Modern Street Ballads

There are plenty of my readers old enough to remember many of these Ballads, and they will come none the worse because they bring with them the reminiscence of their youth. Forsan et hæc olim meminisse juvabit. They owe a great deal of their charm to the fact that they were absolutely contemporary with the events they describe, and, though sometimes rather faulty in their history, owing to the pressure under which they were composed and issued, yet those very inaccuracies prove their freshness.