fastest runner, and the best shot in the parish. His mother was standing near him, wringing her hands in pitiable agony; his little brothers and sisters were clustered round him, and joining, some of them scarce knew why, in the lamentations of the parent. I was much affected. "How has this happened?" asked I, hardly able to articulate. "Oh, my boy! my boy!" exclaimed the unhappy mother, "my first born, and the dearest of my children, has it come to this? Was it for this end that I reared you with so much care, that you should die by the hands of common murderers? Look here," cried she, at the same time rolling down the bedclothes, "look what they have done." I did look, and beheld a wide wound upon the left breast of the corpse, as if a whole charge of slugs, or swanshot, had entered. The left arm, too, I saw was broken; it was a horrible spectacle. I covered it up again. It was plain enough that a rencounter had taken place, during the preceding night, between some of the keepers and Simon and his son; and that it had ended fatally, the proof was now before me. I could not, however, inquire into particulars just at that moment, for the parents were too much overcome by the fate of their child to repeat them; but I learned them soon after. They were as follows: About ten o'clock on the preceding night, the moon being in her first quarter, Simon and his son, each armed with a fowling-piece, and attended by their dogs, set out, according to custom, in quest of game. As they had placed several snares in the woods of Denne in the course of the preceding morning, they directed their steps thither; not only because they were tolerably sure of filling their bag in a moderate space of time, but with the view of ascertaining whether or not the wires had availed them. The distance was considerable. They walked seven good miles before they reached their ground, consequently midnight was hard at hand when they began to penetrate the preserves. Their object being to obtain as many head of game, and with as little noise as possible, they had taken care to provide themselves with brimstone matches, for the purpose of smoking such pheasants as they might happen to see at roost upon the boughs. They had succeeded in bagging a brace with out the necessity of firing, when the dogs starting a couple of hares, both father and son discharged their pieces almost at the same moment. All this occurred close to a particular corner of the wood where they had placed no fewer than three wires, at short distances from one another. No doubt the wires had been observed; and the keepers, rightly judging that those who set them would return at night to take away their spoil, laid them. selves up in ambush in their immediate vicinity. The report of firearms drew them instantly to the spot; neither Simon nor Joe considered it at all derogatory to their dignity to es cape, if they could; so, seeing three men advancing towards them, they took to their heels. The keepers followed. Joe might have escaped with ease; but his father, grown stiff by years, was unable to keep up with him. The pursuers gained upon him rapidly. "Run, Joe; run, my boy," cried the old man ; "never mind me. Remember your mother and sisters; run, and take care of them.”—“ That I will not, father," answered Joe; "where you are, I am; let them come on." Old Simon was by this time pretty well spent with running. He stopped to breathe: Joe stopped also. He endeavoured to load his gun, but had only time to ram home the powder, when the assailants came up. One of them made a blow at the old man's head with a bludgeon, which, had it taken effect, would have put him beyond the reach of surgical art; but Joe caught it ere it fell. His left arm received it, and was broken. Still the right remained to him, and with a single stroke from the butt of his gun he laid the fellow flat upon the earth. A desperate struggle now ensued between the two remaining keepers and the poachers. Though powerless of one hand, Joe was still a match for most men; and Simon, having recovered his breath, fought as if only half the load of years had been upon his back. The keepers gave ground. The sole object of the Lees being escape, they abstained from pursuing them, and made the best of their way for the high road, and along it towards their home. But they were not permitted to go unmolested. keepers followed. By way of checking their farther advance, Joe unfortunately turned round and levelled his piece. He had hardly done so, The when one of the pursuers fired, and his gun being loaded for the purpose with buck-shot, its contents made their way through the young man's clothing, and entered his chest. The wound was not, however, immediately fatal. "I am hurt, father," cried he; "fly, and leave me to my fate." Another shot was fired while he was yet speaking, which took effect upon the only dog that stuck to them. Wild with rage, old Simon would have loaded his gun, and revenged his son or perished, had not the latter assured him that he was still able to proceed. By darting down a deep ravine they managed to evade the keepers; and then taking the most unfrequented ways, they made for the moor. But just as the light in their cottage window became discernible, Joe's strength forsook him; he reeled and fell; nor was it without much waste of time, and almost super-human exertions, that the old man continued to drag, rather than carry him home. Poor Joe