THUMBNAIL STUDIES IN THE LONDON STREETS. LONDON crowd is an awful thing, when you reflect upon the number of infamous characters of which it is necessarily composed. I don't care what crowd it iswhether it is an assemblage of 'raff' at a suburban fair, a body of Volunteers, Rotten Row in the season, or an Exeter Hall May meeting. Some ingenious statistician has calculated that one in every forty adults in London is a professional thief; that is to say, a gentleman who adopts, almost publicly, the profession of burglar, pickpocket, or area sneak; who lives by dishonesty alone, and who, were dishonest courses to fail him, would have no means whatever of gaining a livelihood. But of the really disreputable people in London, I suppose that acknowledged thieves do not form one twentieth portion. Think of the number of men now living and doing well, as respectable members of society, who are destined either to be hanged for murder or to be reprieved, according to the form which the humanitarianism of the Home Secretary for the time being may take. Murderers are not recruited, as a rule, from the criminal classes. It is true that now and then a man or woman is murdered for his or her wealth by a professed thief, but it is the exception, and not the rule. Murder is often the crime of one who has never brought himself under the notice of the police before. It is the crime of the young girl with an illegitimate baby; of the jealous husband, lover, or wife; of a man exposed suddenly to a temptation which he cannot resist the temptation of a good watch or a well-filled purse, which, not being a professional thief, he does not know how to get at by any means short of murder. Well, all the scoundrels who are going to commit these crimes, and to be hung or reprieved for them accordingly, are now walking about among us, and in every big crowd there must be at least one or two of them. Then the forgers; they are not ordinarily professional thieves; they are usually people holding situations of greater or less responsibility, from bank managers down to office boys: well, all the forgers who are to be tried at all the sessions and assizes for the next twenty years, are walking about among us as freely as you or I. Then the embezzlers-these are always people who stand well with their employers and their friends. I remember hearing a judge say, in the course of the trial of a savings bank clerk for embezzlement, when the prisoner's counsel offered to call witnesses to character, of the highest respectability, that he attached little or no value to the witnesses called to speak to their knowledge of the prisoner's character in an embezzlement case, as a man must necessarily be of good repute among his fellows before he could be placed in a position in which embezzlement was possible to him. Then the committers of assaults of all kinds. These are seldom drawn from the purely criminal classes, though, of course, there are cases in which professional thieves resort to violence when they cannot obtain their booty by other means. All these people-all the murderers, forgers, embezzlers, and assaulters, who are to be tried for their crimes during the next (say) twenty years, and, moreover, all the murderers, forgers, embezzlers, and rsaulters whose crimes escape de-tection altogether (here is a vast field for speculation open to the ingenious statisticians-of whom I am certainly one-who begin with conclusions, and 'try back to find premisses!) all are elbowing us about in the streets of this and other towns every day of our lives. How many of these go to make up a London crowd of, say, thirty thousand people? Add to this unsavoury category all the fraudulent bankrupts, past and to come, all the army of swindlers, all the betting thieves, all the unconscientious liars, all the men who ill-treat their wives, all the wives who ill-treat their husbands, all the profligates of both sexes, all the scoundrels of every shape and dye whose crimes do not come under the ken of the British policeman, but who, for all that, are infinitely more harmful to the structure of London society than the poor prig who gets six months for a wipe,' and then reflect upon the nature of your associates whenever you venture into a crowd of any magnitude! Struck by these considerations (I am not a deep thinker, as I hinted in a former paper-if I thought more deeply about them I might find reasons which would induce me to throw these considerations to the winds), I beg that it will be understood that all the remarks that I may make in favour of the people who form the subject of this chapter, are subject to many mental reservations as to their probable infamy and possible detection. In the initial is a gentleman who, as far as I know, is a thoroughly good fellow. He is a soldier, and a sufficiently fortunate one, and stands well up among the captains and lieutenant-colonels of his regiment of Guards. He has seen service in the Crimea, as his three undress medals testify. He is, I suppose, on his way to the orderly-room at the Horse Guards, for, at this morte saison, his seniors are away, and he is in command. Unlike most Guardsmen, he knows his work thoroughly, for he was the adjutant of his batVOL. XII.