[Many as are the frightful cases of error recorded in the annals of every judiciary court, there are few more striking of the uncertainty of evidence respecting personal identity, and of the serious errors based upon it, than are to be read in the curious trial we are about to relate; and which has, for forty years, been the subject of parliamentary appeals in the country where it took place. The recent death of the widow of the unhappy sufferer excites a fresh interest in her wrongs, so strangely left unredressed by the very government that was the unwitting cause of them.]

I.—THE FOUR GUESTS.

On the 4th FlorÉal of the 4th year of the Republic, one and indivisible, (23d April 1796,) four young men were seated at a splendid breakfast in the Rue des Boucheries at Paris. They were all dressed in the costume of the Incroyables of the period; their hair coiffÉs en cadenettes and en oreilles de chien, according to the fantastic custom of the day; they had all top-boots, with silver spurs, large eyeglasses, various watch-chains, and other articles of bijouterie; carrying also the little cane, of about a foot and a half in length, without which no dandy was complete. The breakfast was given by a M. Guesno, a van-proprietor of Douai, who was anxious to celebrate the arrival at Paris of his compatriot Lesurques, who had recently established himself with his family in the busy capital.

"Yes, mon cher Guesno," said Lesurques, "I have quitted for ever our good old town of Douai; or, if not for ever, at least until I have completed in Paris the education of my children. I am now thirty-three years of age. I have paid my debt to my country by serving in the regiment of Auvergne, with some distinction. On leaving the ranks I was fortunate enough to make my services of some slight use, by fulfilling, gratuitously, the functions of chef de bureau of the district. At present, thanks to my patrimony and the dowery of my wife, I have an income of fifteen thousand francs (L.600) a-year, am without ambition, have three children, and my only care is to educate them well. The few days that I have been at Paris have not been wasted; I have a pretty apartment, Rue Montmartre, where I expect to be furnished, and ready to receive you in my turn, with as much comfort as heartiness."

"Wisely conceived," interrupted one of the guests, who, till this moment, had maintained a profound silence; "but who can count upon the morrow in such times as these? May your projects of peace and retirement, Monsieur, be realized: if so, you will then be the happiest man in the Republic; for during the last five or six years, there has been no citoyen, high or low, who could predict what the next week would decide for him."

The speaker uttered this with a tone of bitterness and discouragement which contrasted strangely with the flaunting splendour of his toilet, and the appetite with which he had done honour to the breakfast. He was young, and would have been remarkably handsome, had not his dark eyes and shaggy brows given an expression of fierceness and dissimulation to his countenance, which he vainly endeavoured to hide, by never looking his interlocutor in the face. His name was Couriol. His presence at this breakfast was purely accidental. He had come to see M. Richard, (the proprietor of the house where M. Guesno alighted on his journey to Paris, and who was also one of the guests,) just as they were about to sit down to table, and was invited to join them without ceremony.

The breakfast passed off gaily, in spite of the sombre Couriol; and after two hours' conviviality, they adjourned to the Palais Royal, where, after taking their cafÉ at the Rotonde du Caveau, they separated.

II.—THE FOUR HORSEMEN.

A few days afterwards, on the 8th FlorÉal, four men mounted on dashing looking horses, which, however, bore the unequivocal signs of being hired for the day, rode gaily out of Paris by the barrier of Charenton; talking and laughing loudly, caracoling with great enjoyment, and apparently with nothing but the idea of passing as joyously as possible a day devoted to pleasure.

An attentive observer, however, who did not confine his examination to their careless exteriors, might have remarked that, beneath their long lÉvites, (a peculiar cloak then in fashion,) they carried each a sabre, suspended at the waist, the presence of which was betrayed from time to time by a slight clanking, as the horses stumbled or changed their paces. He might have further remarked a sinister pre-occupation and a brooding fierceness in the countenance of one, whose dark eyes peeped out furtively beneath two thick brows. He took but little share in the boisterous gaiety of the other three, and that little was forced; his laugh was hollow and convulsive. It was Couriol.

Between twelve and one, the four horsemen arrived at the pretty village of Mongeron, on the road to Melun. One of them had preceded them at a hand-gallop to order dinner at the HÔtel de la Poste, kept by the Sieur Evrard. After the dinner, to which they did all honour, they called for pipes and tobacco—(cigars were then almost unknown)—and two of them smoked. Having paid their bill, they proceeded to the Cassino, where they took their cafÉ.

At three o'clock they remounted their horses, and following the road, shaded by stately elms, which leads from Mongeron to the forest of LÉnart, they reached Lieursaint; where they again halted. One of their horses had cast a shoe, and one of the men had broken the little chain which then fastened the spur to the boot. The horseman to whom this accident had happened, stopped at the entrance of the village at Madame ChÂtelain's, a limonadiÈre, whom he begged to serve him some cafÉ, and at the same time to give him a needleful of strong thread to mend the chain of his spur. She did so, but observing the traveller to be rather awkward in his use of the needle, she called her servant, la femme GrossetÈte, who fixed the chain for him, and helped him to place it on his boot. The other three travellers had, during this time, alighted at the inn kept by the Sieur Champeaux, where they drank some wine; while the landlord himself accompanied the traveller and his unshod horse to the farrier's, the Sieur Motteau. This finished, the four met at Madame ChÂtelain's, where they played at billiards. At half-past seven, after a parting cup with the Sieur Champeaux, whither they returned to re-saddle their horses, they set off again in the direction of Melun.

The landlord stood at his door watching the travellers till out of sight, and then turning into his house again, he saw on the table a sabre, which one of his guests had forgotten to fasten to his belt; he dispatched one of his stable-boys after them, but they were out of sight. It was not till an hour afterwards, that the traveller who had had his spur-chain mended, returned at full gallop to claim his sabre. He drank a glass of brandy, and having fastened his weapon securely, departed at furious speed in the direction taken by his comrades.

III.—THE ROBBERY AND MURDER.

At the same time that the horseman left Lieursaint for Paris, the Lyons mail arrived there from Paris, and changed horses. It was about half-past eight, and the night had been obscure for some time. The courier, having charged horses and taken a fresh postilion, set forth to traverse the long forest of Senart. The mail, at this epoch, was very different from what it is at present. It was a simple post-chaise, with a raised box behind, in which were placed the despatches. Only one place, by the side of the courier, was reserved for travellers, and that was obtained with difficulty. On the night in question this seat was occupied by a man of about thirty, who had that morning taken it for Lyons, under the name of Laborde, a silk-merchant; his real name was Durochat; his object may be guessed.

At nine o'clock, the carriage having descended a declivity with great speed, now slackened its course to mount a steep hill which faced it; at this moment four horsemen bounded into the road—two of them seizing the horses' heads, the two other attacked the postilion, who fell lifeless at their feet, his skull split open by a sabre-cut. At the same instant—before he had time to utter a word—the wretched courier was stabbed to the heart by the false Laborde, who sat beside him. They ransacked the mail of a sum of seventy-five thousand francs (L.3000) in money, assignats, and bank-notes. They then took the postilion's horse from the chaise, and Durochat mounting it, they galloped to Paris, which they entered between four and five in the morning by the Barrier de Rambouillet.

IV.—THE ARREST.

This double murder, committed with such audacity on the most frequented route of France, could not but produce an immense sensation, even at that epoch so fertile in brigandage of every sort, where the exploits of la Chouannerie, and the ferocious expeditions of the Chauffeurs,⁸ daily filled them with alarm. The police were at once in pursuit. The post-horse ridden by Durochat, and abandoned by him on the Boulevard, was found wandering about the Palais Royale. It was known that four horses covered with foam had been conducted at about five in the morning to the stables of a certain Muiron, Rue des FossÉ's, Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, by two men who had hired them the day before: these men were Bernard and Couriol; the former of whom was immediately arrested, the second had, with the other accomplices, taken flight.

The research was pursued with great activity at Paris, as well as at the scene of the crime, and along the route which the assassins had twice travelled. The information obtained showed that there were five culprits. The description of the four horsemen who rode from Paris, stopping at Mongeron and Lieursaint, was furnished with as much precision as concordance by the various witnesses who had seen and spoken to them on the road, and in the inns and cafÉs. The description of the traveller, who, under the name of Laborde, had taken the seat beside the courier, was furnished with equal exactitude by the clerks, from whom he had retained the place, and by those who saw him mount. Couriol, recognized as having with Bernard conducted back the horses to Muiron, after the crime, had left Paris for ChÂteau-Thierry, where he was lodged in the house of Citoyen Bruer, where also Guesno had gone on some business. The police followed Couriol, and arrested him. They found upon him a sum in money and assignats, nearly equivalent to a fifth share of what the courier had been robbed. Guesno and Bruer were also arrested, and had their papers seized; but they so completely established their alibi, that they were at once dismissed on their arrival at Paris. At the epoch of which we write, the examination of judicial affairs followed a very different course from the one now traced by the French code. It was to the Citoyen Daubenton, justice of the peace of the division of Pont Neuf, and officer of the police judiciare, that the Central Bureau confided the examination of this affair. This magistrate having ordered the dismissal of Guesno, told him that he might present himself at his cabinet on the morrow, for the papers which had been seized at ChÂteau-Thierry; at the same time he ordered an officer, Hendon, to start at once for Mangeron and Lieursaint, and to bring back the witnesses, whose names he gave him, so that they might all be collected the next day at the Bureau for examination.

Guesno, desirous of having his papers as soon as possible, went out early, and directed his steps towards the Central Bureau, which he had just reached when he encountered his compatriot Lesurques; having explained to him the motive that called him to the Bureau, he proposed to him that they should go together. Lesurques accepted, and the Citizen Daubenton not having yet arrived, they sat down in the antechamber, in order to see him as he passed, and thus expedite the matter.

About ten o'clock the judge, who had entered his cabinet by a back door, was interrupted in his examination of the documents, previous to interrogating the witnesses, by the officer Hendon, who demanded leave to make an important communication. "Amongst the witnesses," said he, "now waiting in the antechamber, are two women—one, la femme Santon, servant to Evrard the innkeeper at Mongeron—the other, la fille GrossetÈte, servant to Madame ChÂtelain the limonadiÈre at Lieursaint, who assert in the most positive manner, that two of the assassins are there, waiting like them to be admitted. These women declare that they cannot deceive themselves, for one of them served the four travellers at Mongeron, and the other spoke to them at Lieursaint, and stayed an hour in the billiard-room while they were playing."

