182 Letter on Affairs in general. [FEB. 



them ; because, if nobody else has praised, there is no choice, and you must 

 be quoted. Thus I see the " Monthly Review" pronounces that "we 

 look upon Almacks' as one of the most delightful novels in our " (pro- 

 bably the English) " language." And Messrs. Saunders and Otley 

 authorities on the subject running rather scarce publish that declaration 

 three times a week in almost every London newspaper. Which pleasing 

 arrangement of reciprocity, in fact, enables the parties to get the work of 

 two advertisements performed by one ; teaching the public at the same time, 

 that the " Monthly Review " thinks Almacks' the most delightful novel in 

 our language, and that there is such a publication as the " Monthly Re- 

 view" the pronouncements of which are oracular. 



But the operation of a spirit of that which is right, is sometimes pleasing 

 to behold, as well as of that which is merely graceful and conciliatory ; 

 on which account I am rather satisfied to find that the " Mr. Begg," who 

 shot a miserable sheriffs' officer in Ireland, the other day, in the execution 

 of his duty, (and who, by a merciful jury, was found guilty only of man- 

 slaughter,) is sentenced to transportation for life. Nothing in the world 

 can be more proper than that we should, as the wise man says, " temper 

 our justice with mercy:" but then, on the other hand, it is quite neces- 

 sary that we should " temper our mercy with justice. There has been 

 an unlucky taste for shooting bailiffs upon a point of law, for a long 

 time, among a certain class of our friends on the other side the Channel : a 

 taste, by the bye, that has a great deal of very atrocious feeling and no 

 necessary courage about it; but looks very much like a disposition to 

 commit murder, merely because there seems to be a chance of doing it d 

 bon marche. If Mr. Begg acted in passion, he is to be pitied; but no 

 earthly consideration ought to save him from punishment. It is not much 

 more than two years since, that a Mr. Conolly, here in England, was 

 transported for life for a similar offence. 



All the newspapers are filled with terrible accounts of the crowding and 

 mischief which took place at St. James's, during the two days that the 

 body of his late Royal Highness the Duke of York, " lay in state." The 

 most inexcusable part of the affair seems to have been that a great number 

 of apparently respectable females, were permitted, by those who should 

 have exercised better control over them, to thrust themselves into associa- 

 tion with a riotous and brutal mob, for the gratification of to say the 

 best of it but a vulgar curiosity. Ladies may be assured and the devil 

 take the taste they have, from highest to lowest, for seeing all that is to be 

 seen ! that no woman ever yet exhibited herself in the degrading position 

 of mixing, and contending no matter for what object with a crowd, 

 without exciting sensations of disgust and aversion in the mind of every 

 man of decent feeling who beheld her. The Morning Chronicle, how- 

 ever, lays all the blame upon the mis- arrangements of the Lord 

 Chamberlain's office, and complains heavily that no accommodation was 

 furnished to the writers for the newspapers ; which was (if such were the 

 fact) very bad judgment. The pressure was so tremendous the same 

 paper adds that " within their own knowledge, one literary gentleman 

 narrowly escaped suffocation from it." I have known one or two " literary 

 gentlemen narrowly escape suffocation " from other causes : but. that is by 

 the bye. 



New books, for the last three or four months, have beon rather dull; 

 something is expected from Sir Walter Scott's Life of Buonaparte : but 

 that ground has been a good deal beaten already ; and there is an idea 



