And by the hand of coarse indulgence fed,

In dirty patchwork negligently dress'd,
Reclined the wife, an infant at her breast;
In her wild face a touch of grace remain'd,
Of vigour palsied and of beauty stain'd;
.her mother there

With gipsy-state engross'd the only chair;
Solemn and dull her look; with such she stands,
And reads the milkmaid's fortune in her hand,
Last in the group the worn-out Grandsire sits
Neglected, lost and living but by fits;
Useless, despised, his worthless labours done,
And half protected by the vicious son,

Who half supports him; he with heavy glance,
Views the young ruffians who around him dance,
And by the sadness in his face appears

To trace the progress of their future years:

Through what strange course of misery, vice, deceit,

Must wildly wander each unpracticed cheat!

What shame and grief, what punishment and pain,

Sport of fierce passion, must each child sustain,

Ere they like him approach their latter end,
Without a hope, a comfort, or a friend: (1)

Strolling Players.

"A wandering, careless, wretched, merry race akin to the gipsey, are the wandering players."§2) The y go about the country mounted on hacks, or in wagons, or on foot, they give performances at small towns. The y are for the most part actors who have gotten their training in Convent Garden or Drury Lane in some menial position, so it happens that,

He who Squire Richard's part would well sustain,

Finds as King Richard he must war ama in

"My horse My horse!" (3)

The members of a strolling company are likely to be,

Pen-spurning clerks and lads contemning trade,

Waiters and servants by confinement teaged,

And youths, of wealth by dissipation eased; (1) Crabbe V. 289. Note: "This picture is evidently finished icon armore and appears to us to be absolutely perfect, both in its moral and physical expression." Jeffrey. Crabbe V. 29. Crabbe has devoted a whole poem to Gipsy life,- The Hall of Justice Crabbe II. 281, but there he deals with the subject in a dramatic rather than a realistic manner.

(2) Crabbe III. (3) Ibid. 204.

With feeling nymphs, who such resources at hand

Scorn to obey the rigor of command;

Some who from higher views by vice are won,

And some of either sex by love undone: (1)

The life of such people Crabbe has described as one of profligacy and distress and he tells us in a note (2) that there is vice and misery enough left, even if you admit some actors sober and some managers prudent to justify his description.(3)

Apprentices.

We read in the quotation cited from Walpole that the poor man "was liable to see his children forcibly removed from him," this meant that the parish had the right to apprentice the children of the poor to any trade and to send them to any part of the country. As there were no laws to regulate infant labor; there were no laws to ineither their education, their health or their good

sure

(1) Crabbe III. 210. (2) Ibid. 217.

(3) Note: Crabbe describes the life and character of an actor, again, in the Maids Story, Tales of the Hall XI. Crabbe VI. 288.