98 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 



for mincing it will not make the matter less my father was a thief." He 

 was, however, professedly a waiter; but his napkin was not large enough 

 to cloak his little peculiarities, and he met his fate at the new drop, kindly 

 assisted by his respected relative. His mother, his " sainted mother," 

 shortly afterwards laid herself open to a suspicion of not ' * accurately dis- 

 tinguishing the right of property," and was commanded to " expatriate 

 herself for life." Here then, commences the career of our hero ; virtually 

 an orphan by the laws of his country, the entire code of which he declared 

 open war with in his subsequent career ; more, we are obliged to confess, 

 from his natural tastes than from pious revenge for the wrongs of his 

 parents. It would deprive the work of half its interest with the reader 

 were we to proceed with it in the elaborate way we could wish; we 

 will, therefore, merely say that the introduction into life of the thief 

 and the vagabond was through the appropriate medium of an attorney's 

 office there he was introduced to some few of the choicest blackguards, 

 in a small way, about town ; but, upon the natural event of his master 

 absconding with the money of his " only respectable client," Jack was thrown 

 upon his own resourses, and went through the degrees of pickpocket 

 housebreaker, and common cheat, until he arrived at the dignified position 

 in society which he now holds. 



The work is illustrated by Meadows, and we are enabled by the permis- 

 sion of the publisher, to give specimens which will speak for themselves, of 

 the merits of the artist. 



This wood-cut represents the wife of Jack Ketch weeping over her dead 

 bird Catherine is a most masterly delineation of the author of the patient 

 endurance of a female under circumstances of the most heart-breaking 



