fi70 Notes of thtt Month on [Dec. 



and wounding ; all this was proved by testimony and circumstance. 

 But it turned out that, on a subsequent trial, the approver was found to 

 swear to things beyond his knowledge ; and this, for which every body 

 must have been prepnred but the Crown lawyers, was actually suffered 

 to extinguish the whole previous 'proof, break up the verdict, and let the 

 condemned walk about their business. The " seventeen" whom the 

 Crown had declared to be conspirators, and forming part of an extensive 

 combination, as dextrously arranged and as mischievously inclined, as 

 if the " Secret Committee of the Order of Liberators" had been at the 

 bottom of the whole affair ; were thus qualified to walk in the ways of 

 honesty again, which, of course, was " all that they Avere ambitious of 

 doing." But Messrs. Creagh and Low, who had been fired at are of 

 another opinion, and we are not much surprised at their declared intention 

 of avoiding the society of such personages as Leary, Shine, &c., by selling 

 their property and leaving the country, while they can leave it alive. 



Nothing can be more amusing than the perpetual pretence of foolish 

 people in humble life to an intercourse with the higher ranks. They 

 indulge their petty pride by talking of them with scorn, by burlesquing 

 their supposed habits, and reprobating the vices which those higher 

 ranks either think no vices at all, or contemptuously give up to the 

 tongues of the multitude. But still, to know something of this scorned 

 and satirized race, to have the presumed entrc of a noble mansion, or to 

 have dined with a peer, swells up the exultation of the coffee-house 

 philosopher to a pitch that makes him instantly explode in speech, 

 pamphlet, or novel. Let us hear the lucubrations of the well known 

 Sir Richard Philips on his experience of the higher orders. 



In the third portion of his " Personal Tour," he says — " As far as I 

 had travelled, and had observed the mutual relations of the population, 

 I had discovered but very partial sympathies among the various classes 

 of the common human family. There were the high-bred Aristocrats, 

 who associated with none but their class, and who mingled by forced 

 and very casual condescensions with certain other classes. There were 

 the professions, poor and proud, or rich and lordly ; yet without being 

 recognized by lords, however much they aped them in style and man- 

 ners. Then there was the Aristocracy of mere craft and jmsilion, but 

 one generation deep, and vulgar though affected ; looking back with 

 horror and contempt at the democratic base Avhence they had just 

 sprung, yet shunned by the descendants of the Norman robbers and of 

 the plunderers of the church and its charities. These classes constituted 

 respectively 1 in 100, 15 in 100, and 10 in 100 — or 26 families in every 

 100 in the country. All, however, concurred in shunning, keeping 

 under, and enslaving the other 74, who seemed to submit with docility 

 to the bridle or the whip. Never did there before exist greater 

 incongruities." 



Now, we wiU pledge the Order of the Garter against Sir Richard's 

 own knighthood, that he knows no more of the Peerage than he knows 

 of the Copernican system. The amount of his knowledge being that he 

 has heard of both — that he has never been three consecutive minutes in 

 the company of a man of rank but on Lord JMayor's Day ; and that 

 Joe Grimtddi, stripped of his clown's jacket and dressed in a black 

 coat, might be made to pass upon him for the heir apparent, or the 

 Archbishop of Canterbury. 



