birthday--I turned aside from my evening walk down Oxford Street,
purposely to take a glance at it; it is now occupied by a respectable
family, and by the lights in the front drawing-room I observed a domestic
party assembled, perhaps at tea, and apparently cheerful and gay.
Marvellous contrast, in my eyes, to the darkness, cold, silence, and
desolation of that same house eighteen years ago, when its nightly
occupants were one famishing scholar and a neglected child. Her, by-the-
bye, in after-years I vainly endeavoured to trace. Apart from her
situation, she was not what would be called an interesting child; she was
neither pretty, nor quick in understanding, nor remarkably pleasing in
manners. But, thank God! even in those years I needed not the
embellishments of novel accessories to conciliate my affections: plain
human nature, in its humblest and most homely apparel, was enough for me,
and I loved the child because she was my partner in wretchedness. If she
is now living she is probably a mother, with children of her own; but, as
I have said, I could never trace her.

This I regret; but another person there was at that time whom I have
since sought to trace with far deeper earnestness, and with far deeper
sorrow at my failure. This person was a young woman, and one of that
unhappy class who subsist upon the wages of prostitution. I feel no
shame, nor have any reason to feel it, in avowing that I was then on
familiar and friendly terms with many women in that unfortunate
condition. The reader needs neither smile at this avowal nor frown; for,
not to remind my classical readers of the old Latin proverb, "_Sine
cerere_," &c., it may well be supposed that in the existing state of my
purse my connection with such women could not have been an impure one.
But the truth is, that at no time of my life have I been a person to hold
myself polluted by the touch or approach of any creature that wore a
human shape; on the contrary, from my very earliest youth it has been my