I TOOK your letter in my hand, Eusebius, and read it in my afternoon's walk, and soon found a comment upon your text, that " after all it is an honest world." You must have been in a fine humour of selfconceit, and talked, as most people in such case do, of the world and thought of yourself. An honest world! Did you ever calculate how much the dishonesty of it costs you? how much of your substance, and how much wearisome care and vexation those perpetual checks upon the Bank of Life, that make more wry faces for you than any drafts upon your pocket? The world is barefaced, scarcely affects honesty, excepting for advantage-and that an almost obsolete mode of dealing. Reading your letter, I found myself under the garden wall of a rich merchant, a neighbour, and there I heard the following short dialogue :-A man was at work upon the wall; another of the same condition passing, calls out to him"Still there, Tom!—when wilt thou make an end on't?"

"Why," said honest Thomas, "d'ye see, not just yet; we could have done it well in a day, but we've been here four days, and I think we must make it the week, for they've an uncommon good tap, and not sparing of it neither."

There now, Eusebius, was a pretty slap in the face to your admired honesty. Your letter, quoth I, shall go back to you with this comment, if the honest postman does not purloin it; but to ensure it's reaching you, I determined to put nothing in it but words. It was not an enviable train of thought that ensued. How much have I been robbed of during my life? Large amounts I gulped down, and got over pretty well; but the minor items brought all confusion of calculation, with multiplication of vexation, that I could bring to no sum, nor dismissal. And I know, Eusebius, you have not fared much better. Your little estate has been invaded, encroached upon-landmarks removed, and trees cut down. How many gaping wolves have thought

YOL. L. NO, CCCX,

you fair game! And when I consider your helplessness-our helplessness, let me say-it rather seems that we ought to give public thanks to the numerous rogues and rascals that have environed us, that they have left us any thing we can call our own. And the more circumscribed that is, the less circumference have we to defend. That is one comfort. It is in a degree the happiness of the beggar who has nothing to guard, and cantat vacuus coram latrone. Full of those thoughts, I wandered on till I reached a small shady retreat, a green spot, just admitting an entrance, encompassed with brier and leafage, that all bowed down to me, and over me, as if I were the lord and master, and they offered me obeisance and service. Here was contrast to the roguish turbulence of life; happy the man, thought I, who can so encompass himself, where nothing may tempt the enemy to find him out! But bitter experience brings the enemy home to us; and when there is no reality for him to touch, he invades us in dreams. I fell asleep, with this picture of secluded and quiet briery beauty in my mind's eye-asleep, I was still its tenant, or its master. There is a noise; the bushes are stirred. Ah, you thief! there is a wolf's head under the dark leafage directly in front: there is another to the right; and through the bushes to the left another monster! Ah, I see how it is! I dare say there is another behind, and they are going to make a simultaneous attack. off: not quite so fast, one villain has hold of my foot; a kick in the jaw with the other has sent him howling. I jump up, they are all upon me. Thanks to a good cudgel, I lay well about me; two are prostrate, one sneaks off, and I strangle the fourth. This is pretty well for a snug retreat. What a heat I am in! There is not room to breathe in here, and the rascals may come too close to me. must enlarge my domain. "Enlarge your domain, you fool, must you!" said a voice. Where did that come from? Never mind: here's an open

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ing, so away I scamper and reach a wider domain indeed; the woody circumference is enlarged, and here down I sit to recover my breathing: little breathing time is however given me. Whoop! whoop! there is howling all about me; every bush shakes; and underneath every individual bough, wherever I look, is a wolf's head, with his red tongue protruded, fringed with handsome furniture of teeth. Up I jump again, round goes the cudgel, on come the wolves, rampant, audacious villains! They are too many for me. This is what I get by enlarging my domain: it only brings more I see. Well, do thy best and lay about thee-and so I do, stoutly. Oh! there is a sad twinge! that rascal has snapped off my right leg! I'm down on one knee! I shall get it now, surely. Well, if I'm not killed outright! There goes my left arm! Now, not a leg have I to stand on-one arm and both legs gone! Whew! if I survive this, I may get my fortune by being exhibited at a fair, and pass for a lusus naturæ. Not much chance of that, though, for here they are thick upon me. Keep your distance, gentlemen, for, like Witherington, I fight upon my stumps. There goes my t'other arm! now then am I nothing but truncus inutile lignum-that's me and my cudgel. Wonderfully voracious these creatures! and good surgeons-they whip off joints as if they understood anatomy, I see: and do it so clean, that it's quite wonderful what little pain I feel. Snap, gulp, and a gobble. Hang me if they hav'n't whipped off half my body. I'm heart-whole, however, and that is all I can say for myself and see, the monsters are making off fast! It is astonishing that a human being should live, so mutilated as I am. Look here, I've only-no I hav'n't that I'm nothing but head, neck, and bit of the brisket. Well may they say, "Oh! what a piece of work is man"-and but a piece-one of shreds and patches would be a beauty to me. Stop if you please there-give me back my bread-basket. Not a bit of it-he's off: then do be so good as to come back and take my head, and then you'll have the whole of me between you." "Not this time," said a wolf, wonderful to relate, majestically rearing on his hind-legs, and lifting himself up, while down flew his black

