MAI A. 25 



Esquire, some five hundred pounds sterling per annum for 

 his labour, had continued, with a sublime simplicity of 

 economy which Mr. Hume might have envied, and admired 

 afar off, to make him do his work gratis, by giving him the 

 nuisances as his perquisites, and teaching him how to eat 

 them. Certainly, (without going the length of the Caribs, 

 who uphold cannibalism because, they say, it makes war 

 cheap, and precludes entirely the need of a commissariat,) 

 this cardinal virtue of cheapness ought to make Squinado 

 an interesting object in the eyes of the present generation, 

 especially as he was at that moment a true sanatory martyr, 

 having, like many of his human fellow-workers, got into a 

 fearful scrape by meddling with those existing interests and 

 e vested rights which are but vested wrongs/ which have 

 proved fatal already to more than one Board of Health. 

 For last night, as he was sitting quietly under a stone in 

 four fathoms water, he became aware (whether by sight, 

 smell, or that mysterious sixth sense, to us unknown, which 

 seems to reside in his delicate feelers) of a palpable nuisance 

 somewhere in the neighbourhood; and, like a trusty servant 

 of the public, turned out of his bed instantly, and went in 

 search; till he discovered, hanging among what he judged 

 to be the stems of tangle (Laminatia) , three or four large 



