fraud, lying, and thieving. This is not the case with the really destitute agricultural labourers and manufacturing workmen who become beggars. 1st, They sing plaintive airs and tunes, and hymns and psalms. 2d, They walk through a town or village proclaiming aloud their wants and sufferings, but still walk on. 3d, They sing songs, and get money for singing. 4th, They play some instrument of music, and solicit aid. 5th, They address you personally at your houses, and tell their real tales of grief. 6th, They apply to you, imploring and beseeching you to purchase some little articles which they have to sell. This is their favourite method. They hate to be thought beggars, though they know they are so. 7th, They apply for work for a day, or half a day, and earn a little money sometimes for a few hours by their labour. 8th, They rush to any public works which may be opening, and offer their labour at much reduced prices in order to obtain employment and wages. Some of them, of course, become corrupted by their new associates at the houses which receive alike all classes of vagrants who can pay for their beds and their beer; and, when once corrupted, they fall into the categories foreseen and described by the vagrant act. But there is always for a long time a very marked distinction, perceptible to every one, between the hereditary and professional beggar, and the mendicants who become so from want and destitution. In too many instances, indeed, the corruption of the young, and especially of young girls, very soon follows the first steps of a begging life; and those who would have shuddered a few months previously at the commission of even an offence, rush headlong into the perpetration of the worst of crimes. The magistrates of England have been blamed for not exercising greater severity towards all vagrants. But if all the idle ' and disorderly' persons spoken of by the vagrant act were conducted, at this moment, before the English justices of the peace, they would soon be unable to provide prisons and asylums for even a tithe of their number. It has been said, that if the ticket system carried on in some unions was adopted, with some little alteration, throughout the kingdom, begging would receive so great a shock, and become such a bad trade, that thousands would no longer follow it, 'but be driven to do what they never would do otherwise— namely, work for an honest living.' 6 But this supposes a state of things which does not exist in VOL. LXXV. NO. CLII. 2 I England. It supposes that there is, with provisions at their present prices, labour and wages enough for all who now beg. We know that this is very far indeed from being the case; and until it shall be so, the ticket system would not meet, though it might mitigate, the evil. With reference to the ticket system, as some of our readers may not have examined it in its details, we supply the following explanation. The ticket system is an expedient hit upon by the Poor Law Commissioners, as well as by other enemies to vagrancy, to relieve real want, and yet provide against imposition. Every rate-payer in a parish it has been proposed to supply with a certain number of blank tickets, to be filled up by him, or her, in favour of any vagrants demanding relief. The tickets are to be addressed to the governors of the Union House to which the poor of the parish are sent to reside, and the governors are to supply the applicant with lodging or food. Some, indeed, propose that the ticket should be valid within twenty miles' distance of the spot where it was given. The author of the pamphlet above referred to, says To carry out the ticket system effectually, it would not only require the sanction of the poor law commissioners, but the hearty co-operation of the guardians and rate-payers. It will be further necessary, that every workhouse be provided with apartments for the reception of tramps, and with labour for them to do; that every rate-payer be supplied with plenty of the following, or some such kind of tickets, to give to persons soliciting relief, and never give money or food; and that such a ticket be a note of admission into any workhouse to which it may be directed within twenty miles of the person's house sending it. Union Workhouse. who solicits relief in consequence of and charge it to the D. B. Rate-payer of the parish of On the other side of the note should be printed-" The person using this note (supposing him to go into workhouse in the evening) will be allowed a supper of seven ounces of bread and two ounces of cheese, a bed; and for breakfast, a pint of gruel and seven ounces of bread, for which he must do two hours' work before leaving in the morning. If he presents the note, or remains in during the day, he will not be allowed to go out till the morning following, and will be required to work the hours the other inmates do, and at the usual meal-times have the diet of the house. Children and the sick will be dieted at discretion." If the vagrant act be not enforced against the hereditary and professional mendicants of England, at least this ticket system should; and if all classes of the English people would resolve on not relieving such mendicants by any other means, their fate would be certain-they must yield. But in the present state of the agricultural and manufacturing destitute poor, who are beggars for the time being, and who are so from a real pressure of want and misery, the English people, as a nation, will not apply the ticket system to them. It will, however, be enquired, 'what right have even the agricultural or manufacturing destitute to complain, when an adequate provision has been made for them by the workhouse system of the poor laws? and what right ' have they to refuse the relief offered them by that system, and 'become beggars?' poor We have so recently defended the workhouse system, and the conduct of the poor law commissioners in enforcing it, that there is no other answer necessary on our part, than the answer of fact; viz. that there is an immense and constantly-increasing number of destitute labourers and manufacturing poor, who will not, until they have made every other effort to prevent it, become parish paupers. They will sing, sell little