at once that the most outrageous system of
extortion had been practised in every instance. The sums advanced had
been pitiful in amount, and the rates of interest charged exorbitant
beyond belief. O how does avarice harden the heart, and dry up the
current of human sympathy! How lamentable this accursed thirst for gold!

"Wide, wasting pest! that rages unconfined,
And crowds with crimes the records of mankind.
For gold, his sword the hireling ruffian draws;
For gold, the hireling judge distorts the laws;
Wealth heap'd on wealth, nor truth, nor safety buys;
And dangers gather as the treasures rise."

And at every one of these dens, what a crowd of victims were collected!
"A motley company indeed--black-legs, and would-be-gentlemen--the
cheater and the cheated." The widow parting with her last trinkets, or,
perchance, her last disposable article of dress, to procure one more
meal for her famishing children! A poor consumptive girl, with the
hectic flush upon her wasting cheek, applying for the same purpose; and
the griping miser--very likely a woman too!--without a spark of
generosity, or an emotion of pity--reading the condition of the
sufferers from their countenances, with the coolest imaginable
calculation--thus ascertaining from their looks the urgency of their
respective cases, that the utmost possible advantage might be taken,
and the intended cheat be made the greater. The pick-pocket, moreover,
the thief, and the purloining servant, received with equal readiness,
and the spoils divided between them, with the fullest understanding
that no questions were to be asked! O 'tis monstrous! "The offence is
rank, and smells to heaven!"

But my visits to these establishments were fruitful of incidents, the
recollection of which is too vivid to be passed lightly over. And as
the present chapter is already of sufficient length, it is proposed to
appropriate a separate one as a record of some of those
reminiscences--one of which may better suffice as a temperance lecture,
than a sermon, while another may perhaps interest the reader from its
aspect of romance. If the reader chooses, he can pass it over
altogether.

CHAPTER XV.

SCENES IN THE LOMBARDS.

"A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch,
Uncapable of pity, void and empty
From any dram of mercy."--_Shakspeare._

"----there, there, there! a diamond gone, cost me three thousand ducats
in Frankfort! The curse never fell on ou