The Uncollected Writings Of Thomas De Quincey - free ebook by Thomas De Quincey

PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1890.

Richard Clay &amp; Sons, Limited, London &amp; Bungay....

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PREFACE.

' The last fruit off an old tree! ' This, in the words of Walter Savage Landor , is what I have now the honour to set before the public in these hitherto ' Uncollected Writings of Thomas De Quincey. ' It was my privilege to be associated intimately with the Author some thirty to forty years ago—from the beginning of 1850 until his death in 1859. [1] Throughout the whole period during which he was engaged in preparing for the Press his Selections Grave and Gay , I assisted in the task. Of the sin

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No. I.

No question has been coming up at intervals for reconsideration more frequently than that which respects the comparative pretensions of Pagan (viz. Greek and Roman) Literature on the one side, and Modern (that is, the Literature of Christendom) on the other. Being brought uniformly before unjust tribunals—that is, tribunals corrupted and bribed by their own vanity—it is not wonderful that this great question should have been stifled and overlaid with peremptory decrees, dogmatically cutting the

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No. II.—THE GREEK ORATORS.

Now, let us come to the orators. Isocrates, the eldest of those who have survived, is a mere scholastic rhetorician: for he was a timid man, and did not dare to confront the terrors of a stormy political audience; and hence, though he lived about an entire century, he never once addressed the Athenian citizens. It is true, that, although no bonâ fide orator—for he never spoke in any usual acceptation of that word, and, as a consequence, never had an opportunity of replying, which only can bring

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THE GERMAN LANGUAGE, AND PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.

Using a New Testament, of which (in the narrative parts at least) any one word being given will suggest most of what is immediately consecutive, you evade the most irksome of the penalties annexed to the first breaking ground in a new language: you evade the necessity of hunting up and down a dictionary. Your own memory, and the inevitable suggestions of the context, furnish a dictionary pro hac vice . And afterwards, upon advancing to other books, where you are obliged to forego such aids, and

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MORAL EFFECTS OF REVOLUTIONS.

( May, 1822. ) In revolutionary times, as when a civil war prevails in a country, men are much worse, as moral beings, than in quiet and untroubled states of peace. So much is matter of history. The English, under Charles II., after twenty years' agitation and civil tumults; the Romans after Sylla and Marius, and the still more bloody proscriptions of the Triumvirates; the French, after the Wars of the League and the storms of the Revolution—were much changed for the worse, and exhibited strange

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PREFIGURATIONS OF REMOTE EVENTS. [24]

( April, 1823. ) With a total disbelief in all the vulgar legends of supernatural agency, and that upon firmer principles than I fear most people could assign for their incredulity, I must yet believe that the 'soul of the world' has in some instances sent forth mysterious types of the cardinal events, in the great historic drama of our planet. One has been noticed by a German author, and it is placed beyond the limits of any rational scepticism; I mean the coincidence between the augury derived

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MEASURE OF VALUE.[25]

( December, 1823. ) To the reader.—This article was written and printed before the author heard of the lamented death of Mr. Ricardo. It is remarkable at first sight that Mr. Malthus, to whom Political Economy is so much indebted in one chapter (viz. the chapter of Population), should in every other chapter have stumbled at every step. On a nearer view, however, the wonder ceases. His failures and his errors have arisen in all cases from the illogical structure of his understanding; his success

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LETTER IN REPLY TO HAZLITT CONCERNING THE MALTHUSIAN DOCTRINE OF POPULATION.