The judge could not admit the probability of two of the assassins thus voluntarily placing themselves within the grasp of the law, yet he ordered the women to be shown into his presence. On interrogation, they persisted in their statements, declaring that it was impossible they could deceive themselves. Guesno was then introduced to the judge's presence, the women being continued to examine him strictly before finally pronouncing as to his identity.

"What brings you to the Central Bureau?" demanded the judge.

"I come to receive my papers," replied Guesno, "as you promised me yesterday that I should have them on application."

"Are you alone?"

"I have a compatriot with me, one Joseph Lesurques, whom I met on the way here."

The judge then ordered the second individual designated by the women to be introduced. It was Lesurques. He spoke to Lesurques and to Guesno for a few minutes, and then begged them to return into the antechamber, where their papers would be sent to them. An order was given, however, to the officer, Hendon, not to lose sight of them.

On their leaving the room, M. Daubenton again demanded of the women, if they persisted in their declarations as to the identity of these men with the criminals they were in search of. They replied, without hesitation, that they were certain of it; that they could not be deceived. The magistrate was then forced to receive their depositions in writing, and to order the arrest of Guesno and Lesurques.

From the moment of their arrest, the examination proceeded with great rapidity. Guesno and Lesurques were confronted with the witnesses brought from Mongeron and Lieursaint, and were recognised by all of them!

La femme Santon deposed, that Lesurques was the one who, after the dinner at Mongeron, wanted to pay in assignats, but that the big dark man (Couriol) paid in money. She was positive as to Lesurques being the man.

Champeaux and his wife, who kept the inn at Lieursaint, were equally positive as to Lesurques being the one whose spur wanted mending, and who came back to fetch the sabre which he had forgotten. Lafolie, groom at Mongeron, and la femme Alfroy, also recognised him; and Laurent Charbaut, labourer, who dined in the same room with the four horsemen, recognised Lesurques as the one who had silver spurs fastened by little chains to his top-boots. This combination of testimony, respecting one whom they had seen but a few days before, was sufficient to leave little doubt in the mind of any one. The trial was therefore fixed on.

The day of his arrest, Lesurques wrote the following letter to one of his friends, which was intercepted, and joined to the documentary evidence to be examined on the trial:—

"My dear Friend,—I have met with nothing but unpleasantries since my arrival at Paris, but I did not—I could not anticipate the misfortune which has befallen me to-day. You know me—and you know whether I am capable of sullying myself with a crime—yet the most atrocious crime is imputed to me. The mere thought of it makes me tremble. I find myself implicated in the murder of the Lyons' courier. Three women and two men, whom I know not—whose residence I know not—(for you well know that I have not left Paris)—have had the impudence to swear that they recognise me, and that I was the first of the four who presented himself at their houses on horseback. You know, also, that I have not crossed a horse's back since my arrival in Paris. You may understand the importance of such an accusation, which tends at nothing less than my judicial assassination. Oblige me by lending me the assistance of your memory, and endeavour to recollect where I was and what persons I saw at Paris, on the day when they impudently assert they saw me out of Paris, (I believe it was the 7th or 8th,) in order that I may confound these infamous calumniators, and make them suffer the penalty of the law."

In a postscript he enumerates the persons he saw on that day: Citoyen Tixier, General Cambrai, 'Demoiselle EugÉnie, Citoyen Hilaire Ledru, his wife's hairdresser, the workmen in his apartments, and the porter of the house.

V.—THE TRIAL, AND THE BLINDNESS OF ZEAL.

MM. Lesurques, Guesno, Couriol, Bernard, Richard, and Bruer, were summoned before the tribunal of justice; the three first as authors or accomplices of the murder and robbery—Bernard as having furnished the horses—Richard as having concealed at his house Couriol—and his mistress, Madelaine Breban, as having received and concealed part of the stolen goods—and Bruer as having given Couriol refuge at ChÂteau-Thierry.

The witnesses persisted in their declarations as to the identity of Guesno and Lesurques. But Guesno established beyond all doubt the fact of his alibi; and Bruer easily refuted every charge that concerned himself. Lesurques had cited fifteen witnesses—all respectable men—and presented himself at the bar with a calmness and confidence which produced a favourable impression. Against the positive testimony of the six witnesses who asserted him to have been at Mongeron and Lieursaint on the 8th FlorÉal, he had brought a mass of testimony to prove an alibi.

Citoyen Legrand, a rich jeweller and goldsmith, compatriot of Lesurques, was first examined. He deposed, that on the 8th FlorÉal—the day on which the crime had been committed—Lesurques had passed a portion of the morning with him.

Aldenof, a jeweller, Hilaire Ledru, and Chausfer, deposed, that on that day they dined with Lesurques in the Rue Montorgueil; that, after dinner, they went to a cafÉ, took some liqueur, and went home with him.

Beudart, a painter, deposed that he was invited to the dinner, with Lesurques and his friends, but that, as one of the national guard, he was that day on service, and so was prevented attending; but that, he had gone to Lesurques that very evening in his uniform, and had seen him go to bed. In support of his deposition he produced his billet de garde, dated the 8th.

Finally, the workmen employed in the apartment that Lesurques was having fitted up, deposed that they saw him at various times during the 8th and 9th FlorÉal.

No further doubt of his innocence now remained; the alibi was so distinctly proved, and on such unquestionable testimony, that the jury showed in their manner that they were ready to acquit him, when a fatal circumstance suddenly changed the whole face of the matter.

The jeweller Legrand, who had manifested such zeal in the establishment of his friend's innocence, had, with an anxiety to avail himself of every trifle, declared, that to prove the sincerity of his declaration, he would cite a fact which prevented his being mistaken. On the 8th FlorÉal, he had made before dinner an exchange of jewellery with the witness, Aldenof. He proposed that his ledger should be sent for, as its entry there would serve to fix all recollections.

As a matter of form, the ledger was sent for. At the first glance, however, it was evident that the date of the transaction, mentioned by Legrand, had been altered! The exchange had taken place on the 9th, and an alteration, badly dissimulated by an erasure, had substituted the figure 8 for the original figure 9.

Murmurs of surprise and indignation followed this discovery, and the President, pressing Legrand with questions, and unable to obtain from him any satisfactory answer, ordered his arrest. Legrand then, trembling and terrified, retracted his former deposition, and declared that he was not certain he had seen Lesurques on the 8th FlorÉal, but that he had altered his book in order to give more probability to the declaration he had determined to make in his friend's favour—of whose innocence he was so assured, that it was only the conviction that he was accused erroneously, which made him perjure himself to save that innocent head.

From this moment, the jury received the depositions in favour of Lesurques with extreme prejudice—those already heard seemed little better than connivance, and those yet to be heard were listened to with such suspicion as to have no effect. The conviction of his guilt was fixed in every mind. Lesurques, despairing to get over such fatal appearances, ceased his energetic denials, and awaited his sentence in gloomy silence. The jury retired.

At this moment a woman, agitated with the most violent emotions, demanded to speak to the President. She said that she was moved by the voice of conscience, and wished to save the criminal tribunal from a dreadful error. It was Madelaine Breban, the mistress of Couriol. Brought before the President, she declared that she knew positively Lesurques was innocent, and that the witnesses, deceived by an inexplicable resemblance, had confounded him with the real culprit, who was called Dubosq.

Prejudiced as they were against Lesurques, and suspicious of all testimony after the perjury they had already detected, the tribunal scarcely listened to Madelaine Breban; and the jury returned with their verdict, in consequence of which, Couriol, Lesurques, and Bernard were condemned to death; Richard to four-and-twenty years' imprisonment; Guesno and Bruer were acquitted.

No sooner was the sentence passed, than Lesurques rose calmly, and addressing the Judges, said, "I am innocent of the crime of which I am accused. Ah! citoyens, if it is horrible to murder on the high-road, it is not less so to murder by the law!"

Couriol, condemned to death, rose and said, "Yes, I am guilty—I avow it. But Lesurques is innocent, and Bernard did not participate in the murder."

Four times he reiterated this declaration; and, on entering his prison, he wrote to the judge a letter full of sorrow and repentance, in which he said, "I have never known Lesurques; my accomplices are Vidal, Rossi, Durochat, and Dubosq. The resemblance of Lesurques to Dubosq has deceived the witnesses."

To this declaration of Couriol was joined that of Madelaine Breban, who, after the judgment, returned to renew her protestation, accompanied by two individuals, who swore that, before the trial, she had told them Lesurques had never had any relations with the culprits; but that he was a victim of his fatal likeness to Dubosq. These testimonies threw doubt in the minds of the magistrates, who hastened to demand a reprieve from the Directory, which, terrified at the idea of seeing an innocent man perish through a judicial error, had recourse to the Corps LÉgislatif; for every other resource was exhausted. The message of the Directory to the Five Hundred was pressing; its aim was to demand a reprieve, and a decision as to what course to pursue. It ended thus: "Must Lesurques perish on the scaffold because he resembles a villain?"

The Corps LÉgislatif passed to the order of the day, as every condition had been legally fulfilled, that a particular case could not justify an infraction of decreed laws; and that, too, on such indications, to do away with a condemnation legally pronounced by a jury, would be to overset all ideas of justice and equality before the law.

The right of pardon had been abolished; and Lesurques had neither resources nor hope. He bore his fate with firmness and resignation, and wrote, on the day of his execution, this note to his wife:—

"Ma bonne Amie,—There is no eluding ones destiny, I was fated to be judicially murdered. I shall at least bear it with proper courage. I send you my locks of hair; when our children are grown up, you will divide it among them; it is the only heritage I can leave them."

He addressed also a letter to Dubosq through the newspapers. "You, in whose place I am about to perish, content yourself with the sacrifice of my life. Should you ever be brought to justice, remember my three children covered with opprobrium—remember my wife reduced to despair and do not longer prolong their misfortunes."

VI.—THE EXECUTION.

The 10th March 1797, Lesurques was led to the scaffold. He wished to be dressed completely in white, as a symbol of his innocence. He wore pantaloons and frock-coat of white cotton, and his shirt-collar turned down over his shoulders. It was the day before Good Friday, and he expressed regret that he had not to die on the morrow. In passing from the prison de la Conciergerie to the Place de la GrÈve, where the execution took place, Couriol, placed beside Lesurques in the cart, cried out to the people in a loud voice, "Citoyens, I am guilty! I am guilty! but Lesurques is innocent."

On arriving at the platform of the guillotine, already stained with the blood of Bernard, Lesurques exclaimed, "I pardon my judges; I pardon the witnesses through whose error I die; and I pardon Legrand, who has not a little contributed to my judicial assassination. I die protesting my innocence." In another instant he was no more.

