a gentle sleep. The punkah, you will find,
will very speedily lull you to repose."

"Well, I will," said the valet; and, in ten
minutes, fell fast asleep. The venetians were
then closed, and the house kept as quiet as
possible.

When Lord Jamleigh himself arrived, and
established his identity, the scene that ensued
may be easily imagined.

The magistrate, with a marvellous want of
tact, acknowledged the mistake that he had
made: told, in fact, the whole uncomplimentary
truth. Lord Jamleigh, and perhaps
with reason, was dreadfully annoyed at the idea
that the servant should have been mistaken
for himself; but he let out, however, that that
was the third time the thing had happened,
and that in future he should insist upon the
fellow wearing livery, instead of plain clothes,
and a black wide-awake hat.

The valet was speedily lifted out of the
best bed, and transferred to another apartment,
where he slept himself sober, and arose
at about half-past one to explain to his
lordship that he was not much in fault.

I would advise all noblemen and gentlemen
who, like Lord Jamleigh, would take a
bird's-eye look at India, not to travel with
an European servant, who, in that country, is
as helpless as an infant, and quite as troublesome,
besides being in the way of everybody
in every house. It is, moreover, cruel to
the servant. He can talk to no one, and
becomes perfectly miserable. If he take
to drinking—which he is almost sure to do—
he is much more deserving of pity than of
condemnation.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL JAIL-SERMON.

PREFACE.

"THE Life of David Haggart, alias John
Wilson, alias John Morison, alias Barney
M'Coul, alias John M'Colgan, alias Daniel
O'Brien, alias the Switcher. Written by
Himself, while under Sentence of Death.
Edinburgh, 1821." That is the title of the
little book upon which we depend for the
materials of this biography.

Our hero was hanged in the year just named
at the age of twenty. The book appeared
three or four days after his execution, with a
frontispiece-sketch of its author sitting in
the condemned cell in a meditative attitude,
with folded arms, crossed knees, and a gratified
expression on his face. Pen and ink are
by his side, and the prison-dress is loosely
arranged in graceful folds about his person.
Were it not for the cropped hair, we might
consider him a poet; but it is very notorious
that from a tuneful brain the spirit of song
exhales as choice macassar through the
skull, good for the growth and for improving
and beautifying the hair, and for sustaining
it in decorative charm. But our hero David
Haggart, pickpocket, highwayman, and murderer,
during his short life of a score of years,
is to be regarded as a poet in spite of his
hair, if metaphor can make him one. He
lisped in metaphor, and cannot speak plain
prose. He knows a tobacco-pipe but as a
steamer, spoons only as feelers, stockings as
stamp-drawers, shoes as crabs. He was in
his earliest years a distinguished linguist,
and his learned autobiography is to be read
only by help of a glossary. The vulgar world
does not know that a benjy is a waistcoat,
that a blone is a girl, and that when our
hero speaks of a budgekain he means a
public-house; that by jiger he means door,
by a much-toper-fecker an umbrella-rnaker,
by a milvad a blow, and by luke nothing.

It is, not, however, as a poet and a linguist
that we desire to present David Haggart to
the public. The intense perseverance which
enabled him while very young to attain high
success and distinction in a dangerous and
romantic calling, closed by an exemplary
death upon the gallows, renders his life, as
we are assured on the best authority (and
we are, of course, bound to believe it), one
of the most interesting biographies
possible, especially to be commended to the
study of the young. We learn of Haggart,
in the advertisement prefixed to his
autobiography, that "his conduct during the
interval between his trial and his execution
was such as to give satisfaction to the
respectable clergymen by whom he was
attended. His time was partly devoted to
religious exercises and partly to furnishing
materials for an account of his life."

Our copy of the life contains on a fly-leaf
a warrant of its accuracy, written and signed
by the author with his precious autograph,
four days before his death. Possibly, for the
promotion of its sale, the whole edition had
been thus enriched under the eyes of an
admiring clergy.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

Birth, Parentage, and Education. The Bantam Cock.
The Till. The Pony. David enters the Militia.

DAVID HAGGART was born at a farm-town
called the Golden Acre, near Canon Mills, in
the county of Edinburgh, on Midsummer-
day in the first year of the present century.
In one of the last passages of his autobiography
we learn that he was born left-handed,
"and," he adds, "with thieves' fingers for
forks" (whereby he means his middle and
forefinger, the chief implements of the
pickpocket), "are equally long, and they never
failed me." Thus he was a born thief, not a
man destitute of genius or aptitude forced
either by chance or want into an uncongenial
calling.

John Haggart, little David's father, was a
gamekeeper; but when his family increased,
he applied himself to the business of a dog-
trainer, and obtained a large connexion
among sporting men. Our hero in his early
childhood assisted his father as keeper of