THE LION'S HEAD. [27] To the Editor of the London Magazine. Westmoreland, November 4, 1823. My dear Sir,—This morning I received your parcel, containing amongst other inclosures, the two last numbers of your journal. In the first of these is printed a little paper of mine on Mr. Malthus; and in the second I observe a letter from Mr. Hazlitt—alleging two passages from the 403rd and 421st pages of his Political Essays as substantially anticipating all that I had said. I believe that he has anticip

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SCIENCE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY,

BRIEFLY AND PLAINLY STATED. [31] ( March, 1824. ) I do not remember that any public event of our own times has touched me so nearly, or so much with the feelings belonging to a private affliction, as the death of Mr. Ricardo. To me in some sense it was a private affliction—and no doubt to all others who knew and honoured his extraordinary talents. For great intellectual merit, wherever it has been steadily contemplated, cannot but conciliate some personal regard: and for my own part I acknowledg

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PLANS FOR THE INSTRUCTION OF BOYS IN LARGE NUMBERS.[33]

( April and May, 1824. ) This is the work of a very ingenious man, and records the most original experiment in Education which in this country at least has been attempted since the date of those communicated by the Edgeworths. We say designedly 'in this country;' because to compare it with some continental schemes which have been only recently made known to the English public (and not fully made known even yet) would impose upon us a minute review of those schemes, which would be, first , dispro

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CASE OF APPEAL.

Our little Courts of Justice not unfrequently furnish cases of considerable interest; and we are always willing to make the resemblance between our microcosm and the world at large as close as possible, at least in every useful point we are trying to collect a volume of Reports. As all the boys are expected to be present during a trial, to give importance to the proceeding, the time of such as are capable of the task must be profitably employed in taking notes. A useful effect may also be produc

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ABSTRACT OF SWEDENBORGIANISM:

( May, 1824. ) ———But now to my hero. If many a forgotten writer, or writer destined to be forgotten, is on that account the more deserving of applause for having spared no cost of toil and intellectual exertion upon his works, certainly Swedenborg of all such writers is deserving of the most. Without doubt his flask in the moon is full; and not at all less than any of those which Ariosto saw in that planet filled with the lost wits of men, so thoroughly is his great work emptied of every drop o

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SKETCH OF PROFESSOR WILSON.[43]

[ In a Letter to an American Gentleman. ] My dear L,—Among the lions whom you missed by one accident or another on your late travels in Europe, I observe that you recur to none with so much regret as Professor Wilson; you dwell upon this one disappointment as a personal misfortune; and perhaps with reason; for, in the course of my life, I have met with no man of equally varied accomplishments, or, upon the whole, so well entitled to be ranked with that order of men distinguished by brilliant ver

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THE LAKE DIALECT.

To the Editor of 'Titan.' My Dear Sir,—I send you a few hasty notes upon Mr. Robert Ferguson's little work (relating to the dialect current at the English Lakes). [48] Mr. Ferguson's book is learned and seasonable, adapted to the stage at which such studies have now arrived among us, and adapted also to a popular use. I am sure that Mr. Ferguson knows a great deal more about his very interesting theme than I do. Nevertheless, I presume to sit in judgment upon him; or so it will be inferred from

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A GLANCE AT THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII.[53]

What two works are those for which at this moment our national intellect (or, more rigorously speaking, our popular intellect) is beginning clamorously to call? They are these: first, a Conversations-Lexicon , obeying (as regards plan and purpose) the general outline of the German work bearing that title; ministering to the same elementary necessities; implying, therefore, a somewhat corresponding stage of progress in our own populace and that of Germany; but otherwise (as regards the executive

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THE ENGLISH IN INDIA.

In now reproducing the three series of notes on the Indian Mutiny written by De Quincey for me in Titan , I must advert briefly to the agony of apprehension under which the two earlier chapters were written. I can never forget the intense anxiety with which he studied daily the columns of The Scotsman and The Times , looking wistfully for tidings from Roorkhee where his daughter Florence was shut up. The father's heart was on the rack until news arrived that the little garrison was saved. The fo

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HURRIED NOTICES OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.

( September, 1857. ) From the foundations of the earth, no case in human action or suffering has occurred which could less need or less tolerate the aid of artificial rhetoric than that tremendous tragedy which now for three months long has been moving over the plains of Hindostan. What in Grecian days were called aporreta (απορῥητα), things not utterable in human language or to human ears—things ineffable—things to be whispered—things to dream of, not to tell [57] —these things amongst high-cas

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PASSING NOTICES OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.