-NO. LXX. talion for the six or seven years of his captaincy. He is a strict soldier; rather feared by his subalterns when he is in command, but very much liked notwithstanding. He has married a wealthy wife, has a good house in Berkeley Square, and a place in Inverness-shire, with grousemoors, deer - forests, and salmonstreams of the right sort. He is thinking of standing for the county, at his wife's suggestion, but beyond a genial interest in conservative successes, he does not trouble himself much about politics. Everybody likes him, but he may-I say, he may be an awful scoundrel at bottom. Here are two young gentlemen (on the next page), who appear to be annoying a quiet-looking and rather plain young milliner. I am sorry to say that this is a group which presents itself much too often to the Thumb-nail Sketcher. I do not mean to say that the two young men are always disgraceful bullies of unprotected young women, or that the unprotected young women are always the timid, shrinking girls that they are commonly represented to be in dramas of domestic interest, and in indignant letters to the Times' newspaper. I am afraid that it only too often happens that the shrinking milliner is quite as glad of the society of the young men who accost her as the young men are of hers, although I am bound to admit that in the present case the girl seems a decent girl, and her annoyers two 'jolly dogs' of the most objectionable type. One of them is so obliging as to offer her his arm, while the other condescends to the extent of offering to carry her bandbox, an employment with which he is probably not altogether unfamiliar in the ordinary routine of his avocations. She will bear with them for a few minutes, in the hope that her continued silence will induce them to cease their annoyance, and when she finds that their admiration is rather increased than abated by her modest demeanour, she will stop still and request them to go on without her. As this is quite out of the question, she will cross the road, and they will follow 2 B his disappointments, unless you pump him on the subject, and then you will find that the amalgamation of the British and Indian forces has resulted in complications that you cannot understand, and that one of these complications is at the bottom of his retirement from active service. He has strong views upon, and a certain interest in, the Banda and Kirwee prize money, and he looks forward to buying an annuity for his mother (who lets lodgings) with his share, if he should ever get it. He is poor-that is to say, his income is small; but he always manages to dress well, and looks gentlemanly from a gentleman's-although, perhaps, not from a tailor's -point of view. gaily from screaming farce to rollicking 'comic copy,' and back again from rollicking comic copy to screaming farce. But this is not exactly true of his professional existence. He is but a moody buffoon in private life, much addicted to the smoking of long clay pipes and the contemplation of bad boots. He is, at bottom, a good-natured fellow, and a sufficiently industrious one. He is much chaffed for his moody nature now, but he will die some day, and then many solemn bumpers will be emptied by his club fellows to the memory of the good heart that underlaid that thin veneer of cynicism. Ba Here is a sketch from the window at White's. He is also a member of the Senior and the Carlton, but he is seldom seen at either. He prefers the view from White's, and he prefers the men he meets there, and he likes the chattiness of that famous club. He knows every body, does the old major, and has, in his time, been everywhere. He has served in a dozen different capacities, and in almost as many services; indeed, his range of military experience extends from a captaincy of Bashi Bazouks to a majority of Yeomanry Cavalry. He has been rather a sad dog in his time, but he is much quieter now, and is extremely popular among dowagers at fashionable watering-places. This rather heavy and very melancholy-looking gentleman with the thick black beard is a purveyor of touch-and-go farces to the principal metropolitan theatres. He also does amusing gossip for the provincial journals, light frothy magazine articles, dramatic criticisms for a weekly paper, and an occasional novel of an airy, not to say extremely trivial nature. His name is well known to the readers of light literature, and also to enthusiastic playgoers who go early and come away late. He is supposed by them to pass a butterfly existence, flitting |