PLEASE, Sir, bestow a copper on a distressed tradesman," exclaims the half sturdy, half subdued tramp, sulkily touching his hat as he passes you on the turnpike road.

"Do give me a halfpenny, Sir, in charity! Mother's very ill, and I'll thank you very much!" whines the shivering urchin as he runs along at your side.

"Here I am, your honour; matches and all!" cries the disabled tar in the streets of Bath, as, in one hand, he holds out his straw hat for the expected dole, and, in the other, exhibits the bundle of matches and the whisp of stay laces which the police of the city require him to offer for sale under pain of being taken up as a beggar.

"I am starving," the squalid wretch writes with chalk in large letters on the London pavement, and lays him silently down beside his mute appeal.

These are all Protestant beggars, gentle reader. They appeal to your sensibilities merely. In England, you are never asked to bestow your alms for the love of God.

But let us not say 66 never." The warm-hearted, Catholic Irish wanderers cannot always restrain the habits of their mind. Though sad experience may have taught them that, in this country, a petition does not gain strength by being backed by the love of God or of the Blessed Virgin, yet the holy motive will, at times, be added; and then, if their appeal be successful, how fervently they call upon all the saints to reward you! how piously they kneel down in a retired nook in the way-side

VOL. XI.

B

to pray for the object which you have recommended to their sympathy! Ragged, ruined, but yet hopeful, the father and mother of the gang will kneel there together; while the tattered and barefooted children look in amazement from their unusuallyexcited parents to the stranger who has proved his brotherhood in faith by making that holy sign which they had begun to think was scorned by all well dressed and prosperous people.

The English Protestant looks on, and mocks their superstition and their exaggerated gratitude.

Which of the saints was it who said that he could never refuse charity when it was asked of him for the love of God?

We do not mean to assert that Protestants, in bestowing alms, are uninfluenced by pious motives: our object is to point out the different modes of appeal which obtain in Catholic and in heretical countries. The motive may exist in the charitable of other religions, but it is unacknowledged. It is unacknowledged on the part of the giver; it is not appealed to on the part of the suppliant. Whence, we ask, is derived this so widely-different system? Climate, race, temperament cannot have occasioned it: for Catholics of the same races and countries, feel as Catholics do all over the world. Protestants read the Bible: they know that the reward promised to the giver of the " cup of cold water is promised to the one who bestows it in His name. We fear, indeed, that Protestantism has so thrown cold water over the affections of its votaries, that they forget the motive even when they would comply with the injunction.

How different is the feeling which, in Catholic countries, unites the beggar and his patron! Members of the same community of faith, a community of feeling runs from one to the other end of the social chain. The beggar is not there looked down upon as an outcast: poverty is not there, as Sidney Smith says it is in this country, "infamous." Beggars have been canonized Lazarus has been declared to be in Abraham's bosom: his prayers may yet avail the rich man here below. Honoured of God, why should poverty be considered dishonourable by man? And with us, I am solaced to say that is not so considered. The humble mendicant, who daily takes his place at the accustomed corner of a foreign street as regularly as the London urchin seeks his well-swept "crossing," feels no abasement when he holds out his cap to the richer neighbour who passes near him: and the latter recognises the suppliant as one of the same kind as himself; recognises his claim to sympathy by considerately touching his hat in answer to the poor man's silent appeal.

We would not deny but that the charity of Catholics may be excessive: we would not deny but that they give alms incon

siderately, often injudiciously because spontaneously: we would not deny but that the unmeasured alms of Catholic countries may tend to foster idleness, and, destroying the feeling of selfdependence, produce that difference which all travellers observe between the lower classes of Catholic and Protestant states, between the population of the Catholic and Protestant cantons of Switzerland. We admit that, in this country, Catholic families are too apt to allow beggars to hang, in idleness, round their mansions; considering themselves provided for during the winter if they can take possession of a shed, an outhouse, or a hovel upon their domain: but who will say that even the excess of this warm-hearted, unreasoning charity is not preferable to the Protestant system which builds workhouses and appoints paid officers to relieve the poor with cold-blooded decorum, and to test their sorrows and their claims with the legal nicety of act-ofParliament guagers?

Immense are the sums legally collected in England for the parochial relief of the poor; immense are the sums freely bestowed by religious zeal or sectarian bigotry to extend what is called gospel light amongst the heathen; to establish missionary farmers, with their wives and children, upon the best lands at the antipodes; to scatter Bibles amongst those who cannot read. We admit the decorum with which all this is done; but we seek in vain for the warm-hearted sympathy of Catholic charity. It is still the rich who relieve the poor. It is not one fellow-christian bestowing upon another fellow-christian that of which he is only the steward. "Do not thank me," we once heard a Catholic exclaim to one of these Protestant tramps whom she had relieved, and who humbly told his unspiritualized thanks: "Do not thank me: thank the good God who enabled me to help you. I have only done my duty: but pray for me." How the unchristian vagabond stared!

"Eh Christiani!" cries the Tuscan beggar beside the thronged thoroughfare where thousands come out to inhale the sultry evening air: "dove andate Christiani? Andate mangiar del cocomero. Ma non fa caldo: non n'avete di bisogno. Date mi piuttosto il vostro quatrinello per l'amor di Dio e della Santissima Virgine-Stop Christians! where are you going? You are going to buy slices of water melon at the stalls. But the weather is not hot: you do not need them. Give me rather, give me your penny for the love of God and the Blessed Virgin."

Such language reads strange in English; but we think it is Christian: and we own that we like the tone of equality that pervades it,-based, as it is, upon that bond of union which the epithet "Christiani" recalls to all.

But not to this world alone is that bond of sacred union confined. How often have we seen the humble suppliant pass from chair to chair in a French church, quietly soliciting that alms the bestowal of which during prayers would, in England, be thought to interrupt the devotion which, on the contrary, it sanctifies! How often have we seen such a humble suppliant, when the sacristan came round to collect alms that prayers might be offered for the souls in purgatory, drop, into his bag, the coin just received, and hope that the dear one for whom he wept might reap some benefit from the great sacrificial offering he thus contributed to procure!

"Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, being lovers of the brotherhood, merciful, modest, humble.”

And in lieu of these holy sympathies, English Protestantism has established poor laws; English Protestantism has built union workhouses where

-Pallentes habitant Morbi, tristisque senectus,
Et Metus, et malasuada Fames, et turpis Egestas,

-Lethumque, Laborque:

and cold officials walk, periodically, round the buildings and see that decrepitude and disease, childhood and old age, are clad, fed and cared for with the method and exactness of an utilitarian, who looks to the expenditure of his money, rather than with the sympathy of a Christian greeting an equal soul. And yet the establishment of these workhouses is a noble feature in the country. Practically speaking and looking only to its physical bearings, it is a fine spectacle to see such asylums for the destitute provided in every district of the land. Were any traveller returning from a far-off country to tell us that, in that distant region, the whole kingdom was divided into districts: that in every district was maintained a well-built, commodious mansion, superintended by a steady master and matron, in which all who were unable to find employment, orphan children and all who were brought to distress by sickness, improvidence, or their own ill conduct, were received and supported as long as they chose to stay; were lodged in warm rooms; well clothed; well fed; attended regularly by a surgeon appointed to watch over their health; that a school master and mistress were provided for the children; that they were assembled, morning and evening, for family prayers, and that the ministers of their religion were admitted, at all times, to see them; that they were subject to no extraordinary labour to defray the expenses of the establishment; and that the principal residents of the neighbourhood weekly met to hear and redress their grievances -how should we esteem the beneficence of that distant people!