( October, 1857. ) An English historian—one amongst many—of our British India, having never happened to visit any part of that vast region, nor, indeed, any part of the East, founded upon that accident a claim to a very favourable distinction. It was, Mr. Mill argued, desirable—it was a splendid advantage— NOT to have seen India. This advantage he singly, amongst a crowd of coming rivals and precursors, might modestly plead; and to that extent he pretended to a precedency amongst all his competi

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EUROPEANS.

I am not sorry that the first topic, which chance brings uppermost, is one which overflows with the wrath of inexhaustible disgust. What fiend of foolishness has suggested to our absurd kinsmen in the East, through the last sixty years, to generalise themselves under the name of Europeans ? As if they were ashamed of their British connections, and precisely at that moment when they are leaving England, they begin to assume continental airs; when bidding farewell to Europe, they begin to style th

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DELHI.

That man—I suppose we are all agreed—who commanded in Meerut on Sunday the tenth day of May, in the year of Christ one thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven, a day which will furnish an epoch for ever to the records of civilisation—that man who could have stopped the bloody kennel of hounds, but did not , racing in full cry to the homes of our unsuspecting brothers and sisters in Delhi—it were good for that man if he had not been born. He had notice such as might have wakened the dead early in

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SUGGESTIONS UPON THE SECRET OF THE MUTINY.

( January, 1858. ) The first question arises upon the true originators, proximate and immediate, of the mutiny—who were they? This question ploughs deeper than any which moves under an impulse of mere historic curiosity; and it is practically the main question. Knowing the true, instant, operative cause, already we know something of the remedy;—having sure information as to the ringleaders, we are enabled at once to read their motives in the past, to anticipate their policy in the future;—having

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ON NOVELS.

( Two pages written in a Lady's Album. [68] ) A false ridicule has settled upon Novels, and upon Young Ladies as the readers of novels. Love, we are told authoritatively, has not that importance in the actual practice of life—nor that extensive influence upon human affairs—which novel-writers postulate, and which the interest of novels presumes. Something to this effect has been said by an eminent writer; and the law is generally laid down upon these principles by cynical old men, and envious bl

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PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1890.

Richard Clay &amp; Sons, Limited, London &amp; Bungay....

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NATIONAL MORALITY.

'Its purpose [1] is to diffuse amongst those of the middle classes, whose daily occupations leave them small leisure for direct personal inquiries, some sufficient materials for appreciating the justice of our British pretensions and attitude in our coming war with China. It is a question frequently raised amongst public journalists, whether we British are entitled to that exalted distinction which sometimes we claim for ourselves, and which sometimes is claimed on our behalf, by neutral observe

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CHINESE POLICY.

'The dispute at Shanghai, in 1848, equally as regards the origin of that dispute, and as regards the Chinese mode of conducting it, will give the reader a key to the Chinese character and the Chinese policy. To begin by making the most arrogant resistance to the simplest demands of justice, to end by cringing in the lowliest fashion before the guns of a little war-brig, there we have, in a representative abstract, the Chinese system of law and gospel. The equities of the present war are briefly

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HINTS TOWARDS AN APPRECIATION OF THE COMING WAR IN CHINA.

Said before the opening of July, that same warning remark may happen to have a prophetic rank, and practically, a prophetic value, which two months later would tell for mere history, and history paid for by a painful experience. The war which is now approaching wears in some respects the strangest features that have yet been heard of in old romance, or in prosaic history, for we are at war with the southernmost province of China—namely, Quantung, and pre-eminently with its chief city of Canton,

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CONDUCT OF THE WAR.

Such is the condition of that guilty town, nearest of all Chinese towns to Hong-Kong, and indissolubly connected with ourselves. From this town it is that the insults to our flag, and the attempts at poisoning, wholesale and retail, have collectively emanated; and all under the original impulse of Yeh. Surely, in speculating on the conduct of the war, either as probable or as reasonable, the old oracular sentence of Cato the Elder and of the Roman senate ( Delenda est Carthago ) begins to murmur

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SHAKSPERE'S TEXT.—SUETONIUS UNRAVELLED.

