ninety years of busy life had left him, broke down after concluding the labours of that protracted sitting, and was taken direct to his bed, from which he never again rose alive. But his memory remained behind, and we shall come upon his work again ere long in the course of our retrospect.
We needed quite a new departure in mendicancy and crime.—Author, chap. i.
No feature of the life of the twentieth century was more striking than that of the resolute struggle into which we were then plunged, for a thorough social and moral resanitation. The resanitation of the other or material kind, already alluded to, which had partly preceded and prepared the way for, and partly accompanied this present movement, and the success of which, in the case of London, had promptly spread its benefits to other of our chief cities and towns, had powerfully helped to turn public attention in this new direction. The end in view was no less than the complete extirpation, on the one hand, of all the hereditary professional criminal element, and on the other of all the diversified heritage of professional mendicancy; that is to say, of every form of begging, mendicant tramping, gipsying, and general vagabondage throughout the country.
It was no small help towards these great national purposes that the age teemed with stimulation and suggestion. Necessity had laid its hand upon society; for besides the fact of the increasing density of the
