kind, his teeth being forty in number,
whereas wolves have but twenty-six.  The
muscles of his neck were very strong; his
sides so formed that he could bend his head
to his tail; his eyes sparkled so with fire,
that it was hardly possible (for a regiment of
dragoons) to bear his look; his tail was very
large, broad, thick, and bristled with black
hair; and his feet armed with claws which
are described as being extremely strong and
singular.  He was as inodorous after death
as "Monsieur Bardelle and his friends had
found him to be when alive, for, when
killed, he sent forth a very disagreeable
stench.  In his body several sheep's bones
were found.  The king, who fully appreciated
the heroic, directed that he should be embalmed,
and stuffed with straw!  He was in
that condition returned to Monsieur de
Beauterme, who kept him till the Revolution
came, and amongst other institutions swept
away the terror of the Cevennes.

So came to an end, not by any manner
of means an untimely one, the Wild Beast of
the Gévaudan.  He was, doubtless, a terrible
creature to behold, but if he at all resembled
the portrait of him which was sent in April,
seventeen hundred and sixty-five, to the
Intendant of Alençon, (in case he should
happen to pass that way—some three hundred
miles off), he must have been a creature rather
to kill you with laughter than with his teeth
and claws.  I have the engraving from the
original picture before me at this moment,
and it bears this inscription: "Figure de la
Beste féroce que l'on a nommé l'hyène, qui a
dévoré plus que quatre-vingt personnes dans
le Gévaudan."  The animal is, in truth, a
most ridiculous monster, one that Trinculo
would have jeered at as "a very weak
monster,—a most poor credulous monster,—
a puppy-headed monster,—a most scurvy
monster."  Indeed the jester could hardly
have hit upon any phrase of absurdity
whereby to load him with contempt, as he
stands, passant gardant, with one paw in the
air, his curly tail trailing on the ground, with
ponderous head and cropped ears,—with
his mouth filled with enormous teeth,
wide open, as if he were catching flies;
with his small sleepy eyes, and with the
most good-natured expression on his foolish
face.

Such a wild beast is not a thing to fly from
on the wings of fear.  If one did avoid it,
when encountered in the open air, it would
rather be after the fashion of a late Earl;
of whom I once heard the following story:—

He was a large man, who, in speaking,
wabbled like a turkey-cock, and thus he
related his adventures:

"What do you think?" he said, entering
the library of Duffleton House one day, about
forty years ago; "what do you think?  As
I was walking along the Strand this morning,
not far from Exeter Change, I met a
tiger!"

"A tiger!  God bless me!  What on earth
did you do?"

"Do?  I called a hackney coach!"

OLD CUSTOMS.

SIR JOSIAH CHILD, a wise and great man in
his generation, sending out instructions from
the East India Company, in the reign of King
Charles the Second, imperiously told Mr.
Vaux that he expected his orders were to be
his rules, and not the laws of England; which
were a heap of nonsense compiled by a few
ignorant country gentlemen, who hardly
knew how to make laws for the government of
their private families, much less for the
regulating of companies and foreign commerce.

Other persons, not so learned or so
wise as Sir Josiah, came to a similar
conclusion for cogent reasons.  The farmers of
Sussex, for instance, found it simply impossible
to live unless they were allowed to
export the wool of the sheep that fed upon
their great downs; and even the most
respectable of them became participators in
a very peculiar kind of smuggling, which
consisted in getting prohibited goods out of
the kingdom.  This owling trade, as it was
called, became regularly organised in defiance
of the law, and was carried on to a vast
extent in Romney marshes and along the
Sussex coast.  The smugglers trusted the
farmers, and the farmers trusted the
smugglers. A kind of code of honour, or local
morals, was established among them, and was
rarely infringed on.  In such a state of things—
the direct creation of a foolish legislature—
the revenue-officer who interfered with their
business became naturally, in the people's
eyes, the evil doer; while the free trader,
as he was then generally called, was
considered the friend of all.  So widely and
deeply had these feelings taken root in these
parts a century and more ago, that there was
scarcely a farmer, a tradesman, a clergyman,
or a gentleman who had not actively
sympathised with the unlawful trade.

A curious and instructive evidence of the
degree in which this spirit had spread and
corrupted the minds of the people, is to
be found in the history of the murder of
Daniel Chater and William Galley, which
occurred in the neighbourhood in the year
one thousand seven hundred and forty-seven,
which we will now relate with strict adherence
to the facts, as sworn to at the trials of the
murderers.

In September of that year, one John
Dymond, a shepherd, and, no doubt, an agent
for others, agreed with a number of smugglers
to go over from the Sussex coast to the island
of Guernsey, to smuggle a large quantity
of tea.  The smugglers named their price,
and proceeded, like business-men, to execute
their commission; but unusual ill-luck befel
them.  On the way back, they fell in with a
Revenue cutter, which gave chase.  They