rther? Then you
will find Fauna and Flora, twin goddesses of ineptitude, flitting across
the page, unreadable as a geographical treatise. His first masterpiece
was translated into French, anno VI., and the translator apologises that
war with England alone prevents the compilation of a suitable biography.
Was ever thief treated with so grave a consideration?

Then another work was prefaced by the Right Hon. William Eden, and
all were 'embellished with beautiful coloured plates,' and ran through
several editions. Once only did he return to poetry, the favoured medium
of his youth, and he returned to write an imperishable line. Even then
his pedantry persuaded him to renounce the authorship, and to disparage
the achievement. The occasion was the opening of a theatre at Sydney,
wherein the parts were sustained by convicts. The cost of admission to
the gallery was one shilling, paid in money, flour, meat, or spirits.

The play was entitled The Revenge and the Hotel, and Barrington provided
the prologue, which for one passage is for ever memorable. Thus it runs:

From distant climes, o'er widespread seas, we come,
Though not with much eclat or beat of drum;
True patriots we, for be it understood,
We left our country for our country's good.
No private views disgraced our generous zeal,
What urged our travels was our country's weal;
And none will doubt, but that our emigration
Has proved most useful to the British nation.

'We left our country for our country's good.' That line, thrown
fortuitously into four hundred pages of solid prose, has emerged to
become the common possession of Fleet Street. It is the man's one title
to literary fame, for spurning the thievish practice he knew so well,
he was righteously indignant when The London Spy was fathered upon
him. Though he emptied his contemporary's pockets of many thousands,
he enriched the Dictionary of Quotations with one line, which will be
repeated so long as there is human hand to wield a pen. And, if the High
Constable of Paramatta was tediously respectable, George Barrington, the
Prig, was a man of genius.

THE SWITCHER AND GENTLEMAN HARRY

I--THE SWITCHER

DAVID HAGGART was born at Canonmills, with no richer birthright than
thievish fingers and a left hand of surpassing activity. The son of a
gamekeeper, he grew up a long-legged, red-headed callant, lurking in the
sombre shadow of the Cowgate, or like the yo