never spoke after. He was laid upon his bed in a state of stupor, and about half an hour before daybreak breathed his last. Such is a brief relation of the events that brought about the melancholy scene to which I was now a witness. From it I learned, that the blood upon Simon's gaberdine was his son's. The state of frantic sorrow, too, in which I found him, was sufficiently explained, as well as the impulse which drove him to raise a murderous arm against any intruder; and though I could not acquit this old man of blame, though, indeed, I felt that the death of Joe was entirely owing to his lawless proceedings, I could not but pity him to a far greater degree than I condemned him. I did my best to comfort both him and the lad's mother; but my words fell upon inattentive ears, and I departed, much troubled in my own mind, and without having the consolation to reflect, that I had in any degree lightened the troubles of others. The affair, fatal as it was, never came before a court of justice. It was not, of course, to the interest of Simon, had he been capable of attending to his interests, to stir in the matter; for he could not bring his charge home to any definite person, and the very attempt so to do must have involved him in additional trouble. The fact, however, is, that Simon was neVOL. XIX. ver, from the hour of his son's death, in a fit state to conduct any business, or even to take care of himself. His stubborn temper, if it could not bend, was at length broken. All his misfortunes, real and imaginary, seemed to press upon his mind with double violence, now that the child of his pride was taken away from him. I have myself seen him weep, at times, like a woman. Long after his wife had regained her composure, Simon was inconsolable; and the ravages made by sorrow upon his health and frame were many degrees more visible and more serious, than those which threescore and three winters had effected. Simon was an altered man. The gun and the net were laid aside, but the spade and the hoe took not their place. At first he was deemed lazy; the parish refused to assist him; he was cited before the magistrates, and committed to jail. Having remained there till the period of his sentence expired, he was again set at liberty. But of his liberty he made no good use. His very wife now complained of him. He would sit, she said, for hours at a time, with folded arms, staring into the fire. He seldom spoke either to her or her young ones; and when he did, it was incoherently and wildly. At length he was missing. He wandered forth one morning, unshod and bare-headed. In this plight he was seen to pass through the church-yard, resting for a minute or two on Joe's grave. But what became of him after no one can tell. He was never heard of again. some it was surmised, that, under the influence of a crazed brain, he had wandered into a distant part of the country; and hence that, sooner or later, tidings of him would certainly arrive. By others it was insinuated, that he must have either thrown himself from the cliffs into the sea, or fallen over and been destroyed. That the first report was groundless, an absence of five years, during which no intelligence of his destiny has reached his family, furnishes ample ground for belief; whether either of the latter surmises be correct, I am ignorant. All that I know is, that he has never been seen or heard of in these quarters since the morning above alluded to; and that his wife, and four surviving children, are now wholly supported from the poor's-rates. C By POSTHUMOUS LETTERS OF CHARLES EDWARDS, ESQ. London, 18 No. VI. WELL! here I am, once more, in London. You saw my name among the "arrivals." "Charles Edwards, Esq. from a tour!" They would have said as much, although I had come from Botany Bay, so that I drove to P's Hotel with four horses; and I won't be positive as to the fact of coming back-but I should not be the first who had set out from that house for such a destination. I staid one evening at Clifton, and posted from Bath upwards-the world certainly cannot match such travelling, for people who are in haste. Marry! the same circumstances-(everything shows as new to me here as if I were an Esquimaux, or a Kamschatcan born, instead of an Englishman) but the same circumstances which combine to furnish the power for this rapid locomotion, make its adoption, now they exist, pretty nearly compulsory. Farewell to the last incarnation of the eccentric, and adventurous-the scenes that inspired Smollet, and Farquhar, and Fielding. It would be heavy work now to ride through England on horseback-putting up, every twelve hours, for the night, at the close of the day's stage or journey; and without even the chance of a sword drawn at the inn where you stopped, or a scuffle with a highwayman (or a brace of footpads) before you got there. 