1 827.] Notes for the Month. 5 9 



tate to hang the man because we cannot refuse to see that the same 

 strength and courage merited a more fortunate direction. In the same 

 way, where a coiner, or a stage-coach robber, compasses his violation of 

 the law by some process of great dexterity, and escapes with the plunder, 

 we are not pleased that the law is baffled ; although we feel that the offen- 

 der has shewn a rare ingenuity admitting that ingenuity to have been 

 misapplied. But then, while we may laugh, under the influence of this 

 mixed feeling, at the steady eye and delicate touch of a pick-pocket, like 

 Barrington, who would cut off a fine gentleman's watch-chain, or abstract 

 his wig, while he was discussing politics with him or excuse the clever 

 humbug with which an active young man of five-and-twenty years of age 

 (and of one shirt) gulls a widow into a second marriage at sixty years of 

 age, t who has " purple and fine linen" in abundance yet we have no grain 

 of sympathy for the rascally footpad who waits for a passenger in a dark 

 alley with a bludgeon, and plunders him securely, after a blow from be- 

 hind which stuns him, or perhaps (for the striker's more perfect security) 

 beats out his brains ; and even still less with the ruffian of Connaught or 

 Gal way, who aided by an armed force, carries off some female whom he 

 knows holds him in horror or detestation, on the chance that she may 

 buy redemption from disgrace, by consent to " a marriage," which puts 

 him in possession of her portion. 



In every possible point of view, therefore this is the first time that we 

 have adverted to this transaction, and we are already anxious to wash our 

 hands of it the case of the Messrs. Wakefield seems to us to be a hopeless and 

 a disgraceful one. As far as the law is concerned, the escape of the parties with 

 the sentences which they have received, may be considered to be a fortunate 

 one. Upon the moral guilt of their conduct or upon the penalties which, in 

 moral justice, ought to have followed it, it would be loss of time to bestow a 

 word. But, in the character of a " cavalier" the r<*le which the elder of 

 these gentlemen has affected to assume in the claim to be treated, as it were, 

 as air" adventurer," stepping forward to execute a feat in the public eye 

 the success and splendour of which should draw away attention from its 

 criminality taken in this light (which it was an evil hour whenever 

 he pretended to appear in), the failure of Mr. Edward Wakefield has been 

 so ludicrously complete, that it becomes worth while just to record the cir- 

 cumstances and extent of it ! He obtained possession of Miss Turner's 

 person using a device, which every footman in England could have used 

 as competently and successfully as himself but he had possession of the 

 lady, and undisturbed possession. Being ashamed to talk of " love," he 

 courted her, not so well as a footman would have done, but like an attor- 

 ney's " pay" clerk talking about debts, and bills, and bonds, and bailiffs, 

 and pleas, and pounce boxes, and skins of parchment. After an opportu- 

 nity of seven whole days to propitiate a girl of fifteen who the deuce 

 could it be that deluded this gentleman to set up for a gallant, and a for- 

 tune hunter! all the lady's desire is to get away from him. And he 

 winds up this display of rapacity, of fraud, and miserable insufficiency, 

 by a wretched attempt after she has renounced him to blacken her 

 reputation ! 



It is not an ounce of civet, but a whole apothecary's shop full, that a 

 man would need to sweeten his imagination after even talking about this 

 last offence. The effort at slander is as hopeless and absurd, as it is dis* 

 creditable but, in this circumstance, it only tallies with all the other features 



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