BEATING THE BOUNDS.
HOLY Tnurisnar was a stirring day in the Metropolis. It was just such a day as the Charity-boys, whose high holyday it is, would have made if they had had the making of it. The gold in the hats of the Beadles glistened with unwonted radiance ; the ribbons at the breasts of the Vestrymen showed an intenser blue, as they led forth the urchins, with their peeled willow wands, to beat the bounds. It was one of those rare days which are as bright in the innermost parishes of the City as out among the suburbs. What a day in a charity-boy's life is a fine Holy Thursday I It were hard to determine which enjoys it most—the suburban charity- boy, who gets a ramble through green lanes ; or the St. James's charity-boy, who gets a nearer peep of the Queen Dowager's resi- dence ; or the St. Dunstan's-in-the West charity-boy, who goes poking out and in all sorts of courts and houses, up Crane Court, through the hall of the Scotch Corporation, out by the back-door into the bewildering labyrinth of lanes and courts between Fleet Street and Holborn ; or, grandest of all, the charity-boy of St. Peter's ad vincula, along with whom march the Beef-eaters of the Tower and the Governor in his cocked hat. How sedulously they thrash the walls with their light osiers! Tradition tells, that of old they, or rather their predecessors, were themselves the parties whipped at each salient and reentering angle of the boundary, in order to impress them abidingly on their young memories. To us this seems cruel; but there is no limit to the compensating powers of Nature : perhaps the whipping gave the boys a better appetite for the dinner which concludes the ceremony.
Those were the maps, marked not with one but many "strong red lines," of ancient days. Annually renewed, they were less liable to be lost than those of modern times. Had the occupants of the Pension-list—the State charity-boys—been whipped an- nually at every angle of the North-east boundary, (in particular, the anomalous North-west angle of Nova Scotia, said to be formed by one line,) it would not have been necessary to canvass the merits of so many unauthenticated maps in order to settle that ticklish question.
One is nowise surprised to find the alternative process of beating boys or boundaries resorted to in England, on reflecting how im- portant is the part this word beat " performs in the construction of English sentences. It is almost as universally applicable as the "anon, anon, Sir ! " of Francis in Henry the Fourth, or the "oh, Lord ! " of the Clown in All's Well that Ends Well. We say that MILTON beats POPE ; PEEL beats PALMERSTON ; Eclipse beats the field ; COSTA or BENEDICT beats time ; a man beats his wife ; a drummer beats an alarum ; the boys, as aforesaid, beat the bounds; and in Scotland they beat potatoes, whereas in England they mash them. The heart beats, and the rain beats. There are beats in watches, and a watchman has his beat. And now we have pretty well beat the bounds of beating ; unless, indeed, ate were to step across the Irish Channel to O'CONNELL, who, his countrymen pro- test, " beats Banagher."
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