orthy
name by his interest in and persevering efforts for the well-being of our
canal population, is bent on doing similar service for the Gipsy children
and roadside arabs, who are sadly too numerous in the suburban and rural
districts of the land. By securing the registration of canal-boats as
human domiciles, he has brought quite a host of poor little outcasts
within the pale of society and the beneficent influence of the various
educational machineries of the age. By bringing the multitudinous tents,
vans, shows, and their peripatetic lodgers under some similar
arrangements, he hopes to put civilisation, education, and Christianity
within reach, of the thousand ragged Ishmaelites who are at present left
to grow up in ignorance and degradation. These vagrant juveniles are
growing up to strengthen the ranks of the unproductive and criminal
classes; and policy, philanthropy, and Christianity alike demand that the
nomadic waifs should be encircled by the arms of an ameliorating law
which will give them a chance of escaping from the life of semi-barbarity
to which untoward circumstances have consigned them, and to place them in
a position to make something better of the life that now is, and to
secure some fitting preparation for the life that is to come. It is
evidently high time that something should be done, otherwise we must
sooner or later be faced with more serious difficulties than even now
exist. Our sympathies are strongly with the warm-hearted philanthropist;
and we trust that in taking to this new field of effort he will win all
needful aid, and that his endeavours to rescue from a life of crime and
vagabondage these hitherto much-neglected little ones will be crowned
with success.

"'The glories of our mortal state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate--
Death lays its icy hands on kings:
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade:
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.'--_Shirley_."

The following is my letter, relating to the poor little Gipsy children's
homes, as it appeared in the _Daily News_, _Daily Chronicle_, and other
London and country daily papers, December 2nd:--"Amongst some of the
sorrowful features of Gipsy life I have noticed lately, none call more
loudly for Government help, assistance, and supervision