union in the several callings of the thief and the officer. They have grown together in happy relationship since the days of Jonathan Wild. A poet of the last century says, "My evenings all I would with sharpers spend, And make the thief-catcher my bosom friend." And indeed they are very pretty companions together over their claret. The dignitary sits with his feet under the same mahogany with the returned convict; or he is Vice to the Rothschild of the flash-house, who at that moment is negotiating with the partners of the Bristol Bank, touching the return of twenty thousand pounds' worth of abstracted bills, for the honourable consideration of fifty per cent. and no prosecution. Civilisation was very little advanced when the commonwealth of thieves was really persecuted. The present administration of the laws against felony is the key-stone that binds the arch of depredation. Without magistrates and officers, who do not prevent crime, but nurse it, men individually would peril their lives against those who invade their property. But all this possible bloodshed is now saved. A well-ordered police, the stipendiaries at once of the public and those who ease the public of their superfluous possessions, accommodates all difficulties; and, gradually, the rights of thieves are as effectually recognised as the rights of any other painstaking class of the community. Look at this arrangement, and see, not only how much VOL. II. N it has contributed to the respectability of the profession of larceny, but what an insurance of their lives it gives to society, by rendering robbery a quiet gentlemanly art, in which violence is only the argument of bunglers, and which is carried to the highest point of perfection by that division of labour, upon which all excellence, whether mental or mechanical, must be built. It occasionally happens that the most brilliant example of professional success is apprehended, convicted, and hanged. This is part of the con· tract by which the commonwealth of thieves has purchased its charter. The compact is- for the police, a share of profits, and no trouble ;-for the sons of Mercury, protection in general, and a very sparing selection of needful victims. When the time arrives that the career of individual happiness and friendship is to close, there is no shrinking. The ripened felon is a soldier, under the orders of a commander whom he honours; and it is to hima gratification to look back upon the years of comfort he has secured by this compromise with power, instead of being perpetually hunted into some pitiful occupation, which the world calls honest, by a vigilance which should never sleep. At last he dies. Well! in the latest moment he is a privileged being. Fame hovers around him, from the bar to the gallows. He exhibits great composure on his trial; leaves his defence, with a dignified satisfaction, to his counsel; bows to the judge, when he pronounces sentence; and "is fashionably dressed Then come the con in a complete suit of black." solations of spiritual friends. In the interval between the condemnation and the Recorder's report, he becomes perfectly satisfied that he is purified from every stain;-after the fatal mandate arrives, he declares that his only anxiety is to die, lest he should fall into his former errors; and he leaves the world with such exultations of pious people attending him, as martyrs were wont to monopolize, —bowing to the admiring crowd, and “sucking an orange till the drop falls!" DEAR AND CHEAP. ON the 2nd November, 1667, the pleasure-hunting Samuel Pepys, Esq., goes to the King's Playhouse, where he saw 'Henry the Fourth;'-and there he saw something which he deems as worthy of record as Cartwright's acting: "The house full of Parliament-men, it being holiday with them; and it was observable how a gentleman of good habit, sitting just before us, eating of some fruit in the midst of the play, did drop down as dead, being choked; but with much ado Orange Mall did thrust her finger down his throat, and brought him to life again." Orange Mall was a person of energy and discretion; and as she sold her oranges to Parliament-men in the boxes of the King's Playhouse, which they sucked without a compromise of their gentility, she imparted many a piece of scandal, and joined in many an aristocratic laugh which was louder than the voices of the players. In another entry of his 'Diary,' Pepys says, "Sir W. Pen and I had a great deal of discourse with Mall, who tells us that Nell is already left by my Lord Buckhurst." Some sixty years after, Hogarth painted the Orange Malls of his time, in 'The Laughing Audience.' One of these ladies in the boxes is presenting her fruit to an admiring beau in a bag-wig; whilst another, reaching up from the pit, is touching his ample sleeve, to call attention to her basket. Those were the days of dear oranges; when the fruit was an exclusive luxury for the rich. They had been cried in the streets in the days of Ben Jonson ;* and in the time of Orange Mall London heard the cry of "Fair lemons and oranges-oranges and citrons." It did not follow that they were cheap. Hogarth's orange-women carry very small baskets. At the end of the last century the orange-seller of the streets was a barrow-woman, described by Porson in his song of 'Pizarro :'— "As I walk'd through the Strand so cheerful and gay, Fine fruit, sir,' says she, 'and a bill of the play.'' The orange-woman of the streets has passed away. The fruit is now so universal that its shops and stalls are to be found in every quarter. It is the fruit of London-the cheap luxury that rapid communication has placed within the reach of all ranks. Its progress from the Antilles to the markets of England is a suggestive fact. The January sun rises brightly over the North Atlantic. It will be a busy day in Terceira and Fayal, and Saint Michael. The orange-trees are bending under their golden produce. The ships are waiting for their lading. The gatherers have been busy in the orange-gardens, and there are piles of the half-ripe fruit heaped up in readiness *See Trivia,' p. 28. |