66 The joys which charmed the youth of our grandfathers, are departed! There are no people robbed in St Paul's church-yard, nor in Holborn, now. The Paddington stage" is never stopped now (unless to deliver parcels, not once a-year!) instead of being plundered regularly every night, and the coachman stripped to his shirt, and so set upon his box again-sometimes without any shirt-as its used to be. There has not been a burglary, that is, not a proper burglary-the people tied back to back and put down in the coal-cellar, while the house was gutted, and so on-scarcely within my recollection. Nor a fine young thief at least nineteen times escaped from Newgate-of "five-and-twenty, or thereabouts," taken at such a place as "Hockley in the Hole,"—indeed there is no such place-with three brace of pistols, his hair in papers, and a hundred guineas in his pocket! And, as for wild, solitary journeying, by bridle paths, over mountains and through forests, to muse along at a foot pace in; scanty luncheons by the side of a river, or under the shade of a cork-tree; cottage and convent up-puttings, or any other of the casualties that to you and me, in earlier and better days, used to make travel delightful! Mail-coaches forsake us! the whole hundred and twenty miles of road from London to Bristol is but one great high street, now, almost with houses upon both sides of the way; cursed with turtle, gas-light, horse patrole, excellent inn, turnpike at every half mile, and every other nuisance of wealth and regularity. In fact, I look at England now, something with the eye, though not at all with the heart, of a foreigner-did it never strike you, bating, of course, the loss of national strength which unfortunately would accompany such a change, that the people here would be happier if they were not quite so enlightened as they are; and still more so, if there were not quite so many of them? What say you to a good rummaging plague again—such as that treated of in the veritable and moth-eaten tome that you have sent me; and which (do me the favour to say so much, with my profound respects, to your lady sister) shall be returned, translated in the best way that I can make it out-a plague of purpose, and which, as Fletcher's grave-digger suggests it, should take the apothecaries and physicians first, that there might be no help left for money? London alone, for a genuine stranger, the work of half a life would hardly be sufficient for him to examine it. The mere new matter which has arisen since I was here last-in six years-is such a survey to go through, that I must die very slightly informed as to three-fourths of it. "Improvement"-or, at least, increase of extent, will make it a post-stage from one end of the town to the other, very shortly. This is absolute-coming in from Axbridge, I met the place a full mile west of where I left it a mile on the road between Tyburn turnpike and Bayswater. Works that, but yesterday, were the business of years to think of, are projected now, and completed, almost between to-day and to-morrow. Here is a bridge built that has cost half a million! Paying about as much, I understand, as may keep it in repair. And yet nobody seems to suffer; and another, a wilder speculation than the first, at the east end of the town, is undertaking. Luxury makes laudable progress too-not among the people of rankperhaps it could not well get much farther than it has got with themand present circumstances seem likely rather to abate it but the second class in the metropolis, the de facto traders, are pressing harder than ever upon the rich, and driving them fast into projects of exclusion and barricade. Clerks now keep actresses; linen-drapers speak Italian; and tailors keep hunting-horses, and go to the French play. This it is that pulls down the coffee-houses, into which all may walk, and sets up the clubs, into which even he who would eat a twenty-shilling supper cannot enter. And, for the lower ranks, as regards external appearance, literally, now, you can't even guess at the condition of any female in London by her dress, there is not a woman-servant in this house where I am living, who does not go abroad, on her holiday, in velvet and feathers; and in such attire altogether as the wife of a man of moderate income, very often, could hardly hope to compass. So, indeed, for the gentleman; in style and dress, no man ever looks like what he is; until at last, venture to seem anything but a chimneysweeper, and (in a strange neighbourhood) you run good chance to be set down for an impostor. As for "Cap. tains," the island is peopled with them. I can find no dignitaries (except now and then a "Major") else. Public exhibitors are getting into importance too; I saw a person that keeps a showbox somewhere in the Strand, so extreme the other day, in boots and mustachoes, that I learned his quality, by asking (in admiration) to what corps of Hungarians he belonged! Here is a boot-maker, last week, has married a ward in Chancery! some ex-tailor's only joy, with fifty thousand pounds-has been in prison"consented to make settlements"and now backs boxers-drives tandem -and is a "character" "upon town." Another fellow, that I used to buy canes of in Oxford Street, across a counter-I saw at the Opera, dressed like a Pandour! he is a blackleg forsooth, and will be hanged, I dare say to the emulation of every other stick-boy about St James's! Make allowance for the fact, that we all, at some time, come to say as much; and, even then, things did not go thus in my day. There has been an advance in the imposture, as well as in the importance, of the country: an accession to its impudence as well as to its strength; an increase of business scarcely more at the Bank than at the Old Bailey, effected within the last twenty years. The people are fonder of show than they used to be; less jealous, a great deal, of the workhouse; and a spirit of thinking—acting-only with reference to the present, runs more than it did through all the arrangements of the community. We build-to a