untain of
allowance must be flung into the scales to counterbalance his
deficiencies. However coarse, and even profane, in his talk (I hope the
gentle reader will excuse me alike for eliding a few elegant extracts
from his common conversation, and also for reminding him
characteristically, now and then, that Ben's language is not entirely
Addisonian), however rough of tongue and dissonant in voice, Ben's heart
will be found much about in the right place; nay, I verily believe it
has more of natural justice, human kindness, and right sympathies in
it, than are to be found in many of those hard and hollow cones that
beat beneath the twenty-guinea waistcoats of a Burghardt or a
Buckmaster. Ay, give me the fluttering inhabitant of Ben Burke's cowskin
vest; it is worth a thousand of those stuffed and artificial denizens,
whose usual nest is figured satin and cut velvet.

Ben stole--true--he did not deny it; but he stole naught but what he
fancied was wrongfully withheld him: and, if he took from the rich, who
scarcely knew he robbed them, he shared his savoury booty with the poor,
and fed them by his daring. Like Robin Hood of old, he avenged himself
on wanton wealth, and frequently redressed by it the wrongs of penury.
Not that I intend to break a lance for either of them, nor to go any
lengths in excusing; slight extenuation is the limit for prudent
advocacy in these cases. Robin Hood and Benjamin Burke were both of them
thieves; bold men--bad men, if any will insist upon the bad; they sinned
against law, and order, and Providence; they dug rudely at the roots of
social institutions; they spoke and acted in a dangerous fashion about
rights of men and community of things. But set aside the statutes of
Foresting and Venery, disfranchise pheasants, let it be a cogent thing
that poverty and riches approach the golden mean somewhat less
unequally, and we shall not find much of criminality, either in Ben or
Robin.

For a general idea, then, of our poaching friend:--he is a gigantic,
black-whiskered, humorous, ruddy mortal, full of strange oaths, which we
really must not print, and bearded like the pard, and he tumbles in
amongst our humble family party, with--

"Bless your honest heart, Roger! what makes you look so sodden? I'm a
lord, if your eyes a'n't as red as a hedge-hog's; and all the rest o'
you, too; why, you seem to be pretty well merry as mutes. Ha! I see what
it is," added Ben, pouring forth a benediction on their