Couriol continued his declarations of Lesurques's innocence to the foot of the scaffold; and, after a final appeal, he, too, delivered himself to the executioner. The drop fell on a guilty neck, having before been stained with the blood of two innocent men.

The crowd retired with a general conviction that Lesurques had perished guiltless; and several of the judges were seriously troubled by the doubts which this day had raised in their minds. Many of the jury began to repent having relied so on the affirmations of the witnesses from Mongeron and Lieursaint, precise as they had been. M. Daubenton, the magistrate who had first ordered the arrest, went home a thoughtful man, and determined to lose no opportunity of getting at the truth, which the arrest of the three accomplices mentioned by Couriol could alone bring to light.

VII.—THE PROOFS

Two years passed on without affording any clue to the conscientious magistrate. One day, however, he heard that a certain Durochat was arrested for a recent robbery, and was confined in the Sainte Pelagie; and remembering that Durochat was the name of the one designated by Couriol as having taken the place beside the courier, under the false name of Laborde. At the epoch of the trial of Lesurques, it came out that several persons, amongst them an inspector of the administration des postes, had seen the false Laborde at the moment that he was awaiting the mail, and had preserved a distinct recollection of his person.

M. Daubenton, on ascertaining the day of Durochat's approaching trial for robbery, went to the administration des postes, and obtained through the Chef the permission to send for the inspector who had seen the false Laborde, and who was no longer in Paris.

The juges du tribunal had also been warned of the suspicions which rested on Durochat. The day of trial arrived, and he was condemned to fourteen years' imprisonment, and was about being led from the court when the inspector arrived, and declared that Durochat was the man whom he had seen on the 8th FlorÉal mount beside the courier under the false name of Laborde. Durochat only opposed feeble denials to this declaration, and was consequently taken to the Conciergerie.

On the morrow, Durochat was transferred to Versailles, where he was to be judged. Daubenton and a huissier departed with the prisoner and four gendarmes. As they reached the village of Grosbois he demanded some breakfast, for he had eaten nothing since the preceding day. They stopped at the first auberge, and there Durochat manifested a desire to speak to the magistrate in private.

Daubenton ordered the gendarmes to leave them together, and even the huissier, though he made him understand by a sign the danger of being alone with so desperate a villain, was begged to retire. A breakfast was ordered for the two. It was brought—but, by order of the huissier, only one knife was placed on the table. Daubenton took it up, and began carelessly to break an egg with it.

Durochat looked at him fixedly for a moment, and said,

"Monsieur le juge, you are afraid?"

"Afraid!" replied he calmly, "and of whom?"

"Of me," said Durochat.

"Folly!" continued the other, breaking his egg.

"You are. You arm yourself with a knife," said he sarcastically.

"Bah!" replied Daubenton, presenting him the knife, "cut me a piece of bread, and tell me what you have to communicate to me respecting the murder of the courier of Lyons."

There is something in the collected courage of a brave man more impressive than any menace; and courage is a thing which acts upon all natures, however vile. Strongly moved by the calm audacity of the magistrate the ruffian, who had seized the knife with menacing vivacity, now set it down upon the table, and with a faltering voice said, "Vous Êtes un brave, citoyen!" then after a pause, "I am a lost man—it's all up with me; but you shall know all."

He then detailed the circumstances of the crime, as we have related them above, and confirmed all Couriol's declarations, naming Couriol, Rossi, Vidal, and Dubosq, as his accomplices. Before the tribunal he repeated this account, adding, "that he had heard an individual named Lesurques had been condemned for the crime, but that he had neither seen him at the time of the deed, nor subsequently. He did not know him."

He added, that it was Dubosq whose spur had been broken, and was mended where they had dined; for he had heard them talk about it, and that he had lost it in the scuffle. He had seen the other spur in his hand, and heard him say that he intended throwing it in the river. He further gave a description of Dubosq's person, and added, that on that day he wore a flaxen peruke.

Towards the end of the year 8—four years after the murder of the courier of Lyons—Dubosq was arrested for robbery; and was transferred to Versailles, there to be judged by the Tribunal Correctionnel. The president ordered that he should wear a flaxen peruke, and be confronted with the witnesses from Mongeron and Lieursaint, who now unanimously declared that he was the man they had seen. This, coupled with the declarations of Couriol, Durochat, and Madelaine Breban, sufficed to prove the identity; and he did not deny his acquaintance with the other culprits. He was therefore condemned, and perished on the scaffold for the crime.

Vidal was also arrested and executed, though persisting in his innocence; and, finally, Rossi was shortly after discovered and condemned. He exhibited profound repentance, and demanded the succours of religion. To his confessor he left this declaration—"I assert that Lesurques is innocent; but this must only be made public six months after my death."

Thus ends this strange drama; thus were the proofs of Lesurques's innocence furnished beyond a shadow of doubt; and thus, we may add, were seven men executed for a crime committed by five men; two therefore were innocent—were victims of the law.

It is now forty years since the innocence of Lesurques has been established, and little has been done towards the rehabilitation of his memory, the protection of his children, and the restitution of his confiscated goods! Forty years, and his wretched widow has only recently died, having failed in the object of her life! Forty years has the government been silent.

M. Daubenton, who took so honourable and active a part in the detection of the real criminals, consecrated a great part of his life and fortune to the cause of the unfortunate widow and her children. The declaration he addressed to the Minister of Justice commenced thus:—

"The error, on which was founded the condemnation of Lesurques, arose neither with the judges nor the jury. The jury, convinced by the depositions of the witnesses, manifested that conviction judicially; and the judges, after the declaration of the jury, pronounced according to the law.

"The error of his condemnation arose from the mistake of the witnesses—from the fatal resemblance to one of the culprits not apprehended. Nothing gave reason to suspect at that time the cause of the error in which the witnesses had fallen."

We beg to observe that the whole trial was conducted in a slovenly and shameful manner. A man is condemned on the deposition of witnesses;—witnesses, be it observed, of such dulness of perception, and such confidence in their notions, that they persisted in declaring Guesno to be one of the culprits as well as Lesurques. Yet the alibi of Guesno was proved beyond a doubt. How, then, could the jury, with this instance of mistake before their eyes, and which they themselves had condemned as a mistake by acquitting Guesno—how could they place such firm reliance on those self-same testimonies when applied to Lesurques? If they could convict Lesurques upon such evidence, why not also convict Guesno on it? Guesno proved an alibi—so did Lesurques; but because one foolish friend perjured himself to serve Lesurques, the jury hastily set down all his friends as perjurers; they had no evidence of this; it was a mere indignant reaction of feeling, and, as such, a violation of their office. The case ought to have been sifted. It was shuffled over hastily. A verdict, passed in anger, was executed, though at the time a strong doubt existed in the minds of the judges as to its propriety!

Neither the Directory nor the Consulate, neither the Empire nor the Restoration, paid attention to the widow's supplications for a revision of the sentence, that her husband's name might be cleared, and his property restored. In vain did M. Salgues devote ten years to the defence of the injured family; in vain did M. Merilhou, in an important procÈs, warmly espouse the cause; the different governments believed themselves incapable of answering these solicitations.

Since 1830 the widow again supplicated the Tribune des Chambres. Few sessions have passed without some members, particularly from the dÈpartment du Nord, calling attention to the subject. All that has been obtained is a restitution of part of the property seized by the fisc at the period of the execution.

Madame Lesurques has died unsuccessful, because a judicial error cannot be acknowledged or rectified, owing to the insufficiency of the Code. A French journal announces that the son and daughter of Lesurques, still living, pledged themselves on the death-bed of their mother to continue the endeavour which had occupied her forty long years—an endeavour to make the law comprehend that nothing is more tyrannous than the strict fulfilment of its letter—an endeavour to make the world at large more keenly feel the questionable nature of evidence as to personal identity in cases where the witnesses are ignorant, and where the evidence against their testimony is presumptive.

When Archimedes, or some other gentleman, said that he could unfix the earth had he a point of resistance for his lever, he illustrated, by a hypothesis of physics, the law of the generation of aristocracies. Aristocracies begin by having a leg to stand on, or by getting a finger in the pie. The multitude, on the contrary, never have any thing, because they never had any thing, they want the point d'oppui, the springing-ground whence to jump above their condition, where, transformed by the gilded rays of wealth or power, discarding their several skins or sloughs, they sport and flutter, like lesser insects, in the sunny beams of aristocratic life.

Indeed, we have often thought that the transformation of the insect tribes was intended, by a wise Omnipotence, as an illustration (for our own benefit) of the rise and progress of the mere aristocracy of fashionable life.

The first condition of existence of these diminutive creatures, is the egg, or embryo state; this the anxious parent attaches firmly to some leaf or bough, capable of affording sufficient sustenance to the future grub, who, in due course, eats his way through the vegetable kingdom upon which he is quartered, for no merit or exertion of his own; and where his career is only to be noted by the ravages of his insatiable jaws. After a brief period of lethargy or pupa state, this good-for-nothing creature flutters forth, powdered, painted, perfumed, scorning the dirt from which he sprung, and leading a life of uselessness and vanity, until death, in the shape of an autumnal shower, prostrates himself and his finery in the dust.

How beautiful and how complete is the analogy between the insect and his brother butterfly of fashionable life! While yet an embryo, a worm, he grubs his way through a good estate, and not a little ready money. Then, after a long sojourn in the pupa or puppy state—longer far than that of any other maggot—he emerges a perfect butterfly, vain, empty, fluttering, and conceited, idling, flirting, flaunting, philandering, until the summer of his ton is past, when he dies, or is arrested, and expiates a life of puerile vanity in Purgatory or the Queen's Bench.

Let the beginning once be made—the point of extreme depression once be got over: the cares of the daily recurring poor necessities of life—shelter, clothing, food, be of no moment: let a man taste, though it were next to nothing, of the delicious luxury of accumulation, let him, with every hoarded shilling, or half-crown, or pound, carry his head higher, smiling in secret at the world and his friends, and the aristocrat of wealth is formed: he is removed for ever from the hand-to-mouth family of man, and thenceforth represents his breeches pocket.

It is the same with the aristocrat of birth: some fortunate accident—some well-aimed and successful stroke of profligacy, or more rarely of virtue, redeems an individual from the common herd: the rays, mayhap, of royal favour fall upon him, and he begins to bloat; his growth is as the growth of the grain of mustard-seed, and in a little while he overshadoweth the land: Noble and Right Honourable are his posterity to the end of time.

