and Mouth--the soldiers--the milliners--the
Frenchmen--the swindlers, the porters with four-post beds on their back,
who add the excitement of danger to that of amusement! The various,
shifting, motley group, that belong to Oxford-street, and Oxford-street
alone. What thoroughfares equal thee in variety of human specimens! in
the choice of objects--for remark--satire--admiration! Beside the other
streets seem chalked out for a sect,--narrow-minded and devoted to a
_coterie_. Thou alone art Catholic--all receiving. Regent-street
belongs to foreigners, cigars, and ladies in red silk, whose characters
are above scandal. Bond-street belongs to dandies and picture-buyers.
St. James's to club-loungers, and young men in the Guards, with
mustachios properly blackened by the _cire_ of Mr. Delcroix; but
thou, Oxford-street, what class can especially claim thee as its own?
Thou mockest at oligarchies; thou knowest nothing of select orders!
Thou art liberal as air--a chartered libertine! accepting the homage
of all, and retaining the stamp of none. And to call _thee_
stony-hearted!--certainly thou art so to beggars--to people who have not
the WHEREWITHAL; but thou wouldst not be so respectable if thou wert not
capable of a certain reserve to paupers. Thou art civil enough, in all
conscience, to those who have a shilling in their pocket;--those who
have not, why do they live at all?"

"That's not exactly what surprises me," said Asmodeus; "I don't wonder
_why_ they live, but _where_ they live: for I perceive boards
in every parish proclaiming that no vagrant--that is, no person who is
too poor to pay for his lodging--will be permitted to stay there. Where
then does he stay?--every parish unites against him--not a spot of
ground is lawful for him to stand on. At length he is passed on to
his own parish; the meaning of which is, that not finding a decent
livelihood in one place, the laws prevent his seeking it at any other.
By the way, it would not be a bad plan to substitute a vagrant for a
fox, and, to hunt him regularly, you might hunt him with a pack of
respectable persons belonging to the middle class, and eat him when he's
caught. That would be the shortest way to get rid of the race. You might
proclaim a reward for every vagrant's head: it would gain the King more
honour with the rate-payers than clearing the country of wolves won to
his predecessor. What wolf eats so much as a beggar? What wolf so
troublesome, so famished, and