To the Editor of 'Titan'. Dear Sir,—A year or two ago, [7] I received as a present from a distinguished and literary family in Boston (United States), a small pamphlet (twin sister of that published by Mr Payne Collier) on the text of Shakspere. Somewhere in the United States, as here in England, some unknown critic, at some unknown time, had, from some unknown source, collected and recorded on the margin of one amongst the Folio reprints of Shakspere by Heminge &amp; Condell, such new readi

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HOW TO WRITE ENGLISH.[10]

Among world-wide objects of speculation, objects rising to the dignity of a mundane or cosmopolitish value, which challenge at this time more than ever a growing intellectual interest, is the English language. Why particularly at this time? Simply, because the interest in that language rests upon two separate foundations: there are two separate principles concerned in its pretensions; and by accident in part, but in part also through the silent and inevitable march of human progress, there has b

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THE CASUISTRY OF DUELLING.[13]

This mention of Allan Cunningham recalls to my recollection an affair which retains one part of its interest to this day, arising out of the very important casuistical question which it involves. We Protestant nations are in the habit of treating casuistry as a field of speculation, false and baseless per se ; nay, we regard it not so much in the light of a visionary and idle speculation, as one positively erroneous in its principles, and mischievous for its practical results. This is due in par

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A TALE FROM THE GERMAN OF TIECK.[17]

Emilius was sitting in deep thought at his table, awaiting his friend Roderick. The light was burning before him; the winter evening was cold; and to-day he wished for the presence of his fellow-traveller, though at other times wont rather to avoid his society: for on this evening he was about to disclose a secret to him, and beg for his advice. The timid, shy Emilius found in every business and accident of life so many difficulties, such insurmountable hindrances, that it might seem to have bee

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LUDWIG TIECK.

The author of the foregoing tale, Ludwig Tieck, has lately been introduced to the English reader by an admirable translation of his two exquisite little novels, The Pictures and The Betrothing . He is one among the great German writers who made their appearance during the last ten years of the eighteenth century; a period—whether from any extraordinary productiveness in the power that regulates the seed-time and the harvests of the human race, or from the mighty excitements and stimulants wherew

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From Jean Paul Frederick Richter.

Since the day when the town of Haslau first became the seat of a Court, no man could remember that any one event in its annals (always excepting the birth of the hereditary prince) had been looked for with so anxious a curiosity as the opening of the last will and testament left by Van der Kabel. This Van der Kabel may be styled the Haslau Crœsus; and his whole life might be termed, according to the pleasure of the wits, one long festival of god-sends, or a daily washing of golden sands nightly

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CLAUSE II.

'Amongst the important offices of a will, it is universally agreed to be one, that from amongst the presumptive and presumptuous expectants, it should name those who are, and those who are not, to succeed to the inheritance; that it should create heirs and destroy them. In conformity to this notion, I give and bequeath to Mr Glantz, the councillor for ecclesiastical affairs, as also to Mr Knoll, the exchequer officer; likewise to Mr Peter Neupeter, the court-agent; item to Mr Harprecht, director

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CLAUSE III.

'Excepting always, and be it excepted, my present house in Dog-street: which house by virtue of this third clause is to descend and to pass in full property just as it now stands, to that one of my seven relatives above-mentioned, who shall, within the space of one half-hour (to be computed from the reciting of this clause), shed, to the memory of me his departed kinsman, sooner than the other six competitors, one, or, if possible, a couple of tears, in the presence of a respectable magistrate,

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THE HOUSEHOLD WRECK.

' To be weak ,' we need not the great archangel's voice to tell us, ' is to be miserable .' All weakness is suffering and humiliation, no matter for its mode or its subject. Beyond all other weakness, therefore, and by a sad prerogative, as more miserable than what is most miserable in all, that capital weakness of man which regards the tenure of his enjoyments and his power to protect, even for a moment, the crown of flowers—flowers, at the best, how frail and few!—which sometimes settles upon

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CHAPTER I.