There is a poor lad sitting biting his nails till he bites them to the quick, wearing out his heart-strings in constrained silence on the back benches of Westminster Hall: he maketh speeches, eloquent, inwardly, and briefless, mutely bothereth judges, and seduceth innocent juries to his No-side: he findeth out mistakes in his learned brethren, and chuckleth secretly therefor: he scratcheth his wig with a pen, and thinketh by what train of circumstantial evidence he may be able to prove a dinner: he laugheth derisively at the income-tax, and the collectors thereof: yet, when he may not have even a "little brown" to fly with, haply, some good angel, in mortal shape of a solicitor, may bestow on him a brief: rushing home to his chambers in the Temple, he mastereth the points of the case, cogitating pros and cons: he heareth his own voice in court for the first time: the bottled black-letter of years falleth from his lips, like treacle from a pipkin: he maketh good his points, winneth the verdict and the commendations of the judge: solicitors whisper that there is something in him, and clerks express their conviction that he is a "trump:" the young man eloquent is rewarded in one hour for the toil, rust, and enforced obscurity of years: he is no longer a common soldier of the bar; he steppeth by right divine, forth of the ranks, and becometh a man of mark and likelihood: he is now an aristocrat of the bar—perhaps, a Lyndhurst.

Again, behold the future aristocrat of literary life: to-day regard him in a suit of rusty black, a twice-turned stock, and shirt of Isabella colour, with an affecting hat: in and out of every bookseller's in the Row is he, like a dog in a fair: a brown paper parcel he putteth into your hand, the which, before he openeth, he demands how much cash down you mean to give for it: then, having unfolded the same, giveth you to understand that it is such a work as is not to be seen every day, which you may safely swear to. He journeyeth from the east to the west, from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof, manuscript in hand: from Leadenhall Street, where Minerva has her press, to the street hight Albemarle, which John Murray delighteth to honour, but to no purpose: his name is unknown, and his works are nothing worth. Let him once make a hit, as it is termed, and it is no longer hit or miss with him: he getteth a reputation, and he lieth in bed all day: he shaketh the alphabet in a bag, calling it his last new work, and it goeth through three editions in as many days: he lordeth it over "the trade," and will let nobody have any profit but himself: he turneth up his nose at the man who invites him to a plain dinner, and utterly refuseth evening parties: he holdeth conversaziones, where he talks you dead: he driveth a chay, taketh a whole house, sporteth a wife and a minute tiger: in brief, he is now an aristocrat of letters.

The materials for the growth and preservation of these several aristocracies abound in London; and no where on the earth have we the same facilities for the study and investigation of their family likenesses and contrasts, their points of contact and repulsion.

THE ARISTOCRACY OF FASHION.

Approach, reader, but awful, as Pope says—approach "with mincing steps and bow profound;" we are about to introduce you to persons of quality.

It is an extraordinary fact, illustrative how far the ignorance of a discerning public will carry those who make a living by practising upon their credulity, that notwithstanding there is an immense number of books annually presented to the do-nothing world, under the curiosity-provoking title of fashionable novels, we have hardly more than one or two generally recognised true and faithful pictures of really fashionable life. The caricatures of caricatures of this Elysian state are numberless—imagination has been exhausted, sense confounded, grammar put on the rack, the "well of English undefiled" stirred up from the very dregs, to give the excluded pictures of the life of the exclusives—yet, what have we? You will excuse us, reader, disturbing the current of our thoughts, by recollecting any of this forty novel-power of inanity, vulgarity, and pertness; but if you take up any of the many volumes in marbled boards, with calf backs, that you will find in cart-loads at the circulating libraries, and look over a page of the fashionable "lingo" the Lord Jacob talks to the Lady Suky, or the conversation between Sir Silly Billy and the Honourable Snuffy Duffy; or what the Duke of Dabchick thinks of the Princess Molly; and when you are satisfied, which we take it will be in the course of two pages, if you do not throw down the book, and swear by the Lord Harry—why then, read on and be jolly!

The indescribable absurdities, vices, and follies of the bulk of that class of literature called the fashionable novel, are past the power of catalogue-makers to record; but perhaps overwhelming ignorance of the peculiar class they pretend to describe is not the least conspicuous. Next to lack of knowledge, or sound materials deduced from actual observation, we may place want of taste. There are writers to write the exclusives up, and writers to write them down; one raises our envy, and makes us miserable, because we are not permitted to enter their paradise of social life; another devotes three volumes post octavo, in exemplification of the not altogether forgotten moral fiction of the fox and the sour grapes.

The writers of fashionable novels may be divided, as to their social positions, into the tolerated fashionable novel writers, and the intolerable fashionable novel writers; the first, moving in phases more or less equivocal round their centre and their deity, the exclusive set; the last, desperate from the fact of their total and permanent exclusion from society, but still moving round the outside of the boundary wall, and peeping through chinks in the palings. From the former we have the eulogistic, from the latter the depreciatory fashionable novels; these make us familiar with the celestial attributes of countesses-dowager, and the amiability of their pugs. They are slavering, servile, self-degrading productions, and only serve the exclusives as provocatives to laughter; they are usually written by tutors, ladies who have married tutors, or superannuated governesses, patronized by some charitable member of some distinguished family.

The depreciatory or vilificatory fashionable novel delights in exposing the peccadilloes, or imagined peccadilloes, (for it is all the same,) of young or old people of fashion: a gourmand peer, a titled demirep, a "desperate dandy," a black-leg, and a few such other respectable characters, are dialogued through the customary number of chapters, and conducted to the usual catastrophe: virtue is triumphant, vice abashed, towards the latter end of the last volume; and some low-born hero and heroine, introduced to exhibit, by contrast, the vices of the aristocracy, suddenly, and without any effort of their own, acquire large fortunes, perhaps titles, which it would have been just as easy to have given them at first—go to church in an orthodox manner, and set up a virtuous aristocracy of their own.

We are indebted for this class of fashionable novel to outlaws of both sexes; persons who might have held, but for their own misconduct, respectable positions in society; persons of this sort have the impudence, with their no-characters staring them in the face, to set up as public instructors, and to give us ensamples, drawn from their own perverted imaginations, of a class of which they might have known something, but which it is now past human possibility they can ever know.

These people are not merely not in society—which implies no crime—but they are, notwithstanding their nominal rank or title, out of society, for reasons well and thoroughly known: they are those not merely who cannot come in, but those who, if they did intrude, would be immediately turned out.

Next, ascending from this equivocal class, we have the fashionable novel writers of fashionable life. I do not mean exclusive fashionable life, for there are no writers of these works in that class; but I allude to those who mingle with general fashionable society upon such terms, that if they possessed the talent, they might have supplied with ease the want of which the world complains—that of a just and natural picture of the lives of those forming the Corinthian capital of society in London.

Take, for example, a noble and late viceregal lord and his brother, the Honourable Edmund Phipps. These gentlemen have written fashionable novels, and ought to have written good ones; yet we don't know how it is, but whenever we send to a circulating library to enquire whether they have "YES AND NO," the noes have it; and when we venture to ask for the "FERGUSONS," we find that the three post octavo gentlemen of that title not only do not lodge here or there, but that they don't lodge any where.

The fact is, opportunity of observation will do little or nothing without faculty of observation: though the whole social world, old or new, lay bare under the eyes of some men, not one idea could they extract from it; and who, wanting also the descriptive power, still more rare, fail in any attempt to give to the world the results of their experience.

Of this class is the larger number of writers of the better sort, in the line we are talking of: they go into society as they go to galleries, not to copy pictures, but to enjoy them. They enter into the amusements and dissipation of their class, not to look on merely, but to play the game.

In addition to all this, there is a point of honour involved, we think an erroneous one, among persons of quality, as to violating the freemasonry, the signs, ceremonies, and absurdities, of their privacy. Now, this applies only so far as individuals are indicated, and it is so far right. But fashionable classes are fair game, if not shot at sitting; or poached, or snared, or bagged, in any ungentlemanlike, unsportsmanlike fashion. They belong to human character, and human nature; and the reason they have seldom been painted well is, that they have seldom been painted after nature; and any artist will inform you, that whatever is painted to the life, must be painted from the life.

They have not been painted by themselves, because they would have their lives, like the walls that encircle their town houses, impervious to the curious excursive eye; they have not been painted by themselves, because, secondly, the power of depicting graphically what they are in the daily habit of seeing, is not in them, not having been cultivated by study and practice; and thirdly, not being stimulated to literary activity by that Muse of the imperative mood, Necessity, they find more pleasure in having these things brought under their eyes, results of the mental toil and culture of others.

There is a vulgar error uppermost in the minds of some men, which is this: the world of fashion has not hitherto been painted with effect, for the same reason that nobody thinks it worth while to describe a ditch; both being, in the estimation of these persons, stagnant perfumed entities, rich in peculiarly useless vegetation, abounding in vermin and animalculae, and diffusing a contagious effluvia over the surface of society. This error, like many other errors, is an excuse for ignorance, and only shows the innate uncharitableness of some men; they run down, like other sceptics, what they do not know and cannot understand, nor will they believe there can be any good therein; forgetting, knaves and fools as they are, that the aristocratic classes are human beings, with the same intermingled elements of good and ill as themselves, modified by accidental circumstances, which, as the Parliamentary people say, they cannot control, and possessing at least as much of the ordinary good principles and feelings of our common nature, as any other class of our graduated social scale.

Can any thing be more illiberal, more ignorant, more stupid, than for a low man to turn leveller, because he is a low man, and attack, without ceremony and without mercy, people of whom he can by any possibility know no more than the worst side, that is to say, the outside: and whom he considers, like the gilt gingerbread he sees in his biennial visit to Greenwich Fair, as vastly fine, but exceedingly unwholesome?

The truth is, fashionable life has been exalted above its just and proper level, and depressed below it, by the slaverers and the vituperaters, solely because they cannot get at it; the former are idolatrous from hope, the latter devilish in despair; and the result we are familiar with, in caricatures portraying this sort of life alternately as a Heaven and a Hell.

The peculiarities of fashionable life are, it is true, few, but they are characteristic, and we now proceed to—

You proceed to—! Now, my good fellow, tell us, will you, how such a person as you, a garreteer, confessing to dining upon the heel of a twopenny loaf and half an onion; making no secret of running up beer scores at public houses, when they will trust you; retailing your nasty scenes of low life, creatures dying in hospitals, work-house funerals, the adventures of street apple-women, and matters and things incomprehensible to genteel families like ourselves living in Russell Square; an outlaw, living from tavern to tavern, from pot-house to pot-house, without name, residence, or station; a mere fellow, subsisting on the misplaced indulgence of an undiscerning public, and one who, if gentlemen and ladies (like ourselves) would only condescend to write, would find his appropriate circle in a work-house, unless he escaped it by dying in an hospital. You proceed to——! What, in the name of gentility, can you know of fashionable life?

