We backward gaze in after years
To view the scenes of early days,
While in the eyes the unbidden tear
The heart's emotion oft betrays.

Who that has written verses does not
sympathise with the poet's sacrifice in giving up
the plural of tear, so demanded by his rhyme,
to the cruel law of agreement between noun
and verb?

And thus old age with childhood meets
   Until the soul can dream no more:
The past is then a grave of sweets,
   And flowers blossom all before.

How could it be supposed, urges our author,
that there was evil lurking in the heart
of him who composed lines so tender, so
reflective, and so sweet in sentiment ? Not,
however, that this would be any bar to
W. J. R. as a popular writer, for it seems
that if the private histories of half the men
who are now earning livelihoods by their
pens were known, he (biographer) has that
faith in the public appreciation of morality
that their works (sic) would be treated with
scorn and contempt. After reading the above
lyric, who but must exclaim, that " Life is
a mingled yarn of good and ill." If his
(W. J. R.'s) memory should now return to
his boyhood's home, to the gate by the old
trees which once he loved to muse upon,—
woodcut of gate and trees most dexterously j
introduced,—how rudely would it be snapped
and annihilated by the discord of the prison
bell, by the brutal visages of his brothers in
crime,who now surround him at his oakum toil;
"a labour which, independent of the disgrace
of it, is one of the most difficult and unpleasant
tasks that can be conceived." The necessity
for introducing the pictures leads our
author again and again to wander from the
subject of his work into pathos of this
description; a certain Mr. Glindon, too, alias
Courteney, alias Romanoff, is made the
instrument of introducing us into some charming
pictorial scenes- the offer of his hand in
marriage to the daughter of a duchess being
one of them—in which Mr. Robson, perforce,
does not appear, or becomes, at least, a very
secondary personage. Enter, also, a dairyman
and his daughter, who inhabit a dwelling in
the neighbourhood of the Tower of London,
more than usually attractive; the ivy being
trained over its Gothic front, and the little
enclosed garden studded with statues, while
parrots of every hue and from every clime
chattered on their perches: by some
extraordinary error of the compositor, there is,
however, no woodcut of this residence. From the
fifty-fourth page we are favoured with the
company of our hero for a considerable time,
and really under very interesting
circumstances. William James Robson is there a
play-writer; and, what is very much more,
he gets his plays acted. Whether he had
to pay for that luxury or not, does not
appear; but it is a suspicious coincidence
that his success with the managers did not
take place before his successful frauds upon
the Crystal Palace Company. The Tempter,
we learn, assailed him like another Adam in
that three hundred acres of well wooded
undulating ground at Sydenham; and he fell.
The reputation of a popular dramatic author,
at all events, combined with his known
connection with some antimony works at Lam-
beth, assisted in disarming suspicion by
accounting for his excessive extravagance. The
writer of Waltheoff, The Seltish Man, Bianca,
and Love and Loyalty—which last seems to
have had a run at the Marylebone theatre of
from eighty to a hundred nights—might surely
maintain two elegant establishments as well
as his respectable home at Kilburn. With
his domestic relations as bad as bad could be
and a commercial character growing more
felonious daily, it is certainly surprising that
Robson should have produced a drama like
Love and Loyalty. It is of the period of the
Restoration, and abounds with the most
high-flown cavalier opinions. "Bianca," says the
biographer, "the most ambitious of W. J.
R.'s productions, was actually in rehearsal at
Drury Lane at the time of its author's flight
to Copenhagen."

From the time of his capture in that city
until his sentence of twenty years transportation
was pronounced, Robson's history has
been made public enough to all students of
criminal literature. One thing only has been
confided to us by the faithful biographer, with
which we were not before acquainted:
"William James Robson had bought a finger-ring
capable of secreting prussic acid absorbed in
a bit of sponge, and wore this instrument of
death ingeniously enclosed beneath a sparkling
diamond." This, however, was consigned to
the great deep upon his voyage home.

What a different sort of person is this from
the vulgar ruffian who hangs himself to the
prison bars by his belcher handkerchief!
Honour to crime by all means, but let us
discriminate, not cast away our admiration
upon unworthy objects; not only are we
uncompromising for the villain, the whole villain,
and nothing but the villain, but he must be
a delicate and accomplished villain too. I,
the writer of this paper, in company with the
Greek professor at a northern university
went to pay my respects last March to one of
the handsomest and most successful heroes of
this kind at Hoxton. We were wandering
about the pleasant fields of Pentonville, when
these grim words, in an enormous type and
yellow - crime-colour as it seems—attracted
our attention,—THE YELL OF DOOM.

They stood out upon the prison walls,
a frightful warning to its inmates; they
strewed the new cattle market opposite like
autumn leaves in Vallombrosa; in the
windows of the public-houses (where I
read them from the outside, upon my honour),
around the lamp-posts, and in front and rear
of human sandwiches, who carried it about