destroyed. And
yet, the aged and infirm would appear to be proper objects of charity.
In many cases, of course, they must be; but to prove how you may be
deceived, I will state a circumstance which occurred to me some years
ago.

I was driving up the road with a friend. He was one of the pleasantest
and most honest men that nature ever moulded. His death was most
extraordinary: of a nervous temperament, ill health ended in aberration
of intellect. At that time Lord Castlereagh had ended his life of
over-excitement by suicide; the details in the newspapers were read by
him, and he fancied that he was Lord Castlereagh. Acting precisely by
the accounts recorded in the newspapers, he went through the same forms,
and actually divided his carotid artery, using his penknife, as had done
the unfortunate peer. Peace be with him! To proceed. I was driving in
a gig, a distance of about forty miles from town, on the Northern Road,
when, at the bottom of a steep hill, we fell in with a group who were
walking up it. It consisted of a venerable old man, with his grey locks
falling down on his shoulders, dressed as a countryman, with a bundle on
a stick over his shoulders; with him were a young man and woman, both
heavily burdened, and five children of different sizes. The appearance
of the old man was really patriarchal, and there was a placidity in his