Sir, or madam, have mercy, or at least have manners. How astonished you will be—we say, how astonished you will be—if in the fulness of time our title shall dignify the title-page; when it might appear, that by the pen of a peer these papers were made apparent; when, instead of the sort of person you have chosen to imagine your caterer for the good things of fashionable life in London, you may discern to your dismay that a lord—a real lord, alive and kicking, has made a Bude-light of himself, illuminating the shadows of your ignorance: you may read a preparatory memoir, informing you how these ideas of ours were collected in a coach and four, and transmitted to paper in a study overlooking the Green Park; with paper velvet-like, and golden pen ruby-headed, upon rose-wood desk inlaid with ivory, you may find that these essays have been transcribed: you will grovel, you will slaver, you will rub your nose in the pebbles, like a salmon at spawning-time, when this very immortal work shall come out, clothed in purple morocco, our arms emblazoned on the covers, and coroneted on the back, after the manner of publication of the works of royal and noble authors. Then, what running to Debrett for our genealogy, our connexions, our set, and all that customary inquisition of the affairs of the great which makes the delight of the little: the "Book of Beauty," and "Pictures of the Nobility," will be ransacked, of course, for verses by our lordship, or portraits of our lordship's ladyship, or of the ladies Exquisitina or Nonsuchina, daughters of our lordship, with slavering verses by intolerable poets; then it will be discovered, and the discovery duly recorded, that our lordship's eldest son, Viscount Ne'er-do-weel, and the Honourable Mr Nogo, are pursuing cricket and pie-crust (commonly called their studies) at Eton or Harrow, but are expected at our lordship's seat in Some-Shire for their holidays: then we will be proposed, seconded, and elected, like other noblemen equally undistinguished in the world of science, a fellow of the Royal Society and a fellow of the Society of Arts—and for the same good reason, because we may be a lord; and you, and all the world, will say it was very proper that I should have been elected, though knowing no more of science than that acoustics (if we mistake not) means a pump; or of arts, than that calico-printing and letterpress printing are, somehow or other, not exactly one and the same thing.

Then, sir, we shall hear no more of the bread and cheese and onions, pot-house scores, and low company, with which you have so unceremoniously taxed our lordship. You will drive your jumped-up coach, with your awkward wives and dowdy daughters, and your tawdry liveries, all the way from Russell Square to the Green Park, to catch the chance of a glimpse of our lordship. You find out from our lordship's footman that our lordship wears a particular collar to his coat, and you will move heaven and earth to find out our lordship's tailor. When you apply to him to make a coat in our lordship's style, our tailor, who sees at a glance that you are not fit to be his customer, will tell you with an air, that he "declines to execute."

You will discover, from the same authority, that our lordship smokes a particular tobacco, to be had only at a particular shop; and forthwith even real Havannah stinks in your nostrils, and you apply to Pontet. Pontet gives you a tobacco, (not our tobacco,) and you go away in the innocent consciousness of smoking the exclusive weed of a man of fashion.

Prithee, fool, mind thy own business, and stick to thy shop or thy station, whatever it may be; to which while thou stickest, thou must be respectable, but which when thou wouldst quit, desperately to seize the hem of our lordship's garment, thou becomest the laughing-stock of us and of our class, and we cannot choose but despise thee thoroughly.

When we look at the shelves of a circulating library, groaning beneath that generally despicable class of volumes called fashionable novels, when we take up, only to lay down in disgust, "NOTORIETY, OR FASHIONABLES UNVEILED," "PAVILION, OR A MONTH AT BRIGHTON," "MEMOIRS OF A PEERESS," "MARRIAGE IN HIGH LIFE," "ALMACK S REVISITED," or some such stuff, we cannot but infer, that it is not the vices or absurdities of what is ignorantly called fashionable life that creates this never-ceasing demand for trash and nonsense, but rather a morbid appetite for vapidity and small-talk, a lady's-maid's curiosity of the secrets of her betters, a servile love of imitating what is unworthy imitation, and of following that which is not worth following, simply because it is supposed that these ridiculous caricatures represent the real life of

When we recollect, to our shame, that not only these swarms of trashy volumes, which penetrate even into the back-slums, and may be seen unfolded in the paper-patched windows of eighteen-penny milliners in the lowest quarters of our metropolis, find a never-failing succession of ravenous readers, but that newspapers—Sunday newspapers, forsooth—devoted to smutty epigrams, low abuse, vile insinuations, and openly indecent allusion to the connexions, habits of life, and even personal appearance, of fashionable and pseudo-fashionable people, receive a disgraceful and dangerous support; we must come to the conclusion, that in this, as in all other merchandize, the demand creates the supply, and that it is among the lower orders of the middle classes that these caricaturers by profession of the upper, their slanderers and their eulogists, find sympathy and encouragement.

There is a sort of "hero-worship," as Mr Carlyle would term it, attaching to the most absurd, ridiculous, and even vicious doings of people who might be fashionable; a counter-jumper, barber's clerk, medical student, or tailor's apprentice, adores the memory of that great man whom we are happy to be able to style the late "markis." The pavÉ of the Haymarket he considers classic ground, and the "Waterford Arms" a most select wine-bibbing establishment. If he does not break a dozen bells or wrench three or four brace of knockers in the season, this penny-cigar-smoking creature hardly thinks he attains to his fractional proportion of humanity.

This may be relied on, that the great inducement of young scapegraces of fashion to the committal of their diurnal and nocturnal outrages upon propriety, is the mischievous gratification they derive from the awkward imitation of their inferiors; and the most effectual method of bringing these aristocratic pranks into disrepute, will be, to treat them as merely vulgar outrages, and punish the perpetrators accordingly.

If, indeed, the small-fry of society would set themselves to imitate all that is worthy imitation in the better sort of their betters, following good examples instead of bad, it would be something to talk of. But since it is not to be expected that they will pursue virtue, piety, good sense, and good breeding for their own sakes, and as these attributes, when they exist in fashionable life—and they do exist among the most fashionable of fashionable people—are in their nature retiring and unobtrusive, while all that is bad in good society is pushed into notoriety, for the example of the mob, we must take pains to point out at some length the difference between really "good society" and what is vulgarly called good society; that is, in fact, the difference between good and bad, and to mark the distinguishing characteristics of the truly fashionable and the vulgarly fashionable man, as wide and deep as is the gulf between a gent and a gentleman.

If the fashionable world be truly represented, as it is not, in the swarms of so-called fashionable novels, gleaned from the sloppy conversation of footmen's ordinaries, or the retail tittle-tattle of lady's-maids in waiting at the registry-offices, how little is it to the credit of the mass of the reading public that they peruse such stuff; or would it be perused at all, but for that vulgar love, so prevalent about town, of imitation of the Lady Fannys and Lady Mary Dollymops, their nonchalance, their insipidity, their studied ease, and their affectation of being unaffected?

We therefore desire, before we begin, that our young lady readers, our jury of maidens, will do us the favour to dismiss from their recollection all that they may have heard and read of the fashionable world; that they will not believe the exclusives to be as dull as so many bottles of stale small-beer, or as lively as Seltzer water from the spring, with a dash of brandy in it; that they will forget that there is, in fashionable life, any thing worthy their imitation or adoption, unless it should otherwise appear by the evidence; and that they will not once take up a professedly fashionable novel till they have carefully studied and slept upon what we are going to say.

The word "world" is a comprehensive term, and should be taken in all its relations with great latitude, whether with adjectives or without. For example, the "fashionable world" is far from being an integral quantity, or capable of being reasoned upon as if it were as definite in its relations and proportions as an equilateral triangle. It contains within itself a complete gradation from fashionable excellence to fashionable villany; from fashionable virtue to fashionable vice; fashionable ladies and gentlemen, fashionable pimps, demireps, and profligates. It must be individualized if we wish to treat it fairly, as judges try prisoners severally, not in a lump. But our impressions of the fashionable world, as a class, must be taken from the general preponderating characteristics of good or evil of the whole.

Hast ever been, reader, to Bartlemy fair? If you have, you may have seen—nay, you must have seen—Richardson's immortal show. You must have seen a tall platform in front of the migratory edifice, and on that platform you must have delighted your visual orb with the clown, the pantaloon, the harlequin, the dancing ladies, the walking dandy, the king with his crown, the queen in her rabbit-skin robes, the smock-frocked countryman, the top-booted jockey, and all the dramatis personÆ of the performance that every moment of every day, during every fair, is for ever "going to begin." You may hardly have observed, sliding quietly through all this tinselled and spangled poverty, a plain carpenter-like man, in a decent suit, who looks as if he had never seen a performance in the whole course of his life, and as if he never cared to see one. This man is, or rather was, the late Mr Richardson, who died worth thirty thousand pounds, and all the clowns, harlequins, pantaloons, dancing ladies, walking dandies, kings with their crowns, and queens in their rabbit-skins, and the rest, are poor pinch-bellied devils, caricaturing humanity for some twelve or fourteen shillings a-week, finding their own paint and frippery. Now, whenever you wish to form a correct idea of the two great classes of fashionable life, call to your remembrance the gentlemen who, like the late lamented Mr Richardson, are proprietors of shows, and the berouged, bedraggled creatures who exhibit on the platform outside for their living.

To be sure, there may be a little difference in names. The proprietors of the show may be dukes, and earls, and marquisses, and so forth. The mountebanks outside may be called counts, chevaliers, knights of the order of the golden fleece, or of the thimble, or of Malta. But the realities are the same. Fashionable life is a show, truly fashionable people are the proprietors, who are never prominently or ridiculously seen therein; and these several orders of over dressed, under-fed, empty-pocketed mountebanks, are the people put on the platform outside, to astonish the eyes and ears of the groundlings.

The physique of the true fashionable is peculiar and characteristic. From the toe of his boot to the crown of his hat, there is that unostentatious, undefinable something about him distinctive of his social position. Professional men, every body knows, have an expression common to their profession. A purblind cyclops could never mistake the expression of an Independent preacher, an universal free-black-nigger Baptist minister, or a Jesuit. Every body knows an infantry officer, with his "eyes right" physiognomy, his odious black-stock, and his habit of treading on his heels, and can distinguish him from the cavalry man, straddling like a gander at a pond side. Your medical doctor has an obsequious, mealy-mouthed, hope-I-see-you-better face, and carries his hands as if he had just taken his fingers from a poultice; while your lawyer is recognised at once by his perking, conceited, cross-examination phiz, the exact counterpart to the expression of an over-indulged jackdaw.

