an oblivious debtor with a post-obit, or to
cut down a slippery one with a summary
judgment! With what a bland smile he
would refuse the early tender of a green
young debtor, for fear that, once set free,
he would transplant his custom to another
establishment! What decoy-ducks he let fly
among rich young university and military
noodles, to get them enticed to his shop!
Yet, when he got them, and any of them did
not pay—which was not often; (for old
Smirker had a keen scent, and seldom put his
fashionable commission-agents upon a wrong
one) how he raved at the looseness of the
law! Well, I rave at it too, sometimes, and
with good reason.

For a man need not leave the world for
the church or a monkish seclusion to learn
patience and to mortify the passions, while the
ranks of trade are open to him. Neither
need a man who wishes to see the world, as it
is called, and study his fellow-men, spend his
money in travelling through Europe, and his
nights in the streets, while the ranks of trade
are open to him. Neither need a reflective
law-reformer retire with his ponderous tomes
to some eremitical and inaccessible nook in
the innermost of all Inner Temples, there to
perfect principles which, when forced upon
the world, shall promote the greatest happiness
of the greatest number, while the ranks
of trade are open to him. Christian recluse,
student of the world, and ardent Benthamite,
may all take their places behind the glass of
my countinghouse-door, and find their time
not unprofitably expended.

The greatest difficulty that I labour under
is infants— sturdy infants. They bristle up
in every other page of my costly ledger
(costly, I call it, because it is nearly all I got
for my ten thousand pounds); they are more
costly under the head of Cambridge than
London; and more fruitful under the head
of Oxford than Cambridge. Physically they
seem to be a very fine family of robust,
responsible young men; legally they are held
to be weak, and irresponsible idiots. Visually
they stand before me as a race of palpable,
moustached, solid giants; but when I try to
touch them with the strong arm of the law,
like the spectres of the Brocken they melt
into thin air, and the strong arm of the law
becomes strangely paralysed. Young Lord
Merthyr Tydvil is a fair average specimen of
the infant debtor. Let him sit for his portrait
under two phases,—out of court and in
court. Out of court, then, he rides a fine,
high-spirited horse, which he manages with
the ease and grace of an old patrician
horseman. In the cricket-field he bats like a
young Hercules, and bowls with the velocity
of the catapult. On the river it is a sight to
see him pull the stroke-oar against wind and
tide; and he is the reverse of contemptible
when he puts on the gloves with a bargeman
of the Cam. He wrestles and does the backfall
better than any man in all lllyria. His
age is twenty years and nine months. His
muscles are well set, and he looks older.
He handles a skilful cue at the billiard-table,
and makes an occasional bet upon horse-
races with a good deal of judgment. Intellectually
he seems to know pretty well what
he is about. I don't think his name is across
any accommodation bills, but what he has
received half the cash for. As to the amusements
and vices of the metropolis, he is one
of the best judges of them upon town, and
acts as mentor to many other infants. His
taste in wine is considered good, and his
verdict on the merits of a new ballet-dancer is
held to be final.

In court, Lord Merthyr presents a very
different appearance. That collar, which
used to stand up with such unbending
parchment-like stiffness, the admiration and envy
of Piccadilly, is now, in the eyes of the law,
turned down over each shoulder with infantine
grace, and fastened with a ribbon of
most becoming simplicity. That Chesterfield,
poncho, sack, outer-garment, coat, cloak, or
whatever it is called, which had such a
mature, distinguished, Tattersall, club-like
air in Regent Street and Hyde Park, is now,
in the eyes of the law, converted into a juvenile
pinafore, fastened round the waist with
a schoolboy's belt, and conferring on its
wearer the much-coveted gift of perpetual
youth. That embroidered cigar-case—suspicious
gift—filled with the choicest products
of Havannah, at costly prices, vanishes, in
the eye of the law, or becomes transformed
into a box of sweetmeats, provided by the
thoughtful care of a mother or a sister.
That onyx-handled bamboo-cane, which taps
the neatest of boots on the lounge in Rotten
Row, is now, in the eyes of the law, a mere
rounder stick, or an implement used in guiding
a hoop.

Those rooms in Jermyn Street, decorated
with pictures in the chastest taste, and littered
with boxing-gloves, broken pipes, and
champagne corks, are, in the eyes of the law,
the cradle of a child—a child who possesses
a charmed life, invulnerable to the shafts of
the hateful sheriff. Poor, young, innocent,
neglected, infant nobleman—type of some
hundreds of children that I find upon my
books, or rather the books of the late John
Smirker, my predecessor—when I hear that
thy aristocratic father, Earl Merthyr Tydvil,
is in Italy with—— no matter, I will not
dwell upon the painful subject, and that the
paternal acres are safely lodged in a dingy
office in Lincoln's Inn Fields, I feel a sense
of pity for thee springing up in my snobbish,
tradesman's heart. I have fed thee, and I
have clothed thee, and I look upon thee as
my own. Even if the law did not throw its
protecting shield before thee, I would not
touch a hair of thy patrician, infant head;
although thy ingratitude were ten times
greater than it is. I am not unreasonable,
and can make allowance for the feelings of a