wares, tell their tales of misery, and beg; and try all of these expedients before they will consent to enter the unions. Of course, in some cases, this decision is the result of indolence, but in a multitude of others it results from a love of independence. If those labourers and artisans who decide on rejecting parochial relief according to the workhouse system, and on taking to the life of vagrants, could but foresee the wretchedness, misery, degradation, corruption, and vice, to which, in so many instances, that decision must lead them, we confess we think well enough of the English working classes to feel convinced that they would come to another decision. But with this we have at present no concern. They have wages too low, or no wages at all, or the necessaries of life too dear. Something must be done, but what that something must be, we have no intention at present to discuss; as we have already stated at the commencement of this article. ART. VII. Journal of a Tour in Greece and the Ionian Islands. By WILLIAM MURE of Caldwell. 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1842. TOURS by Englishmen in Greece have not been published in numbers so very oppressive as those which have been devoted to Italy; but even they, we fear, have been so numerous, that the public will question strictly the author of every new Grecian tour, whether he has any thing to tell which they have not long ago had an opportunity of hearing. The series of travels in Greece and the adjoining regions, given to the world by our countrymen during the recent period which began with the journeys of Dr Clarke, embraces hardly any work that is quite worthless, and many that possess very distinguished value. A few of them have high literary merit as compositions, or as evidences of scholarship; some have thrown much light upon the classical monuments; and two or three have gone far towards laying the foundation for an accurate acquaintance with the ancient topography of Greece and her colonies. It can make no part of our plan, amidst an overflow of other matter, to aim at appreciating in detail the works which belong to this class. But one group of them may be fitly mentioned, both because it would be unjust to speak of investigations in Greece without naming them, and because the nature of them tends to a further remark which we are desirous of making. We allude to the topographical works of Colonel Leake. These receive but insufficient praise when it is said, not only that in all essential qualities they are models of their kind, but that his researches, prosecuted though they were under manifold disadvantages, must continue to form the basis of all that yet remains to be done, towards completing our systematic knowledge of the interesting subject which has worthily occupied so many years of the veteran scholar's life. But after all that has been performed, there yet remains ample scope for doing more; and there are, in particular, two purposes which, jointly or separately, travellers in Greece may still warrantably pursue, and the attainment of which will fully justify them in publishing the results of their labours. First, there is abundant room for original observation, both in the departments of research which have been partly cultivated already, and in new ones which, till the recent changes in the state of Greece, it was impossible to approach. Much obscurity still hangs over many points of the classical topography, and of the history and condition of the antique monuments, both in Greece itself and in the neighbouring Hellenic countries. The richness of the vein which still remains to be worked in the Grecian colonies, is sufficiently indicated by the valuable researches of Mr Fellows in Asia Minor; and Mr Pashley's residence in Crete has shown how abundant the fruit is which may be gathered even in continental Greece and the islands, by a traveller who, adequately prepared, chooses a narrow range of enquiry, and devotes himself for a long period to personal investigation within its limits. The political and social condition of the Greek nation, again, constitutes a class of facts which, partially investigated before the revolution, has assumed since that event an aspect entirely new, and presents phenomena deserving and demanding close and philosophical observation. Secondly, while there thus presents itself an abundance of unexhausted matter, the method of using both the new matter and the old, offers opportunities for not less improvement. Works possessing at once high literary merit, and great value as instruments for communicating satisfactory and systematic information to ordinary readers, might be composed by travellers who, although fully qualified for original discoveries, may not have been fortunate enough to make any. Such writers might be entitled to rank far higher than mere compilers; and they might perform for Grecian topography, antiquities, and statistics, a task which our original investigators have failed to accomplish The most picturesque and animated of our tours by Englishmen in those regions, convey information which is either fragmentary or deficient in solidity; those, again, which are most valuable as receptacles of knowledge, are repulsive, by reason of their form or their bulk, or both. It is time to ask whether Mr Mure has been justified in giving his Tour to the public, by its aptness to serve either, or both, of the purposes thus indicated as worthy of attainment. We have no hesitation in saying that he has. We will not, indeed, venture to assert that in either department he has done all which might have been done; nor that every thing which he has done is performed in the very best manner; but his work possesses no inconsiderable merit, both for the novelty which belongs to a good deal of its matter, and for the manner in which his materials are treated. His travels occupied two months in the spring of 1838, during which time he visited Corfú and Ithaca, traversed Northern Greece from the mouth of the Achelous to Sunium, and made the circuit of the Peloponnesus. The few weeks thus appropriated were of course insufficient for allowing him to observe the country at large with any great minuteness; but he |