70 Notes for the Month. [JAN. 



an Irish priest." By this violent course, Boyer has " incurred severe 

 papal censures ;" which, it is added, he has taken no steps to remove ! 



Monsieur Frederic Degeorges, who is a candidate for the French 

 professorship of the New London University, has reprinted a series of 

 his Essays, published originally in various periodicals, continental as 

 well as English, of the day. Many of these papers possess consi- 

 derable merit ; and the taste as well as the correctness with which those 

 in English are written if they are the work of M. Degeorges, unassisted 

 by any native is extraordinary. The following description is extracted 

 from a sketch in French, entitled, Ejfet de la Vue de Londres sur un 

 Etranger. It exhibits a lively perception of some of our English 

 peculiarities : 



" Seen in a winter's day, London is one of the dullest and least pleasing 

 cities in the world ; seen on a Saturday night, it is one of the most animated 

 and brilliant ; lighted up on all sides with gas, the ordinary effect is that of 

 a triumphal illumination. Every court is a market, and every street a bazaar ; 

 in which handsome shops ostentatiously display every article of merchandize ; 

 from the rich silks and stuffs of the Indies, down to the commonest eatables 

 destined for the purchase of the poorer people. It is scarcely possible to make 

 way through the enormous crowd that throngs from all parts ; but which, 

 nevertheless, a few watchmen, armed with staves only, contrive to keep in 

 order. 



" Saturday night is the saturnalia of the inhabitants of London ; Sunday the 

 day of their repose. You go to bed in the midst of noise and tumult, and 

 rise in the midst of silence the most profound. The same city, which, the 

 evening before, was full of bustle and confusion, is next day only a vast, and 

 rather gloomy, solitude. All the houses, and all the shops, are shut. The 

 streets and squares are deserted. One part of the population is assembled in 

 the churches ; another portion, engaged in family devotion, are devoutly reading 

 the Bible at home, while the lower classes, collected in the alehouses, indem- 

 nify themselves, by gross intoxication, for the more moderate pleasures which 

 religion forbids them to partake of." 



Modern " Black Mail" The late robberies of the 20,0001. worth of 

 notes stolen from the mail coach, belonging to the Warwick bank, and 

 of the hundred chronometers and timepieces carried away from the shop 

 of Mr. Grimaldi, the watchmaker, in the Strand, with the compromises 

 which have taken place in both these cases for the return of the missing 

 property, have led to a good deal of angry discussion as to the 

 condition of our police. The subject is one that in all times has been 

 found of extreme difficulty. And a second question has been raised 

 under it in the present instance, by a suggestion that it was a police officer 

 who had been concerned in transacting the " return" bargain between the 

 parties. Supposing the case to stand really thus, it seems fit that such an 

 officer should be discharged. An attorney is not allowed to act on both 

 sides of a cause ; and it is not convenient that an agent who is hired 

 expressly to destroy thieves, should be allowed to exhibit an open and 

 distinct advantage in protecting them. But, upon most of the principles 

 which direct our modern commercial policy though such an avowal 

 may appear a little startling it seems to us, that compromise for the 

 return of stolen property as far as the losing parties are concerned 

 is not incapable of being defended. 



The great argument of those who resist the repeal of the usury laws, and 

 the throwing of the trade in money open in the same way with the trade in 

 other commodities, is that under such a liberty men would be tempted, 

 in moments of difficulty, to pay more for a loan than it is worth. The 

 answer to that argument has always been, that every man is himself the 