The sun had just set, and all the invalids at the baths of B—— had retired to their lodgings, when the harsh tones of welcome from the steeple announced the arrival of a new guest. Forthwith all the windows were garrisoned with young faces and old faces, pretty faces and ugly faces; and scarce one but was overspread with instantaneous merriment—a feu-de-joie of laughter, that travelled up the street in company with the very extraordinary object that now advanced from the city gates. Upon a littl

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CHAPTER II.

'The Lord, and his angels, protect us!—As I live, here comes the late governor!' ejaculated the hostess, Mrs. Bridget Sweetbread; suddenly startled out of her afternoon's nap by the horse's hoofs—and seeing right before her what she took for the apparition of Don Juan; whom, as it afterwards appeared, she had seen in a pantomime the night before. 'Thunder and lightning! my good woman,' said the student laughing, 'would you dispute the reality of my flesh and blood?' Mrs. Bridget, however, on per

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CHAPTER III.

'Fire and furies!' exclaimed Mr. Schnackenberger, as Juno broke out into uproarious barking about midnight: the door was opened from the outside; and in stepped the landlady, arrayed in a night-dress that improved her charms into a rivalry with those of her sign at the street-door; accompanied by a fellow, who, by way of salutation, cracked an immense hunting-whip. 'So it's here that I'm to get my own again?' cried the fellow: and forthwith Mr. Jeremiah stepped out of bed, and hauled him up to t

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CHAPTER IV.

Day was beginning to dawn, when a smoke, which forced its way through the door, and which grew every instant thicker and more oppressive, a second time summoned Mr. Schnackenberger from his bed. As he threw open the door, such a volume of flames rolled in from the staircase—which was already on fire from top to bottom—that he saw there was no time to be lost: so he took his pipe, loaded it as quickly as possible, lighted it from the flames of the staircase, began smoking, and then, drawing on hi

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CHAPTER V.

Mr. Schnackenberger's consternation was, in fact, not without very rational grounds. The case was this. Juno was an English bitch—infamous for her voracious appetite in all the villages, far and wide, about the university—and, indeed, in all respects, without a peer throughout the whole country. Of course, Mr. Schnackenberger was much envied on her account by a multitude of fellow students; and very large offers were made him for the dog. To all such overtures, however, the young man had turned

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CHAPTER VI.

As Mr. Jeremiah stood looking out of the window for the purpose of whiling away a tedious forenoon, it first struck his mind—upon the sight of a number of men dressed very differently from himself—that his wardrobe would scarcely match with the festal splendour of the fête at which he was to be present in the evening. Even if it had been possible to overlook the tarnished lustre of his coat, not much embellished by its late watery trials upon the golden sow, yet he could not possibly make his ap

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CHAPTER VII.

At the hotel of the princess, all the resources of good taste and hospitality were called forth to give éclat to the fête , and do honour to the day; and by ten o'clock, a very numerous and brilliant company had already assembled. So much the more astounding must have been the entry of Mr. Jeremiah Schnackenberger; who, by the way, was already familiar to the eyes of many, from his very public entrance into the city on the preceding evening, and to others from his morning's exhibition on the gol

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CHAPTER VIII.

The rattling of a chain through crashing glass and porcelain, which spread alarm through the ball-room, would hardly have drawn Mr. Schnackenberger's attention in his present condition of rapturous elevation, had not the well-known voice of Juno reached his ears at the same moment. He hurried after the sound—shocked, and to be shocked. The fact was simply this: Juno had very early in the evening withdrawn herself from the surveillance of the Golden Sow, and had followed her master's steps. Often

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CHAPTER IX.

'Now, my dears,' said Mr. Von Pilsen to a party who were helping him to laugh at the departed Mr. Schnackenberger, 'as soon as the fellow returns, we must get him into our party at supper.' 'Returns?' exclaimed another; 'why I should fancy he had had enough of birthday fêtes for one life.' 'You think so?' said Von Pilsen: 'so do not I. No, no, my good creature; I flatter myself that I go upon pretty sure grounds: I saw those eyes which he turned upon the princess on making his exit: and mind wha

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CHAPTER X.