robes, and his band and wig metamorphosed him instanter into an eminent barrister. "Your head!" said he," that cannot be worth having, for if it had held any brains, you wouldn't have let us divide your body between us-you are welcome to your head-make the most of it." Make the most of it! and why not, quoth I? more brains in it than you think for, limb of the law; if I'm nobody, still I'll make head against you-oh! oh! you're off, are you?-then I'll just look sharp for an amanuensis, and dictate this combat with you wolves, and send it to Maga and let's see what will come of that!

for

"When land and money's gone and spent, Then learning is most excellent."

The wish to be doing made me soon sprout out a pair of arms, with hands to them, and resolution at my fingers' ends; not so very hard to maintain one's-self after all-how I do write away! and I sha'n't have an empty stomach to fill-that's gone at any rate. Gone! why here it is, and, as I live, a portly belly too! I fill apace-and here are my legs and feet. Richard's himself again!-so up I am in a twinkling-just shake myself to see or feel that all's tight and wellfastened together; and that shake does the business, and I find myself with my back against a stone in the shady little spot I first entered, and your letter, Eusebius, in my hand. Have you not heard of an executioner so expert, that after long flourishing about his sword, when the culprit requested he would put him out of his misery, he replied, "Out of your misery! shake your shoulders;" he did so, and off fell his head; but the shake of the shoulders did more for me, it gave me life, body, and bones, whereas the other—

"Pover uomo, Andava combattendo ed era morto." Now, is there not the pith and marrow of truth in this dream? There are wolves about every property. Who enlarges his domain, makes to himself a larger circumference to defend, greater temptation to thieves, a more expanded field for iniquity to work in, and upon. Multiplied means often prove multiplied vexations. Establish "a raw" upon vitality. Poverty may have to keep its "wolf from

mine-down there!" A butcher-looking rascal put his paw on him, and stared him in the face, as if he should say, "What! disown me!-well, if that ain't too bad!" No, they could not fasten the ownership of one upon him, and he left the room with his dogs at his heels, doubtless determining that his honour's preserves should that night pay for his time, and he thought it an honest charge against justice. Why am I dwelling upon mere outskirts of petty knavery, adjoining, or close upon, to the debate able land of honesty? When knaveries, rogueries, villanies of infinitelygreater frequency and damage rise up and meet one in every nook, corner, and alley of this sinful world, making us blush for the name of civilization we arrogate to ourselves, adepts in chicanery and profligacy boast of the advancement of the age. And advancing it is, and, it might be added, in the road to the gallows, if the word with the thing were not becoming ob. solete. Impunity breeds villany at a fearful rate. Schools there are, and perhaps universities, where it offers degrees. Dickens' Fagan is scarcely an imaginary character, and most probably falls short of reality.

"Is he so young and yet so old a lifter?"

SHAKSPBARE.

may no longer be quoted with surprise. Villany, pilfering, cheating villany, more than divides the interest of the world with politics. The newspapers, for the amusement of the civilized, give you nearly as much of one as of the other. They progress pari passu, and, alas! sometimes intermingle; trick, jugglery, and lying, it is hard to say to which item of interest they principally belong. The Press has been called the Fourth Estate. Then roguery is the fifth-nay, it is more, for it has a considerable share of partnership with some of the others; and so barefaced lying and thimbleriggery assume high privilege. If civilization be the prevalence of moral virtues, we are openly retrograding, becoming barbarians. The test of a mau is not his honesty, but his cleverness. Honesty now shivers, without being even praised. It is no longer "laudatur et alget." Why don't we go one step further, (the public foot is half lifted for the purpose,) and imitate the Azoreans, who, we find in a recent

traveller's account, are politeness itself to thieves? "The prisoners who gaze and gossip through the bars of a prison, bend as respectfully, and are capp'd in return, with precisely the same deference as they would be if they walked the streets. Imprisonment is neither disgrace nor humiliation to themthere is no diminution in the everyday round of salutation; but the hatworship, as George Fox called it, is observed with unaltered gravity, and the world is quite as much their friend, and as full of smooth pretence, as when they lived on the honest side of the gates." Yet, Eusebius, thieves may have some advantage here over the Azoreans; they do not easily get into prison, and when in are very easily let out; and for a man who is tired of life to get hanged, requires far greater interest than to get him a comfortable place under government, which might render it no longer necessary to his wishes to court the gallows. Thieves and rogues are of all persons those mostly pitied; the robbed are not spared either by thieves or law. Law, Eusebius-frightful monster!-lives by perpetual suction; a little monosyllable, with a long bill. The injustice perpetrated by law exceeds calculation and belief. We prate of reforming grievances the greatest grievance is law; and lawyers, cunning fellows, all gaping open-mouth'd, like a nest of ill-fledged birds, importunating power for special commissions.