The gentleman of fashion has nothing in common with the professional gentleman, or any other. He stands alone, "like Adam's recollection of his fall." He has an air, it is true, but his air is not a breeze, like the air of a pretender to fashion. The air of the man of fashion is a zephyr.

The expression of the man of fashion is the more difficult to reduce to words, in that it is mostly negative. It is easier to say what this expression is not, than what it is. We can only say, that there is nothing professionally distinctive about it. It is the expression of a man perfectly at ease in his position, and so well aware that he is so, that he does not seem to be aware of it. An absence of all straining after effect; a solicitude rather to avoid than to court observation. If there is any thing positively indicative in his expression, by which I include his manner, it is that of a good-humoured indifference, an inoffensive, unobtrusive stoicism. He would seem to have adopted the excellent advice given by the Apostle to the Thessalonians—"STUDY TO BE QUIET." This is his rule of life, and he acts upon it upon great and small occasions. He only desires that you will have the goodness to let him alone. If he is cheated by a man of his own set, (for he knows that he is cheated, as a matter of course, by tradespeople,) he cuts the fellow coolly. If he is insulted, he coolly calls out his man. He falls in love with coolness, marries coolly, and leads a cool connubial life. Whether he wins or loses, whatever happens to disturb the world or himself, he takes coolly, and if he has an aspiration on earth, it is that he may be cool and comfortable.

His philosophy is the mingled Stoical and Epicurean. With him life is a trifle to be gracefully played with—a "froward child, to be humoured till it falls asleep, and all is over." His indifference is imputed to him as a crime; but it should not be forgotten that, if there be any fault at all in this indifference, it is the fault of his position. Fortune is to blame, not he, for setting up a man with no other enemy than time, and no other business than amusement. We do not say that this is the true end of life; we do not enter into the enquiry, which might carry us to leeward of our subject, whether men who have the means of enjoying life, do not show the truest wisdom in pursuing enjoyment. We only know that most men similarly circumstanced would act similarly; and whether there is most vice or greatest misery in the idleness of fashionable life, or in the business of the busy world, as it is carried on in our time, I leave to those who have experience and leisure to determine.

Those who wish to study the subject further, may read at their leisure the pleasant paper in which an agreeable writer, Fontenelle, describes Aristotle and Anacreon contending for the prize of wisdom; and may decide with the essayist, giving the prize to the generous old toper of Scios, as we should have done, or to the beetlebrowed Reviewer, according to their humour.

The constitutional and habitual indifference of the man of fashion is generally supposed by those who do not know it, to be an effect of pride; but it is, generally speaking, a symptom of something more akin to humility—of timidity, in short. It is part of his system to avoid contact, save with his fellows; and with those who are not his fellows, or of his set, he is altogether out of his element. Therefore, as he is afraid of giving, and incapable of taking offence, he entrenches himself in the unstudied reserve which he finds by experience renders his individuality least assailable, exactly as he surrounds his ornamental woods, his shrubberies, and his parterres with fences, not the less strong because they are invisible.

With adventurers, people who are treading upon his kibes, equivocal pretenders who are galling his heel, he is hopelessly exclusive, preserving towards them an armed neutrality. His friendship is extended to his equals, and to his equals alone: with these his intercourse is free and unrestrained. These alone see the English man of fashion as he really exists, denuded of that armour of reserve with which he goes clothed cap-À-pie in public. Towards others he is distantly polite; and with such nice tact does he blend a distant manner with politeness, that you cannot carp at the former, or catch at the latter. He lets you see that you cannot be one of them, but in such a way that you may not quarrel with the manner in which he conveys his intimation.

With his inferior he will not be intimate, nor towards him will he be "proudly condescending." He declines to forget himself so far as for a moment to put you on a level with him; but he will not (as you too often do) degrade you by sinking you below your own level. He holds the even tenor of his way whether you trot, spaniel-like, at his heels or no; nor will he once turn round to bestow upon you either cuffs or caresses.

Although by leisure, education, and intelligence, he is qualified to converse with men of genius, he prefers conversing with them through the medium of their works. He is aware that the days of subscriptions, and "striking for dedications," are past and gone, and that the public have taken the place of the patron. He knows that the habits, employments, and in most instances the circumstances, of intellectual men preclude their mingling familiarly in fashionable circles, on equal terms, and that upon no other terms will they consent to be met. He neither patronizes nor neglects them, but is content to stand in the relation towards them of one of the reading public.

His indifference to the fate and fortunes of deserving men has been, among the vulgar, a common imputation upon the man of fashion, of which class most frequently is the man of power. He is accused of lavishing his favours only upon the toady and the tuft-hunter, and leaving men of independent mind to the caprice of fortune.

This complaint comes with a very bad grace from men who would be thought independent. The man who wants the patronage of the great, must go in search of it, whether he call himself independent or no. Men in power are accustomed to be met more than half way; and the independent man, whether he have merit or no, who expects people of rank to come in search of him, and to hunt him out of the obscurity of his garret, will find himself very much mistaken.

None are truly independent while in pursuit of objects which are attainable only by the pleasure of another. The truly independent are those who not only do not solicit favours, but those who do not want them: and there is seen too often, among needy and struggling men of merit, an irritable pride, a "fiertÉ," arising not from a sense of independence, but a consciousness of neglect; and many men boast of the pleasure of an independent life, as many ladies exalt the delights of single blessedness, only because they have never had the offer of changing their condition.

It is quite as unfair, too, to accuse people of condition of bestowing all their favours upon toadies, tuft-hunters, and bear-leaders. The truth is, as they are not in the habit of going into the highways to lookout for persons whereupon to confer obligations, they are obliged to take up with such as offer themselves to their notice. While the man of independence is dreaming away his existence over books and papers in his closet, and cursing the barbarism of the age that does not take him by the hand, and set him up in high places, the man of the world is pushing his fortune in a worldly way, and is content not to talk of independence until he has secured it. The hard words, tuft-hunter, toady, and so forth, are applied, it may be, oftener than they are deserved: led-captain is a term of frequent reproach, but it must always be considered that that sort of talent will be chiefly noticed and rewarded which is in demand in certain circles; fashionable people desire neither to be deafened with wit, nor bewildered with philosophy, nor oppressed with learning; their business, to which they have been brought up, is to glide smoothly through life, and their patronage is chiefly extended to those who offer to relieve them of its petty cares and small annoyances, which men of solid and sterling merit are not able, and, if they were able, are not willing to do.

A wealthy cit has as little regard for men of letters as a fashionable, nor has he the same tact of concealing his indifference; the well-bred man of fashion, who is alone truly the man of fashion, studies tact above all things, and his tact prevents him ever regarding men of mind with any thing approaching contempt.

His friendly offices, which his equals never require, he generally bestows upon men whose position in society is marked and permanent, and who never can by any possibility compete with him; to these, if they be safe—that is, if they keep quiet, and are content to enjoy a sort of unpretending familiarity, without boasting or pluming themselves upon their position, he does the kindest and most liberal things, in the kindest and most liberal way; in a way that no other man than one truly fashionable can accomplish. He confers benefits with an affable and disinterested air, which, while it increases the burden of obligation, seems to demand no acknowledgement; he bestows without seeming to know that he is bestowing, and knowing enough of human nature to be aware that to the deserving, obligations have something humiliating, he wishes to make the burden as light as possible.

One of the most amiable qualities about the aristocracy is their liberality and kindness to their dependents; you seldom or never hear any one who has served them faithfully and long having reason to complain. To do something for these people is part of their system, and not to see them neglected or in want, a point of honour. This kindly feeling they extend, as far as their power or influence extends—to humble friends, electioneering partizans, poor connexions. They are always kind and considerate, provided only these persons possess that unpresuming quietude of manner, which makes up a considerable part of that character they delight in, and which they call safe. If you introduce to one of these people of fashion, any man who may have an object in view, the first enquiry is, what are his claims—that is, what equivalent has he given, or can he give, for the favours he expects? for it is with the high, as with the low world, nothing for nothing; and secondly, you must be prepared to answer for his safety, so that, whatever may be said or done, nothing may, by any possibility, leak out of the protegÉ. This accounts for so many perfumed, be-wigged, purblind, silky fellows being taken in and "done for" by the great; and although these fellows dress like fools, and look like fools, depend on't, they are not the fools you take them for: they are aware, that nothing so effectually throws off their guard and disarms the great, as a well-carried affectation of gentlemanly effeminacy, and "a still small voice, like a woman's." We happen to know that some of these people, for this very delicacy of air and manner picked out of the dirt, and carried into high places, who are au naturel, as we may say, when they go home, and have laid aside the wigs, silk waistcoats, quizzing-glasses, and the rest of their disguise, as honest, friendly, and unaffected fellows, as are in the world—only they do not desire that any body should say so.

Of a man with a stiff back, black beard, short hair, loud voice, and buff waistcoat, people of fashion, on the contrary, stand in continual awe; his tongue is to them a rattlesnake's tail wagging only as a signal for them to get out of his way; they quiver like an aspen at the sound of his voice, and for their own particular, would rather hear the sharpening of a saw: if such a one courts their acquaintance, they are hopelessly, despairingly polite; if, as is usual, he then waxes insolent, and, as the fast fellows would call it, slangs them, they are delighted with the opportunity of displaying that placid indifference upon which they pride themselves as one of their exclusive accomplishments.

Another peculiarity of truly fashionable people is, that they never say or do spiteful, or vindictive things; revenge and spite they consider low, plebeian, and vulgar; besides, vindictiveness of any kind disturbs their equanimity, puts them out of their way, and levels them with the people who may have injured or annoyed them; they cannot endure jaundice of body or mind, and equally abhor any thing that sticks either in the gall, bladder, or "gizzard." Their defensive armour, than which none can be less penetrable, is equanimity; their weapons, unstudied indifference and dignified neglect.

Towards their own "order," they are invariably consistent in kindness and consideration; they stand by, and stand to, one another with a paternal amity, which is only outwardly disturbed by politics; embarrassment or necessity effaces conventional distinctions of politics, and Whig or Tory is always ready to provide for "honest Jack," or "do something" for "poor Fred." But we are not to consider their exertions in this way, accompanied with any self-sacrifice or self-denial; holding in their own hands the means of providing for their friends or relatives, they usually so contrive matters that they lose nothing by it.

