e read somewhere of
a justice of peace who, on being nominated in the commission, wrote a
letter to a bookseller for the statutes respecting his official duty in
the following orthography--'Please send the ax relating to a gustus
pease.' No doubt, when this learned gentleman had possessed himself of
the axe, he hewed the laws with it to some purpose. Mr. Bertram was not
quite so ignorant of English grammar as his worshipful predecessor; but
Augustus Pease himself could not have used more indiscriminately the
weapon unwarily put into his hand.

In good earnest, he considered the commission with which he had been
entrusted as a personal mark of favour from his sovereign; forgetting
that he had formerly thought his being deprived of a privilege, or
honour, common to those of his rank was the result of mere party cabal.
He commanded his trusty aid-de-camp, Dominie Sampson, to read aloud the
commission; and at the first words, 'The King has been pleased to
appoint'--'Pleased!' he exclaimed in a transport of gratitude; 'honest
gentleman! I'm sure he cannot be better pleased than I am.'

Accordingly, unwilling to confine his gratitude to mere feelings or
verbal expressions, he gave full current to the new-born zeal of office,
and endeavoured to express his sense of the honour conferred upon him by
an unmitigated activity in the discharge of his duty. New brooms, it is
said, sweep clean; and I myself can bear witness that, on the arrival of
a new housemaid, the ancient, hereditary, and domestic spiders who have
spun their webs over the lower division of my bookshelves (consisting
chiefly of law and divinity) during the peaceful reign of her
predecessor, fly at full speed before the probationary inroads of the new
mercenary. Even so the Laird of Ellangowan ruthlessly commenced his
magisterial reform, at the expense of various established and
superannuated pickers and stealers who had been his neighbours for half a
century. He wrought his miracles like a second Duke Humphrey; and by the
influence of the beadle's rod caused the lame to walk, the blind to see,
and the palsied to labour. He detected poachers, black-fishers,
orchard-breakers, and pigeon-shooters; had the applause of the bench for
his reward, and the public credit of an active magistrate.

All this good had its rateable proportion of evil. Even an admitted
nuisance of ancient standing should not be abated without some caution.
The zeal of our worthy friend now invol