THE PRUSSIAN GENTLEMAN. 



- 



THE world has been edified by the adventures of " The French 

 Rogue," " The Spanish Rogue ;" and we have met with a personage 

 in every way calculated to dispute their several claims of superiority, 

 dans la belle science of finesse and trickery, and to challenge high 

 respect and consideration as " The Prussian Rogue." Berlin has rea- 

 son to be proud of her hero : he is a varlet of no vulgar brain. We 

 say is, for at the moment we write, the scape-grace whom we shall 

 introduce to our readers under the appellation of Hans Kutzlus en- 

 joys his life and liberty, despite of Ketch and Newgate ; for, we may 

 premise, the labours of our friend Hans have chiefly been directed 

 to the instructing our countrymen in worldly experience. For our- 

 selves, we look upon it as no small compliment to the singleness, 

 the honesty, the surly good-nature of John Bull, that he, above all 

 others, is selected by scheming knaves, to work their spells upon. 

 We conceive him indirectly flattered by their choice. 



Hans Kutzlus was, in the due season, judaized a member of the 

 synagogue. Yet, lest this circumstance might prejudice him in the 

 mind of the orthodox and too fastidious reader, we are bound to de- 

 clare that Hans held not to the faith of his fathers. We have our- 

 selves, again and again, beheld him eat his recantation in a gammon 

 of bacon. Besides, Love, whose arrow spares not even circumcised 

 flesh, had enmeshed our hero in the toils of a Christian JtUe-de-cham- 

 bre, labouring in her vocation in Paris. Hans and Josephine became 

 one; in consequence of which, Hans and his father were ever after 

 two. The patrimony of our hero was divided amongst younger and 

 more discreet brothers ; and Hans, being shut out from the syna- 

 gogue, incontinently went to church. We have deemed it necessary 

 to say thus much of the birth and parentage of our subject, both as 

 it is in conformity with " the good old plan," and also with our wish 

 that Hans may not risk condemnation for venial errors, when he has 

 a sufficiency of full-blown villainies to employ the castigation of the 

 virtuous. 



We have not been so fortunate as to obtain matter to form a con- 

 necting chain of the adventures of our hero, leading from the cradle 

 to as close a proximity as is with safety possible, to the gallows. 

 Unhappily, all that we are enabled to give, are a few anecdotes of 

 Hans a few touches of character some slight strokes and lines, by 

 which our readers may form some notion of the expression and mag- 

 nitude of our hero. 



Not more than two years since, Hans had all the external appear- 

 ance and appurtenances of a gentleman : a handsome house, superb 

 furniture, diamonds at his knees and on his fingers, and a gold re- 

 peater in his fob. These things were to him his working-tools. He 

 used a shew of wealth, as a means to obtain the substance. (In this 

 point, how many, at the present moment, resemble Hans !) Bills, 

 promissory-notes that seductive ruin, that fatal embodiment of pro- 

 crastinationwere handled by Kutzlus " familiar as his garter." He 



M. M. No. 87. 2 E 