To the peculiar quietude of manner, and characteristic gentleness of persons of fashion, in their intercourse with each other, we have many concurring testimonies of impartial observers: of these, the most just at once, and eloquent, that we remember to have read, is that contained in an ever-memorable letter from a Mr Tomkins to a Mrs Jenkins, attributed (with what justice, deponent knoweth not) to a noble and learned lord, supreme in natural theology and excitability, remarkable for versatile nose and talents, and distinguished for chequered fortunes, and "inexpressibles" to match. This learned lord, or Tomkins aforesaid, or whoever may have been the inditer of the epistle ad Jenkins, is eloquent exceedingly upon the narcotine of fashionable life: declares that its soothing influences were unequalled by vapour of purest mundungus, or acetate of morphia, or even pill of opium, blended intimately with glass of eau-de-vie. Tomkins is quite right: no man, admitted by whatever door, or ascending by whatever staircase, to the salons of the great, fails to be impressed with the idea that there exists among what the Post calls the "gay and fastidious habituÉs" of the place, every disposition to place him perfectly at his ease: and, if he cannot be at ease, the fault is in him, not in his entertainers. To a great nisi prius lawyer, accustomed during a long life to the discrimination of character in the way of his profession, such a contrast as is presented by the repose and unobtrusive politesse of high life, compared with the brusquerie of the world below, must have been doubly delightful; and we are glad to have upon record the just and eloquent testimony to its existence and social value from so eloquent a pen.

The world without is apt to confound reserve and distance among the great, with pride and insensibility: even those who, admitted by sufferance to fashionable circles, behold the peculiar charm of high life through a wintry atmosphere: the free and unrestrained converse of men of fashion with their equals, none but themselves can know, and none but themselves describe.

Their habit of living, among themselves, is generally simple, and devoid of extravagance or ostentation: they have the best of every thing it is true, but then they have all the advantages of unbounded competition. and unlimited credit: they pay when they think proper, but no tradesman ever dares venture to ask them for money: such as have the bad taste to "dun" are "done:" the patient and long-suffering find their money "after many days." Their amusements among themselves are inexpensive, almost to meanness: the subscription to Almacks, that paradise of exclusives, and envy of the excluded, amounts to not more than half a-guinea a ball, if so much: a stall at the opera costs a young man of fashion, for the season, forty, fifty, or sixty pounds, according to position: for this he is entitled to an ivory ticket, which, when he does not feel inclined to go himself, he can transfer for the evening to another. If he have the misfortune to be a younger brother, many little windfalls come to his share, the results of his relationship. He has an apartment at his elder brother's town-house, or he resides with the dowager, or with a maiden aunt; somebody keeps his cab horse, and some other body keeps the saddle-horse that Lady Mary or Jack Somebody gave him; his "tiger" has the run of all his friends' kitchens as a matter of course, and, as a matter of course, himself has two or three invitations a-day during the season; though, like other poor men, he prefers dining independently at his club. He is on very good terms with the "girls" of his set, and is allowed a little innocent flirtation, because he is known to have tact enough not to compromise himself or them by falling in love, or paying "ridiculous" addresses: although a little "fast" perhaps, he is perfectly safe, and is on good terms with every body except his eldest brother: he is the idol of countesses-dowager, who hand him a few hundreds whenever he is short, pay his debts for him—give him good advice, and call him "Freddy dear:" in short, although he has nothing, excepting his boot-hooks, that he can possibly call his own, he is a merry, good-natured, honest, harmless fellow, a favourite with every body, and envied for his light-heartedness even by his more fortunate elder brother.

In a book published some five-and-thirty years ago, is an account of the then prevailing method of killing a fashionable day: as the pursuit of inanity and folly has a tedious sameness about it, this picture will answer, with a few variations, for the man of fashion of to-day.

"About twelve, he (the man of fashion) rises, lolls upon a sofa, skims the newspaper, and curses its stupidity. He is particularly angry if he does not find in it a paragraph which he sent to the agent of a fashionable newspaper, generally the Morning Post, who lives by procuring such sort of intelligence, containing an account of his having dined at some titled man's table the day before, with whom, if he has no rank himself, he is particularly anxious to mingle. After swallowing several cups of tea and cocoa, and slices of foreign sausages and fowls, he assumes his riding coat, and sallies out to his stables to inspect his horses, and chat with his coachman and grooms.

"Having finished this review and audience, he orders his curricle, and, followed by a couple of grooms, he dashes through most of the principal streets, and calls upon the most celebrated coach and harness makers; at the latter he is shown several new bits for his approbation. He then proceeds to his breeches-maker, thence to Tattersall's, where he is sure to meet a great number of friends, with whom he kills another hour discussing the merits of the different animals he meets with there. These important duties being done, he strolls to an exhibition, or to a print-shop, and looks over a portfolio of caricatures; thence he keeps on moving to a fashionable hotel, to take white spruce beer(!) and sandwiches; here, after arranging his parties for the evening, be returns home to dress. After looking over the cards which have been left for him, he proceeds to his toilette with his valet, and is dressed about seven, when his chariot is at the door, and he drives either to some family to dinner, or to the hotel he visited in the morning, when he perhaps formed a party of four. At ten o'clock he enters the Opera, and like a butterfly moves from box to box; thence behind the scenes; after which he proceeds to one or two routs, or some fashionable gaming-house, and about four is in bed, to recruit himself for a repetition of the same course the next day.

"These loungers have a phraseology peculiar to themselves. A short time since, if one of them was asked how he was, the answer would have been, 'we are in force to-day;' if his wife was enquired after, 'she is in high preservation;' if asked how often he had been at the opera, 'it is my second opera.' They also say, perhaps, speaking of some illustrious hero, 'he's a fine brave fellow, but he ties his handkerchief most shockingly.' I also remember being one day in Hyde Park, when a gentleman rode up to one of these loungers, and after exchanging salutations, the former said to the latter, I wish much to have the pleasure of seeing you—are you engaged next Wednesday? Upon which the other turned round to a little half starved groom, and said, 'John, am I engaged next Wednesday?'

"The women of fashion," observes this writer, "are just as great and as insipid idlers, in their way, as are the male triflers. They seldom walk in the streets, but are almost always cooped up in their carriages, driving about the streets, and leaving their cards at the houses of their friends, whom they never think of seeing, although they may be at home at the time; thence they proceed to the most expensive jewellers, where they order a piece of plate or a trinket; thence to some fashionable milliner."

This picture is not altogether like, but some of the features may certainly be easily reorganized; if we substitute sherry, a chop, and a club in Pall-Mall, for white spruce beer, sandwiches, and a tavern; replacing the curricle and footman by a cab and tiger, the remainder, with trivial alterations, may stand good of the fashionable idler of to-day, as of him of the last century.

In childhood, nay, even in infancy, for all I can see to the contrary, the physique of persons of fashion is sufficiently distinctive and characteristic of the class. If you walk in the parks and gardens, and notice these young thoroughbreds exercising under the care of their nurses, their tutors, and their nursery governesses, you will be perfectly convinced that they are as easily to be distinguished in all their points and paces from the children of the mobility, as is a well-blooded Arabian from a Suffolk punch.

The small oval head, clustered with rippling ringlets, as Alfred Jennyson calls them; the clear laughing eye, the long fair neck, the porcelain skin, warmed with the tenderest tinge of pink, so transparent withal that you almost see the animal spirit careering within; the drooping shoulder, the rounded bust, clean limbs, well-turned ankle, fine almost to a fault, the light springy step, the graceful easy carriage, the absence of sheepishness or shyness, an air cheerful without noise, a manner playful without rudeness, and you have the true son or daughter of the Englishman of fashion.

Then, how characteristic of the class of which these children are the rising hope, is the taste displayed in their dress; they are attired with costly simplicity; or, if a fond mamma indulges in any little extravagance of childish costume, you see that it is the extravagance of taste; there is no tawdriness, no over-dressing, no little ones in masquerade, they dress appropriately, and, at the same time, distinctively.

Pretty souls! Many a time and oft have we wandered forth of the turbulent town, less to brace our unstrung nerves by the elastic air—less to bathe our wearied eyes in the green light of earth's bosom, than to drive away sad thoughts in the contemplation of your innocent gambols; with our stick; delight we to launch your mimic barks from the sandy shores of Serpentine; with you, glad are we to make haste, expecting the fastest sailer on the further shore; with you, we exult, once more a boy, in the speed of our trim-built favourite.

We love the old Newfoundland dog, ay, and the old footman, as much as you do, and could hang like you about both their necks; we wish you would not think us too big a boy to "stop" for you at single-wicket; imaginary hoops we trundle in your gleesome train; like you, we have a decided aversion to "taw," considering it not young-gentleman-like; we, too, forgetting that the governess is single and two-and-thirty, wonder on earth what can make governess so cross; we love you, when we see you hand in hand squiring your little sister, saluting your little sister's little friends, carrying their little parasols, and helping them over little stony places, like little gentlemen. Happy, happy dogs! we envy neither your birth nor the fortune that awaits you, nor repine we that our fate condemns us to tug the unremitting oar against that tide of fortune upon which, with easy sail, you will float lightly down to death; the whole heart, the buoyant spirit, the conscience yet unstung by mute reproach of sin; these things we envy you—not the things so mean a world can give, but the things which, though it cannot give, soon—alas, how soon—it takes away!

Contrast these children with the children of Mr Deputy Stubbs of the ward of Farringdon Within, or common Councillor Muggs of Bassishaw; they really do not look like animals of the same species.

The rising Stubbses and Muggses have heads shaped like a China orange, croppy hair, chubby chins, chubby cheeks, and blazing red and chubby noses—short, pursy, apoplectic necks, like their fathers—squab, four-square figures, mounted upon turned legs, with measly skins; so that, taken altogether, they are exceedingly offensive and disagreeable. Then they eat, these young, Stubbses and Muggses, how they do eat! then they are dressed, how they are dressed! five different tartans, four colours in velvet, seven sorts of ribbons, and a woolpack of fleecy hosiery, as if there wasn't another Stubbs or Muggs in existence; then how they annoy and infest, with bad manners and noise, the deputies and common-councilmen who visit at Stubbses and Muggses; how the maids "drat them" all day long, and how Mrs Stubbs and Mrs Muggs hate Mr Sucklethumb, the butterman, because he never "notices the child."

