the same penalties were decreed. In probing
and searching after heresy, Michele was not
content with inquiring into backslidings of
recent date, but insisted on making inquisition
into those of ten or twenty years' standing. "If,"
says Ranke, on the authority of the report of a
Venetian ambassador, "any place was
distinguished for the small number of its convictions,
he thought it needed purging; he attributed
its exemption from punishments to the
negligence of the authorities. . . . It was remarked
that he never commuted a sentence for a more
lenient one; on the contrary, he generally wished
them more severe."

Such was the man who now ruled where,
within the memory of middle-aged men, the
jovial, pagan-minded voluptuary, Leo the Tenth,
had so recently talked elegant Platonism with
free-thinking philosophers, laughed loud and long
with scoffing buffoons, and patronised bishops
who abstained from reading the "twaddle"
of St. Paul for fear of injuring the purity of
their Ciceronian style! But the Church was
not then in danger or rather had not yet been
discovered to be so.

CAB!

FROM my earliest youth I was taught to
regard cabmen as birds of prey. I was led to
consider that their hands were against every
man, and every man's hand ought to be against
them in self-defence. I was forbidden to
attribute their husky voices to anything but
unlimited indulgence in common spirituous liquors.
The red noses that I saw peeping from under
broad-brimmed hats, and over bee-hive-looking
caped great coats, were never said in my hearing
to arise from exposure to the weather. When
I was sent on a solitary journey—perhaps to
school—in a four-wheeled hackney-coach or cab,
I always heard a stern voice bargaining with the
driver before I was placed inside; and I looked
upon him, through the small window in front,
during the short intervals when I was not being
jerked from corner to corner of the far too
spacious vehicle, as a dangerous ogre who might
leap down and devour me at any moment.

When I grew up to attain the gay, thoughtless
position of a young man about town, I lost
my fear of the wild cab-driver, and found no
amusement so agreeable as that of playing upon
his weaknesses. My favourite plan at night
was to affect the appearance of the most idiotic
intoxication, and, when I had drawn half a dozen
eager charioteers around me, to select one, in
such a manner that he might suppose he had got
a helpless productive fare. On arriving at my
destination, of course I left the vehicle with the
steadiest of steps and the soberest of aspects,
to present him with his exact charge, as
regulated by Act of Parliament.

In due time I became a married man; and
discarded for ever these youthful freaks of fancy.
My early teaching with regard to the utter
badness of all cabmen had not disappeared, and I
still treated them with moderate severity. I
never pampered them with bonuses over their
legal fares; and I learned every distance as if I
had been an Ordnance Surveyor. I still looked
upon them as untamed, devouring creatures,
who hung upon the skirts of society, and I was
prepared to impress this view upon my children,
as my guardians had impressed it upon me.
Before, however, I had an opportunity of doing
this, my sentiments underwent a marked change.

My wife, accompanied by a servant, and our
first-born, an infant, aged three months, had
started, one November afternoon, to visit a
relative at the other side of London. The day was
misty, but when the evening came, the whole
town was filled with a dense fog, as thick as
soup. I gave them up at an early hour, never
supposing that they would attempt to break
through the black smoky barrier, and accomplish
a journey of nearly nine miles. In this I was
mistaken, for towards eleven o'clock the door
bell rang, and they presented themselves muffled
up like stage-coachmen. The account I received
was, that a four-wheeled cab had been found,
that they had been three hours and a half upon
the road, that the cabman had walked nearly
the whole way with a lamp at the head of his
horse, and that he was now outside awaiting
payment.

I felt a powerful struggle going on within me.
The legislature had fixed the price of cab-work
at two shillings an hour, or sixpence a mile, but
it had said nothing about snowstorms, fluctuations
in the price of provender, or November
fogs. There was no contract between my wife
and the cabman, and she had not engaged him
by the hour, so that, protected by the Act of
Parliament, I might have sent out four-and-six
pence for the nine miles' ride by the servant,
and have closed the door securely against the
driver. Actuated, perhaps, as much by curiosity,
as a sense of justice, I did not do this, but
ordered the man in, and gave him the dangerous
permission to name his own price. He was a
middle-aged driver, with a sharp nose, and when
he entered the room, he placed his hat upon the
floor, and seemed a little bewildered by the
novelty of his situation.

"If I am to, I am," he said, "but I'd much
rather leave it to you, sir."

"This is a journey," I replied, "hardly within
the meaning of the act, and whatever you charge,
I will cheerfully pay."

"Well," he said, with much deliberation, "I
don't think five shillin's ought to hurt you?"

"I don't think it ought," I returned,
astonished at this moderate demand,* "nor yet
seven-and-sixpence, or eight shillings. You can't
be a regular cabman?"
* This is a fact within the experience of the
writer.

My visitor pulled his badge from under his
great-coat at this remark, not quite understanding
the drift of it.

""I mean," I said, explaining the remark,
"that you've not driven a cab long."