USURY 159 



prodigality and dissipation. "Where the carcase is, there 

 Avill the crows congregate ; and foremost in the crowd are 

 those of an honourable and useful profession, who, throw- 

 ing off its ornaments or trammels, that they may the more 

 freely exercise their talents, — find means, by their know- 

 ledge of finance, to replenish the empty exchequers of 

 inconsiderate youths, in a generous and disinterested 

 manner known only to themselves. Birds of this feather 

 are found in every town in England ; but I should judge 

 that none of them can rival Cambridge in the glossy 

 blackness of their plumage, the quick penetration of their 

 evil eye, the keenness of their appetite, or the sharpness 

 of their bills. 



But, to leave this metaphor, the undergraduates first 

 get involved without fair means of extricating themselves, 

 and then fly to these harpies for relief, which they ad- 

 minister by anticipating all their dupes may have in 

 reversion, and by easing them of what little they had left 

 of honour, honesty, or good principle. It would be sup- 

 posed that such practices, publicly known, would consign 

 the enactors to an unenvied distinction ; on the contrary, 

 they live and thrive in the midst of a community renowned 

 for its ethics, and have been known to commit with 

 impunity acts which ought to have sent them to the 

 hulks. While presuming on the rank of gentlemen, which 

 their profession gives them, without a particle of claim to 

 it, either by birth or early associations, and by relying on 

 a position their superior knowledge of chicanery has pro- 

 cured for them, they exercise their calling with an air of 

 importance that shameless effrontery only could adopt 

 and support, and poverty and ignorance only encourage. 



