science; feeling a natural desire, as a gentleman, to throw up his brief, and yet entertaining an uncomfortable consciousness that there were professional grounds for retaining it; dreading the degradation of aiding a scoundrel-scheme, and yet equally shrinking from that abandonment of a case intrusted to him, which anticipates a fatal verdict-nay, which almost usurps the functions of a jury.

As he proceeded to argue against his convictions, and, in the teeth of proved facts, to deny what was evident to men's senses,-to throw false weights into the scale of justice, to hoodwink the clear-seeing, to interprets the law now by its spirit, and now by its letter, as occasion served-to banter or browbeat the timid, and extort from the inexperienced inadvertent expressions contradictory to their deliberate assertions and anon to throw suspicion upon a true witness-seeking the escape of the worst of criminals rather than disappoint his audience of a speech, and himself of a display-indignation and disgust had nearly terminated my doze; but when he again appeared, labouring in vain over a bad case, or, destitute of a case, straining his hungry eyes in quest even of the worst, which yet came not throughout the long, long term-the sigh made its way, and pity again spoke in the old key, "Poor devil!"

Another miscellaneous multitude came into view. Gentlemen insolvents, who had spent a cool fifty thousand before they came of age; and middle-aged miserables, who, with ten fifty thousands in hand, never knew how to spend a hundred pounds a-year. The poor devils!

Here was a smart, smirking, self-sufficient elderly youth, industriously bent on smiling himself into the hearts of all the women he met -making offers of his hand, with a liberality which, had there been the smallest chance of acceptance, would have been rash in a Briareus— and securing nothing anywhere but a chilling rejection, a stare of angry astonishment, or a suggestion relative to the common fate of vanity and presumption from a sensitive brother, touching horseponds, horsewhips, or horse-pistols at the best.

Here was, moreover, a bridegroom in his raptures—in the first bloom of his passionate idolatry-secure in the possession of an angelic creature, and therefore the happiest of the happy for life; but there was at the same time something visible in the corners of the angelic creature's very bright black eyes, that in spite of his present ecstasy and exulting anticipation, forced out, as the smirking confidence of the all-rejected suitor had done before, the piteous ejaculation, "Poor devil!"

Here stood a sturdy grasper of hard cash, very cunning in his way, handing over his bullion in exchange for the note of hand of a "leg,' confident that he was thereby making sixty per cent., and doing a devilish good thing for himself. Poor devil! And there was the flashy representative of various enlightened and independent electors, who having just turned his coat, and thus attracted the general attention of the spectators, was congratulating himself on having happily discovered the right side of things-on finding himself famous. Poor devil! who are his constituents?

But amongst a troop of objects, all unlike, except in the circumstance of being equally entitled to a rude sort of commiseration—

trampers by the road-side, tillers of the field, delvers far underground -sons of hard toil mingled with the children of idleness, who often in their way toil harder still to drag themselves through life, poor devils!—there was one disconsolate, yet willing labourer, who fixed my attention. It was the curate of the parish to which the other poor devils belonged.

Weddings, churchings, christenings, burials, visitations of the sick, and school examinations-morning and afternoon service, with sermons thrown in as make-weights;-his slip of a garden to attend to, his sundry miles to walk daily through miry ways, his six boys to instruct in Latin and morality, his wife to lecture on serenity of temper, his regularly rejected article to write for the magazine, and his suit of black to watch day by day in its rapid declension towards a dun-colour-all this, and infinitely more to do, for sixty pounds a year! What a life he had of it! Poor-no, poor gentleman!

Dodging through the crowd, came a poor devil more familiarly known to me it was the printer's; the humblest member of the great republic of letters-the last and least of the Romans-the link between the literate and the illiterate.