"The subjects' grief Comes through commissions."

SHAKSPEARE.

Lawyers they are upon the country like fleas upon a dog's back, innumerable, busy, and troublesome, and like a dog they use it. How much of every man's substance, that has had much to do with the world's business, has not gone into the hands of lawyers? At births, deaths, and marriages, there they are-would they were a little cheaper! You settle some paltry matter with your neighbour, and each pays his lawyer more than the fee-simple of a little estate; the trifle would ruin a poor man who had saved up a hundred or so. What a frightful case was that of the gold dust robbery, where the great cormorant law was law and maw too, and licked up dust and all, clean. It really is a most frightful state of things at the best. With no very great experience of law-yet not

unbitten at toes and fingers, and somewhat to the quick-I entertain a horror of all pertaining to it as well as yourself, Eusebius, who used to say the only virtuous act of Punch was his hanging the judge. It makes one uncomfortable to read the trials in the different courts-and in fancy go over the costs: the adjournments, too, because the clock strikes-and all to be done again, till-fees, fees, fees, nothing but fees, become the all-important

matter.

"The suit begins with plaintiff and defendant,

But both are plaintiffs long before the end on't."

And how is it all connected with law get such rascally looks ?-is it real, or our dislike paints them so? Somebody has remarked that we never see in the "Hue and Cry" a rogue advertised as handsome. Is it then that the courts are crowded with rogues, or that we think them so? What a frightful picture Mr Dickens has given of the Fleet Prison, and the poor cobbler who was ruined by having an estate left him. All true, true, true, but true only as far as it goes; truth goes beyond even that. Why must justice always come with sheriff and assize, and muffled up like an old womanwhy not come periodically like an Hercules to the Augean stables? Oh! “Quirk, Gammon, and Snap," are you not detestable? Your names and your doings are a deserved satire-personi. fications of the triformis Diana, justice. For what is law but justice's left handand justice's right, what of that? It is clenched with the fee, fully equal in weight to the decision held in the other and so justice is complimented with being called "even-handed." The world now seems to take a particular interest in thievery, and every kind of cheating. Nothing goes down so well with the public taste as the brutal doings of the worst of mankind; the most detestable holes of villany are visited and minutely described, for the purpose of painting mankind to the life; sickening and disgusting as the scenes are, the taste that permits it is more so, and is indicative of a very unhealthy state of morality and manners. Some writers of great power most unnaturally fasten upon the vilest character one commanding virtue, to render punishment

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and the gallows particularly odious. All greatness but among rogues is treated in burlesque-we are in no other quarter to look for heroes. Hence vice assumes unblushing effrontery. We are going fast the "Rogue's March." We are Spartanizing-encouraging wickedness, so it be done adroitly. The consequence is that peculiar air and swagger which rogues assume at the offices of police; as if the rascals were conscious of the éclat and flourish with which they come off in general opinion. A thief is not ashamed to tell you in confidence whose property he has pilfered, whose house he has broken into, and how he has effected it; perhaps not without some hope that you are an author, and will celebrate him. A friend of mine not long ago was robbed at his lodgings in town-his portmanteau, money, and clothes taken away. One of the thieves was discovered. there was no possibility of a successful denial of the matter, the fellow assumed an air of familiarity and indifference, offered his services in the manner of one who was conferring a kindness, to procure any items particularly valued; told, with a professional gusto, how they had proceeded : cut his gibes upon some letters found and read-and finally betrayed one of his companions-accompanied my friend to the house where he was to be found, or rather directed my friend and the officer to come in after him, and take the man he should be sitting with. They did so; and when the officer took him, the rascal most artfully remonstrated with the officer. It must be a mistake-he would be answerable for his honest friend to any amount; and when, finally, the thief was conveyed away, he pretended to shed tears, and said, most pathetically, "My dear Jem, can I do any thing for you?" If there were as much zeal in hunting out these professional haunts, for the purpose of putting down the disgraceful nuisances, as there is in cooking up these dishes of villany for the public taste, vice would not get a-head as it does. What must other countries think of us, especially the more moral, when let into the secret of our iniquities through our fashionable literature? The boasted morality and high principle of this nation are oozing out of fingers that hold the pen of the ready