1830.] The Demon of Drury-lane. 561 



these are questions to which it is impossible to find favourable answers. 

 The fact, the dreadful fact, seems almost established. The strangely- 

 gifted, mysterious, and miserable subject of this history, our civil but 

 ill-fated acquaintance of the privilege-office, has been for more than half 



the term of his natural existence on terms of intimacy with 



* * * * 



We begin to suspect that there may really be wickedness and peril 

 in these profane stage-plays j and that he with whom we have inno- 

 cently gossiped, may be an agent set there on purpose to register our 

 names upon the free-list, to seduce us into the theatre, and to ruin us 



gratuitously ! ! 



* * # * 



Earnestly do we hope that he may be enabled to explain the enigma 

 better than we can. We trust that the gorgons and chimeras dire, 

 which, to our apprehension, are now haunting his path, may prove 

 as harmless and gentje as doves ; and that he may secretly have within 

 his own mind a guiding and a golden light to console him amidst the 

 dangers and darkness that appear to envelope him. And if he should 

 be able to prove to us that he is still human if he can shew the means 

 by which he obtains his information, and can convince us that he has 

 no earthly right to a place in Sir Walter Scott's next edition of his 

 " Demonology," the public we think will cheerfully second our efforts 

 in brightening his future days, in interposing with the new management 

 in his favour, and ensuring him a view of the Christmas pantomime. 

 Only let him convince us that he has not fallen into the most terrible 

 of all toils, and we shall immediately open a subscription to purchase 

 him not a piece of plate but a Free Admission to the theatre as long 

 as he lives. May it be forty years more ! B. 



SIERRA LEONE SAINTS, AND WEST INDIA SINNERS. 



IT was only a few months ago that we submitted to our readers some 

 account of that modern Golgotha of the " Saints" Sierra Leone. We 

 then expressed our honest indignation at the unworthy arts by which 

 the British public were long kept in ignorance of its total worthlessness, 

 and our detestation of the audacious deceptions practised upon the 

 British government to induce them to give annual grants of public 

 money for its support, and finally, to take this deadly concern out of 

 the hands of the " philanthropists/' and throw away a few more 

 millions on their maudlin schemes, instituted under the mask of 

 Humanity. We scarcely, at that period, ventured to hope that in such a 

 short space of time a complete exposure of this African sink of iniquity 

 would take place ; and now that the facts can no longer be concealed or 

 glossed over, we sincerely trust Mr. Hume, and other active members 

 of the legislature, will continue their exertions to expose and punish 

 the authors of a system of fraudulent deception, which has cost Great 

 Britain such sums of money, arid so many thousands of valuable lives; 

 and which has also inflicted such a load of misery upon the unfortunate 

 beings who have from time to time been forced to become free settlers, 

 to sink under the tender mercies of the abolitionists. 



Sierra Leone was at one time, and even up to a recent date, repre- 

 sented by the " Saints" to be one of the most healthy of settlements : 



M.M. New Series. VOL. X. No. 59. 4 B 