At the first view, his seemed an enviable, an honoured lot! Who would not feel proud and joyful to be the bearer of that proof of the first sheet of the "Lyrical Ballads," to the great Bard of the Lakes! Where is the reader of romance who would not feel it a labour of love and pleasure, to carry those first printed chapters of "Rienzi," and place them in the hands of the brilliant Novelist! Nay, where is the timid and delicate lady who would hesitate to play printer's devil, if the task were to deliver that proof for correction (if such were possible), to the author of the "Irish Melodies" in person! But upon a nearer view of matters, the printer's devil did not seem to bear any resemblance to him who once got into paradise-a place quite beside the path of our little peripatetic. His thoughts were not fixed on the immortal to whom he was going, but on the mortal way he had to go; he heeded not, in the proof he bore, the depth of the matter, but in the street before him the depth of the mud. He would as soon carry a proof of the Price Current, as of Congreve's plays-unless in the latter instance the distance should be less. He could sleep during the time he had to wait for it, just as well—whether the house were Adam Smith's, or Horace Smith's, or merely Smith's. Early or late, east or west, hot or cold, wet or dry, he walked away with his proof, always half-asleep, a semi-somnambulist; a glorious torchbearer, unconscious of the rays which circled him; a cherub bearing melodious tidings in the semblance of a little devil.

But as, conformably with his habit of an afternoon, and at all other seasons, he dozed industriously, I caught a new infection from the poor devil of my dream, and my sleep deepened-so also did my reflections.

"What!" I exclaimed, quietly, so as not to terminate the doze prematurely. "What! are all these conditions of life-each so unlike the other, some so opposite-in reality, much the same? Is the possessor of riches and power, equally the drudge of necessity, an exile from pleasure, with the parish-apprentice? Is the teacher's life, no less

than the rapscallion's who was never taught to read, one of trials and privations, and toil, and trouble? Is a change of name, of place, and of dress, all that constitutes the difference between one kind of drudgery and another? However different the drama-low farce or heroic tragedy-do both wear the same look when you go behind the scenes, and survey their qualities, not from the dress-boxes, but from the back of the stage? And are we all, in some costume or other, but Slaves of the Lamp! Poor devils!"

These, and many other moral reflections which followed, must have increased my sleepiness until I was stupified; for a most absurd succession of anomalous figures, of objects the most insanely incongruous, passed before me. The printer's devil seemed to have become prime minister, the curate had acquired an imp-like shape, the schoolmaster was much less than human, and the barrister worse than a brute, In short, as the ground shifted, like a dioramic view, I felt myself sliding into a scene Underground-the country residence of the Personage lately alluded to, as having once paid a temporary visit to paradise.

I had arrived at a most eventful time. The men there had become far too wicked for their ancient master. An insurrection had broken out, and all was in confusion. They were putting out all the fires, introducing what they called a cold-water cure. But worse-they were hunting the Illustrious Personage up and down, who vainly sought to pacify his pupils, vainly implored mercy. Not only was he deposed by proclamation, but the mob, that many-tailed monster, was threatening to take summary vengeance upon him, and lynch-law was legally established.

"Alas!" cried he, in the bitterness of his chilling reverse-and there was something in the moral that forcibly struck me, emanating, as the phrase is, from such a source. “Alas! wickedness is hard work, and devilishly unprofitable !"

I could not even here, as in other instances, influenced doubtless by the force of habit, repress the exclamation," Poor devil!"

Before my doze ended, I distinctly saw two or three of my own ancestors, with many who are ostentatiously claimed by several pious friends of mine, giving the deposed proprietor hard chase, and diminishing as often as they caught him, some one of his legitimate and constitutional appendages. His horns had fallen a sacrifice at the first rush of the insurrection; his persecutors next proceeded to pare his hoofs to the quick; and when I started up from my doze, falling at the same time into the fire, they were deliberately chopping off his ail!

Poor dev -But one need not pity him when wide awake.

THE BARNABYS IN AMERICA.

BY MRS. TROLLOPE.

CHAP. XXXVII,

To Albany, however, Major Allen Barnaby had no more intention of going than to Jericho. Instead of committing any such folly, he very deliberately went on shore at the spot from whence he could most conveniently reach the Springs, which his amiable family honoured by their presence, and arriving there late in the evening, spent the interval between that hour and morning in getting his party ready to set off. Nobody, however, who had seen him figuring away at the supper-table as a first-rate European man of fashion, would have guessed the real state of the case Nobody would have fancied, that unless he had contrived to take himself off faster than the dear friends he had left could follow him, he would in all human probability have been exposed to a very disagreeable explanation. He was in high spirits, charmingly affectionate in manner to the dear creatures he had rejoined, and altogether so extremely agreeable that the party at the table d'hôte very much regretted to find that his stay was to be so vexatiously short.