Half an hour after came the true claimant; who, being also drunk, went right up-stairs without troubling the waiter; and forthwith getting into bed, laid himself right upon Mr. Jeremiah Schnackenberger. 'D——n this heavy quilt,' said the student, waking up and recollecting the hundred-pounder of the preceding night; and, without further ceremony, he kicked the supposed quilt into the middle of the room. Now began war: for the 'quilt' rose up without delay; and Mr. Schnackenberger, who had been so

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CHAPTER XI.

At half-past ten on the following morning, at which time Mr. Schnackenberger first unclosed his eyes, behold! at the foot of his bed was sitting my hostess of the Golden Sow. 'Aye,' said she, 'I think it's time, Sir: and it's time, I think, to let you know what it is to affront a creditable body before all the world.' 'Nay, for God's sake, old one, what's the matter?' said Mr. Schnackenberger, laughing and sitting bolt upright in bed. 'Old? Well, if I have a few more years on my head, I've a lit

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CHAPTER XII.

The student was a good way advanced on his road, when he descried the princess, attended by another lady and a gentleman approaching in an open carriage. As soon, however, as he was near enough to be recognised by the party in the carriage, the princess turned away her head with manifest signs of displeasure—purely, as it appeared, to avoid noticing Mr. Jeremiah. Scarcely, however, was the carriage past him, together with Mr. Von Pilsen, who galloped by him in a tumult of laughter, when the ill-

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CHAPTER XIII.

The good luck seemed to have anticipated Mr. Schnackenberger's nearest wishes. For on reaching the Double-barrelled Gun, whither he arrived without further disturbance than that of the general gazing to which he was exposed by the fragment of a coat which survived from the late engagement, a billet was put into his hands of the following tenor: 'Come and explain this evening, if you can explain, your astonishing neglect of this morning's appointment. I shall be at the theatre; and shall do what

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CHAPTER XIV.

The play-hour was arrived; and yet no coat was forthcoming from the tailor: on the contrary, the tailor himself was gone to the play. The landlord of the Double-barrelled Gun, who would readily have lent one, was off upon a rural excursion, and not expected at home before the next morning; and the waiter, whose assistance would not have been disdained in such a pressing emergency, was of so spare and meagre a habit, that, in spite of furious exertions on the part of Mr. Schnackenberger, John's c

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CHAPTER XV.

All the world was astonished, when from the door of the Double-barrelled Gun a man stepped forth on the hottest day in August, arrayed as for a Siberian winter in a dreadnought, guarded with furs, and a hat pressed down, so as almost to cover his face. The train of curious persons who attended his motions naturally grew larger at every step. Whosoever had hitherto doubted whether this man were mad—doubted no longer when he was seen to enter the theatre; where in the lightest summer-clothing the

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CHAPTER XVI.

A most beautiful moonlight began at this juncture to throw its beams in the prison, when Mr. Schnackenberger, starting up from his sleepless couch, for pure rage, seized upon the iron bars of his window, and shook them with a fervent prayer, that instead of bars it had pleased God to put Mr. Mayor within his grasp. To his infinite astonishment, the bars were more obedient to his wrath than could have been expected. One shake more, and like a row of carious teeth they were all in Mr. Schnackenber

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CHAPTER XVII.

'Saints in heaven! is this the messenger of the last day?' screamed out a female voice, as the doorbell rang out a furious alarum—peal upon peal—under that able performer, Mr. Jeremiah Schnackenberger. She hastened to open the door; but, when she beheld a soldier in the state uniform, she assured him it was all over with him; for his worship was gone to bed; and, when that was the case, he never allowed of any disturbance without making an example. 'Aye, but I come upon state business.' 'No matt

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CHAPTER XVIII.

When Mr. Schnackenberger returned home from his persecutions, he found the door of the Double-barrelled Gun standing wide open: and, as he had observed a light in his own room, he walked right up-stairs without disturbing the sleeping waiter. But to his great astonishment, two gigantic fellows were posted outside the door; who, upon his affirming that he must be allowed to enter his own room, seemed in some foreign and unintelligible language to support the negative of that proposition. Without

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CHAPTER XIX.