Another extraordinary phenomenon you cannot fail to observe in the children of the aristocracy; they seem to skip over the equivocal period, the neutral ground of human life, and emerge from the chrysaloid state of childhood, into the full and perfect imago of little lords and gentlemen, and little ladies, without any of those intermediate conditions of laddism, hobble-de-hoyism, or bread-and-butterishness, so prominently characteristic of the approaching puberty of the rest of the rising generation. Your Eton boy is not a boy, he is a young gentleman; your Lady Louisa is not a girl, she is only not yet "come out;" how to account for the peculiarity I know not, except the knowledge of the fact, that attention to the petites morales forms so great a part of the education of our rising aristocracy, and is considered so vitally important to their proper carriage, as well in their set as out of it, that their children are as far advanced in this particular at fifteen, as the children of middling people at twenty-five. The petticoat-string by which the youth of the non-fashionable class is tied to their mother, is a ligature not in use among the fashionable world; from the earliest period professional persons are employed in their education, and the mother never shows in the matter. Whether this, or any other peculiarity of the class, be an advantage or a disadvantage, natural or unnatural, right or wrong, it is not for the writer to say; he only points out what he has observed; and if he has failed to state it properly, let him be properly corrected.

Our aristocratic youth we take the liberty to classify, as they do coaches, of which they are so passionately fond, into

1. FAST,
2. SLOW.

The fast youths have several degrees of swiftness, from the railway pace, down through imperceptible gradations, to ten miles an hour, at which rate of going the fast fellows end, and the slow fellows begin.

Of these last there are also many varieties, from the tandem and tax-cart down to the waggon and dog-truck; and it cannot be denied, that as regards the former more especially, there is a great similarity between the youths themselves and the vehicles they govern; they go very fast, don't know what they are driving at, are propelled in any direction by much more sagacious animals than themselves, and are usually empty inside. The fast fellows are divided, moreover, into the occasional and permanently fast; and first of the occasional fast fellows:—

These form a very considerable proportion of our fashionable youth, and combine the gentleman with a dash of the petit-maitre, overlaying a naturally good disposition with a surface of scampishness, which, however, they lay down when they marry, and thenceforward they belong altogether to the slow school.

The permanently fast fellows deserve a more detailed notice, since they are always before the police magistrates and the public, in one shape or another; and although often committing themselves, are seldom or never committed.

The members of this class it is who furnish the democratic Sunday papers with a never-ending succession of articles, headed "THE ARISTOCRACY AGAIN," "BRUTALITY OF THE HIGHER CLASSES," "DEPRAVITY OF THE NOBBY ONES," and the like and it is from these fast fellows, unfortunately, that a great many ignorant people draw their conclusions of fashionable life and conversation in general, extending the vices of a few shameless profligates to the entire of the little world, commonly called the great.

The permanently fast fellows, or, as we think their general demeanour entitles them to be called, "Blackguard Nobs," are a lot of little, scrubby, bad-blooded, groom-like fellows, who have always, even from childhood, been incorrigible, of whom nursery governesses could make nothing, and whose education tutors abandoned in despair; expelled from Eton, rusticated at Cambridge, good for nothing but mischief in boyhood, regularly bred scamps and profligates in youth, and, luckily for mankind, generally worn-out before they attain the wrong side of forty. A stable is their delight, almost their home, and their olfactories are refreshed by nothing so much as by the smell of old litter, to which attar of roses is assafoetida in comparison.

Their knowledge of horses, which they get at second-hand from Field, or some of the other crack veterinaries, is their only pride, and indeed the only thing they imagine any man ought to be proud of; they reverence a fellow who has a good seat in his saddle, and delight in horsemanship, because horsemanship requires no brains; driving a "buggy" in good style is respectable, but "shoving along" a four-in-hand the highest exercise of human intellect, as for Milton and Shakspeare, and such inky-fingered old prigs, who never had a good horse in their lives, they despise such low fellows thoroughly. Their chief companions, or rather, their most intimate friends, are the fellows who hang about livery stables, betting-rooms, race-courses, and hippodromes; crop-eared grooms, chaunters, dog-stealers, starveling jockeys, blacklegs, foreign counts, breeders, feeders; these are all "d—d honest fellows," and the "best fellows in the world," although they get their living by cheating the fast fellows, who patronize them.

Of money, they know no more than that it is a necessary instrument of their pleasures, and must be got some how or anyhow; accordingly, they are on intimate terms with a species of shark called a bill-discounter, who commits upon them every sort of robbery, under the sanction of the law; and who also is always a "d—d honest fellow."

They can be sufficiently liberal of their money, whenever they have any, to all who do not want, or who do not deserve it; if a prize-fighter becomes embarrassed in his circumstances, or a jockey is "down upon his luck," it is quite refreshing to see the madness with which the fast fellows strike for a subscription; an opera-dancer out of an engagement, or an actress in the same interesting condition, provided they are not modest women, have, they think, a claim upon their generosity—and perhaps they have.

They think it ungentlemanly to cheat, or, as they call it, "stick" any of their own set, except in matters of horse-flesh; but "sticking" any body out of their own set, especially tradesmen, is considered an excellent joke, and the "sticker" rises several degrees in public estimation.

We should be doing great injustice to the fast fellows if we omitted a brief notice of their accomplishments. Driving is, of course, the chief; and, by long experience and impunity, wonderfully grand exploits are achieved by the fast fellows in this department.

One of the most original is to get into a strong cab, with a very powerful horse, lamps lit, tiger inside, and to go quietly along, keeping a sharp look-out for any night cabman who may be "lobbing," as the phrase is, off his stand, the moment the "game," who is generally one part asleep and three parts drunk, is espied, put your horse to full gallop, and, guiding your vehicle with the precision fast fellows alone attain, whip inside the cabwheel, and take it off. The night cab comes down by the run, the night cabman tumbles off, breaking his nose or neck, as it may happen, and you drive off as if the devil kicked you. When you have gone a couple of miles, make a circumbendibus back again to the night-house frequented by your set, and relate the adventure, with the same voice and countenance as a broker quotes the price of stocks; then order a cool bottle of claret with the air of a man who has done a meritorious action!

Another accomplishment, at which not a few of the fast fellows excel, is that of imitating upon a key-bugle various animals, in an especial manner the braying of an ass: when the fast fellows drive down to the Trafalgar at Greenwich, the Toy at Hampton Court, or the Swan at Henley upon Thames, the bugle-player mounts aloft, the rest of the fast fellows keeping a lookout for donkeys; when one is seen, a hideous imitative bray is set up by the man of music, and his quadrupedal brother, attracted by the congenial sound, rushes to the roadside—mutual recognition, with much merriment, is the result.

The fast fellow who does this best, is considered one of the immortals; and we are not without expectation, in due time, of seeing his talent rewarded by a pension.

Breaking bells, twisting knockers, and "knapping" rail-heads, has descended so low of late that the fast fellows are ashamed of it, and have resigned it to the medical students, patriotic young members of Parliament, and others of the imitative classes; but there yet exists, or very lately existed, a collection of these and various other surreptitiously acquired properties, known among the fast fellow by the title of ——'s Museum, every article being ticketed artistically, and the whole presenting an example of devotion to the cause of science, we believe, without a parallel.

These are a few of the comparatively innocent amusements of the fast fellows; others there are of graver character, which we need not refer to, especially as the fast school is fast wearing itself out, and many of the fast fellows already begin to "put on the drag," and go at a more reasonable pace.

Their ignorance, with the single exception of horse-flesh, is appalling. Nobody who does not know the fast fellows, would credit that men could by any possibility grow up in such absolute ignorance of whatever a gentleman is expected to know; whatever a gentleman is expected not to know, they have at their tongues' and fingers' ends.

Intellectual men, of whatever description, they regard with the most perfect indifference—an indifference too passive for contempt; they affect to wonder, or probably do wonder, what such men are for, or why people sometimes talk about them. Books they find convenient for putting under the legs of barrack-room tables, to bring them to a level, and think they are made of different sizes for that purpose; but no fast fellow was ever yet detected in looking into one of them, to see whether there was any thing inside. Such as have been taught to spell, employ part of the Sunday in deciphering the smutty jokes of the Satirist, and pronounce the jokes "d—d good," and the paper "a d—d honest paper." If they happen, by any chance, to come into contact with one of the slow school, or any body who has been taught to read, they have a method of silencing his battery, which they think "capital." If a man should say in their company, that Chaucer was a great poet, one will immediately enquire, "how much?" while another wishes to know if Chaucer is entered for the "Derby?" "How much?" is the invariable slang, whenever a man gets the bit out of his mouth, or, in other words, talks of any thing but horses.

There is no novelty in this; it is only a second edition of Dean Swift's "new-fashioned way of being witty," which, in his fashionable day, was called "a bite." "You must ask a bantering question," he informs Stella, "or tell some damned lie in a serious manner, and then they will answer or speak as if you were in earnest; then cry you, 'there's a bite.' I would not have you undervalue this, for it is the constant amusement in court, and every where else among the great people; and I let you know it, in order to have it obtain amongst you, and teach you a new refinement."

If they accept an invitation from Lord Northampton to go to one of his soirÉes, which they sometimes do for a "lark," their antics are vastly amusing; they put on grave, philosophic faces, and mimic the savans to the life; if the noble president, thinking he is doing the polite thing, points out to them a poet, for example, or a professor, they have a knack of elevating the shoulders, looking at the man with a pitying air, and whispering the words "poor beast," with a tone and manner quite inimitable. Indeed this is one of the few clever things they do, and on or off the stage we have never seen any thing like it.

If Dickens were to die—an event that, we hope and trust, may not occur these fifty years, the fast fellows would have some such conversation upon the event, as follows:—

A. So, Dickens, I hear, is dead.

B. How much?

C. What's that?

A. Why, Pickwick, to be sure.

B. Oh! Eh? Pickwick—Moses—Bath coach—I know.

C. Pickwick—near Chippenham? Paul Methven lives there—I know.

A. No—no—I tell you, he's a man that writes.

B. Is he? He may be. How should I know?

C. Well—it's a d——d hard case, that, at the beginning of the season, I should have lost a d——d good tiger. Has any body got a d——d small tiger for sale?

As we are in the humour for dialogue, we may as well give a verbatim report of our last interview with Lord——, who had been a fast fellow in his youth. We encountered him on the sunny side of St James's Street, the other day, tottering to Brookes's: although we don't expect you to believe it, what passed was, as we recollect it, exactly as follows:—

"Well, my Lord, I hope your gout is better?"

"Eh—how are you? Well, I think I am better, d'ye know."

"Glad to hear it."

"Thankee—thankee—d'ye know, eh, I've changed my doctor?"

"Well, and how d'ye like your new one?"

"Capitally—eh—d'ye know, he's a clever fellow. Young—eh—but clever—very. D'ye know, eh—he corresponds regularly with—eh—with Sir Humphrey Newton and Sir Isaac Davy!"