Before the company retired to their respective apartments for the night, Major Allen Barnaby took his son-in-law aside, and inviting him to a moonlight promenade in the front of the hotel, made him by a few words comprehend the nature of the circumstances which rendered an immediate ramble westward desirable. The Don showed no want of quickness in his manner of receiving this intelligence, and promised with a greater appearance of courage than was quite usual with him, that he would take care his Patti should be ready.

This point settled, the gentlemen returned to the house, and soon afterwards my heroine and her spouse were tête-à-tête together. It was the lady who spoke first.

"What in the world does all this mean, major ?" said she, looking a little as if she intended to be out of temper. "I should like to know, if you please, what reason you can possibly have for insisting upon paying every thing to-night, just as if we had not another hour to stay here?"

"You have several hours more to stay here, my dear, and I hope you will pass some of them in sleeping soundly. But my reason for wishing to pay every thing here, honestly, to-night is, that I mean to go away very early to-morrow morning."

"Good heavens! how tiresome you are,' "exclaimed Mrs. Allen Barnaby with a flash of the eye that showed her to be very heartily provoked. "Just as we have got acquainted with ever so many agreeable people, and made ourselves perfectly comfortable, you come down upon us with your tyrannical' I must,' which just means I will, and presto, every thing must be packed up in a moment, and off we must go, just as if Patty and I, and Tornorino, were so many blind March.-VOL. LXVII. NO. CCLXVII.

Y

puppies that you amused yourself by carrying about with you in a hamper."

"Blind, my dearest love!" exclaimed the major; "you really wrong me very much; nothing I can assure you can be further from my inclination than even leaving you in the dark for an hour, and much less, my Barnaby, would I have you blind. Listen to me for a very few minutes, fair wife, and I will shed light enough upon the business, to make you see just as clearly as I do myself."

"Some more of your pretty gambling exploits, I'll be bound for it," exclaimed the lady, with a very ominous frown.

"Not so, my love," he replied, with great gentleness; "I really have not had the good fortune of being able to win as much money by gambling since you left me, as would excite suspicion in a lynx. But if you expect, my beloved Barnaby, that I am to make ten thousand dollars in half an hour, by any manoeuvre to which I should choose to invite all New York to be present while it is performed, and that moreover, I should stand to be cross-examined by them afterwards, if you expect this, my charming wife, you overrate my abilities."

"Ten thousand dollars!!!" exclaimed my heroine, with eyes and hands raised towards the ceiling. "Ten thousand dollars! What are you talking about?"

"I am talking, my dear, of the sum which I last inserted within the leather folds of my pocket-book," replied the major, demurely. "The which sum, although in very dirty American bank-notes, I would willingly submit to your ocular examination, my dear, were it not that I feel the moments to be rather precious, and that I am aware you must have a good deal to do in order to be ready to start by the stage at five o'clock to-morrow morning."

"You don't mean to say that you have really done some of those smoking fellows out of ten thousand dollars, and then set off exactly in the way they would be sure to follow? Oh, major! major! we shall be caught at last! How could you be so mad as to come here?"

Chiefly, my dear, because I was quite sure it was the very last place that they would calculate I should be likely to come to. And secondly, because I wished to have the honour and happiness of attending you and our charming daughter on the pleasant little circuitous tour, which I intend making westward, through this glorious and unequalled country."

"I do believe you are mad, major," said his lady, looking a good deal mystified, and rather uncomfortable. "If I did not know by experience, that drink what you will, you never get really tipsy, I should certainly think you were so now."

"Then you would be greatly mistaken, Mrs. Allen Barnaby," he replied. "I confess this little adventure has put me in good spirits, and makes me appear, perhaps, rather more frolicsome than ordinary, but you may trust me, my dear, my vivacity shall not bring you into any disagreeable scrape whatever, nor myself either. So set about packing up, there's a good woman, and then we will contrive to get a little sleep, if we can,'

"And Patty?" exclaimed my heroine, suddenly stopping in the