Mr. Schnackenberger's howling had (as the waiter predicted) gradually died away, and he was grimly meditating on his own miseries, to which he had now lost all hope of seeing an end before daylight, when the sudden rattling of a key at the yard door awakened flattering hopes in his breast. It proved to be the waiter, who came to make a gaol delivery—and on letting him out said, 'I am commissioned by the gentlemen to secure your silence;' at the same time putting into his hand a piece of gold. 'T

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CHAPTER XX.

Next morning, when the Provost-marshal came to fetch back the appointments of the military wig-maker, it struck our good-natured student that he had very probably brought the poor fellow into an unpleasant scrape. He felt, therefore, called upon as a gentleman, to wait upon the Mayor, and do his best to beg him off. In fact, he arrived just in time: for all the arrangements were complete for demonstrating to the poor wig-maker, by an à posteriori line of argument, the importance of valour in his

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CHAPTER XXI.

'Beg your pardon, Sir, are you Mr. Schnackenberger?' said a young man to our hero, as he was riding out of the city gate. 'Yes, Sir, I'm the man; what would you have with me?' and, at the same time looking earnestly at him, he remembered his face amongst the footmen on the birth-night. 'At the Forester's house—about eleven o'clock,' whispered the man mysteriously. 'Very good,' said Mr. Schnackenberger, nodding significantly; and forthwith, upon the wings of rapturous anticipation, he flew to the

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CHAPTER XXII.

Rapidly as Mr. Schnackenberger drove through the gates, he was arrested by the voice of the warder, who cited him to instant attendance at the town-hall. Within the memory of man, this was the first time that any business had been transacted on a holiday; an extraordinary sitting was now being held; and the prisoner under examination was——Juno. 'Oh! heaven and its mercies! when will my afflictions cease?' said the exhausted student; 'when shall I have a respite?' Respite there could be none at p

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CHAPTER XXIII.

Exhausted by the misfortunes of the day, towards evening Mr. Jeremiah was reposing at his length, and smoking in the window-seat of his room. Solemn clouds of smoke expressed the gloomy vapours which rested on his brain. The hours of Juno's life, it seemed to him, were numbered; every soul in B—— was her sworn foe—bipeds and quadrupeds, men, women, dogs, cats, children, kittens, deputy-recorders, rabbits, cooks, legs-of-mutton, to say nothing of goose-livers, sausages, haunches of venison, and '

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CHAPTER XXIV.

The first thing Mr. Schnackenberger did was to draw his purse-strings, and indemnify the cook-maid. The next thing Mr. Schnackenberger did was to go into the public-room of the Gun, call for a common pipe, and seat himself growling in a corner.—Of all possible privileges conferred by the laws, the very least desirable is that of being created game: Juno was now invested with that 'painful pre-eminence;' she was solemnly proclaimed game: and all qualified persons, i. e. every man, woman, and chil

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CHAPTER XXV.

Scarcely had Mr. Schnackenberger withdrawn to his apartment, when a pair of 'field-pieces' were heard clattering up-stairs—such and so mighty as, among all people that on earth do dwell, no mortal wore, himself only except, and the student, Mr. Fabian Sebastian. Little had he thought under his evening canopy of smoke, that Nemesis was treading so closely upon his heels. 'Sir, my brother,' began Mr. Student Fabian, 'the time is up: and here am I, to claim my rights. Where is the dog? The money is

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CHAPTER XXVI.

'Now then,' said Mr. Schnackenberger, entering the Double-barrelled Gun with his friend,—'Now, waiter, let us have Rhenish and Champagne, and all other good things with which your Gun is charged: fire off both barrels upon us: Come, you dog, make ready—present; for we solemnise a funeral to-day:' and, at the same time, he flung down the purchase-money of Juno upon the table. The waiter hastened to obey his orders. The longer the two masters of Juno drank together, the more did they convince them

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