PREFACE.

IF any gentleman of a studious turn of mind, who may have acquired the habit of carrying pencils and note-books, would for one year reside in Monmouth Court, Seven Dials; six months in Orchard Street, Westminster; three months in Mint Street, Borough; and consent to undergo another three months on the extremely popular, but very much disliked treadmill (vulgo the "Everlasting Staircase "), finishing, I will propose, by a six months' tramp, in the character of a cadger and beggar, over England, I have not the least doubt but that he would be able to write an interesting work on the languages, secret and vulgar, of the lower orders.

In the matter of SLANG, our studious friend would have to divide his time betwixt observation and research. Conversations on the outsides of omnibuses, on steamboat piers, or at railway termini, would demand his most attentive hearing, so would the knots of semidecayed cabmen, standing about in bundles of worn-out great-coats and haybands, betwixt watering pails, and

conversing in a dialect, every third word of which is without home or respectable relations. He would also have to station himself for hours near gatherings of ragged boys playing or fighting, but ever and anon contributing to the note-book a pure street term. He would have to "hang about" lobbies, mark the refined word-droppings of magniloquent flunkies, "run after" all the popular preachers, go to the Inns of Court, be up all night and about all day-in fact, be a ubiquitarian, with a note-book and pencil in hand.

As for research, he would have to turn over each page of our popular literature, wander through all the weekly serials, wade through the newspapers, fashionable and unfashionable, and subscribe to Mudie's, and scour the novels. This done, and if he has been an observant man, I will engage to say, that he has made a choice gathering, and that we may reasonably expect an interesting little book.

I give this outline of preparatory study to show the reason the task has never been undertaken before. People in the present chase after respectability dont care to turn blackguards, and exchange cards with the Whitechapel Pecker or the Sharp's Alley Chicken, for the sake of a few vulgar, although curious words; and we may rest assured that it is quite impossible to write any account of vulgar or low language, and remain