degree perfectly ludicrous-only for the hour-neighbourhoods rise up like fairy cities, and fall down within the time that they formerly took in being set about. Your new houses are showy; the fancy of the day calls them tasteful; and there is not much chance of their standing long enough to allow them to go out of fashion. You get everywhere a whitewashed front-plateglass windows-folding doors, and gilded cornices---a spiral staircase, that you risk your life every time you go up-and a drawing-room, that stands in your lease, with a clause, that you shan't attempt to dance in it—but, for a single circumstance of convenience or accommodation-a closet, a recess, a foot deep-there is not such a thing from the top of the building to the botton! Your house--that is the object-must stand upon no ground; your garden -stabling-offices-there is not a stall in which a horse can turn round -are all cut and carved, and economical to an inch; your bed-chambers will be low and inconvenient; your cellars full of water, (for they have found out that it is very sad nonsense indeed, now, the laying a "foundation"); and your back windows-at a rent that is perfectly facetious to talk about-will look upon a churchyard, a court filled with old-clothesmen, or a disreputable alley. The same quality of spirit-careless of the future-anxious only to be great (or seem so) in the present-in an increased degree actuates the trader. A botcher, without common stock of thread and needles-six yards of sky-blue drugget only in his shop, and sixteen starving children squalling in his "back parlour"-will still be Gros Marchand--take a house in the "Quadrant," or the "Arcade;" write himself up Army Clothier" for a month, and go into the Gazette, as "Special Tailor to the King's Monkey." And such places as these "Quadrant" houses are! So very foppishly gay and pretending in their exterior; within dark, narrow, mean, and thrust (behind) upon every comfortless, and vile propinquity. Changing tenants one half of them, (not to speak of those who run away,) regularly four times a year. Empty three months in every twelve; but producing a most disproportionable price during the other nine; for the failure of eleven speculators nowadays-Courage, mes amis !-never deters him who should make up the dozen. 66 Then all these people deal in the vice of Furnished Lodgings" too; making themselves, where they should (if vain and impudent) be free and independent too-wilfully servants to every coxcomb who is casting away the little subsistence he has, so that his tawdry foppery may but contribute to the maintenance of their own. An auctioneer, or attorney in small practice, who could afford to call a reasonable dwelling his own, will let a train of insolent lacqueys into his house, a riotous lad their master, and perhaps a limited seraglio; for no bribe but that the creature may put his "name" upon a door in "George Street, Hanover Square," and give "parties" in gilded rooms to brother "beaten things," when the rightful occupant is away. Unde habeas quærit nemo! but have (in London) now you must-that's absolute! No matter that you ask nothing; that's not sufficient; you must not be poor. Dedicate your whole life to the study of our pleasures; take advantage of our wants or of our vices; minister, with a large capital, to our very meanest necessities; but, some way or other, see you get country-houses, and carriages-be a sheriff or a baronet, or don't dare to show your face. Then away all start, one against the other; everybody promulgates the devil's right (prescriptive) to the hindmost; the marvel to any creature, who has lived where men are contented with a little, is how so much is made, and out of such seemingly small game, and by so many! And it is a curious picture of the condition and habits of the countrya record which, kept five hundred years ago, would be more valuable now than all the histories together that we have in print-the common newspaper which comes into the world every morning at six o'clock, and lies upon our breakfast-table-and always full too, that's the strangest problem, regularly by nine. The whole world, take away alone America, possesses nothing like an approach to the same document. A foreigner finds it difficult to comprehend the daily amount of the actual domestic occurrencethe rapes, murders, forgeries, "and all other interesting intelligence," which the metropolis affords-as I saw a Sunday placard specifying the contents of a paper the other day. But the real curiosity is in the page of advertisements-the master-key which this furnishes to the state of England of Europe-almost of the world. The uncountable variety of callings and speculations that appear-some so great; some so apparently contemptible; and yet all opening mines of riches to so many! One column announces the preparation of a hundred ships, all ready to sail instantly, almost for as many different ports in different quarters of the globe. The next offers-" steampackets to Richmond," "every Sunday morning at nine"-" Refreshments on board," and "Two and sixpence each passenger." A third sets out with the word Accommodation!"-"Any sum!" from two hundred pounds to ten thousand!"ready to advance for the convenience of noblemen and gentlemen at a moment's notice." And at the top of the fourth, under the same title " Accommodation"—you find that "Ladies whose situations require a temporary retirement" may hear of "An airy |