1829.) Affairs in General. 75 
Of course no man can desire to exult in the fate of a miserable being, 
urged by vanity to extravagance, and by extravagance to fraud. But 
what a lesson is here in the contrast of his luxuries and his end! and 
how naturally the one leads to the other! Here was a gradual slave of 
meanness and guilt, who could not live without the honour and glory of 
a villa, which, if he had never dreamed of, he might have been at this 
hour a thriving and respectable man, and of which the very price, if he 
could have prevailed on himself to dispense with his vinery, orchards, 
&c., might have saved him from the atrocious act for which he died. 
We shrink from the calculation of how many of his survivors are on 
the verge of the same course of guilt by the same contemptible necessity. 
When persons employed at the low salaries of our public offices, feel it 
incumbent on them to ape their superiors, and, on a couple of hundreds 
a year, shew. off at the rate of as many thousands, flourish in til- 
buries, attend Epsom, lay in their own champagne, and give dinners to 
‘a select few” atthe Albion, we know where the history must end. We 
regularly find its development in a flight to America, with £20,000. of 
that public money for which, if negligence in high places be punish- 
able, the head of the office ought to be mulcted to double the amount ; 
or in a flight from the world, in the stockbroker-style, at the tangent of 
a pistol ; or in a farewell to it, at the end of a rope, in the shopkeeper- 
style. But, in whatever style the close arrives, the catastrophe is inevi- 
table ; and if every villa in the vicinage of London, for which a specu- 
lator has been banished, shot, or hanged, were to have his effigy fixed up 
in the centre of its “lawn, surrounded,” as Mr. Robins says, “ with 
flowering shrubs of the most enchanting odours, brilliant Cape-heaths, 
and orange-trees brought from the first conservatories in the realms of the 
British isles ;’ the warning would be the preservative of many a neck. 
The seduction of the villa, even with all its silken-lined verandas, and 
plate-glass windows down to the ground, would be tolerably neutralized 
by the scarecrow in front ; or if, instead of the effigy, the skeleton of 
the culprit could be gibbeted on the parterre, the sight would be only the 
more yaluable, if not for its entertainment, at least for its moral. We 
recommend the hint to the Legislature. 
Madame Vestris, in the present quiescent state of St. Stephen’s, has 
been indulging the town with oratory. She is a clever little creature, 
and oppressed with as small a share of diffidence as any female alive. 
Her speech was totally uncalled for, and very well delivered. But the 
critics forget, when they speak of it as the first instance of female elo- 
uence on the stage. We remember better, and it is but justice to record 
t Madame Vestris herself, half a dozen years ago, moved by the indig- 
nity of having only half a dozen wax candles burning in her dressing- 
room at the Opera, when Catalani, or Ronzi de Begnis, or some equally 
superb affair, burned seven, broke out into open war with the authori- 
ties behind the scenes ; a war, the rumours of which soon, of course, 
reached the audience. A newspaper correspondence ensued, in which 
little Vestris, conceiving herself aggrieved, took the summary and 
oe resolution of telling her own story to the audience; bringing 
orward the reluctant stage director, by the ear or the nose, we cannot 
exactly recollect which, to substantiate her facts against himself, which 
the unhappy director did in a very satisfactory and rueful manner. She 
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