e pinchings, beatings, starvings, trials, hangings, and burnings
were made the goal of the shortest of all imaginable short cuts; and old
women who had established pin manufactories in the stomachs of thousands,
instead of receiving patents for their inventions, divided the honour of
illuminating the land with the blazing tar-barrels provided for their
peculiar use and benefit. Whether it was that aerial gambols on unsaddled
and rough-backed broomsticks grew tiresome, or the small profit attending
the vocation became smaller, or that all the elderly ladies with moles,
and without anything else, were burnt up, we can't pretend to say; but
certain it is, the art of witchcraft fell into disrepute. Corking,
minikin, and all description of pins, were obliged to be made in the
regular way; and cows even departed this world without the honour of the
human immolations formerly considered the necessary sacrifice for the loss
of their inestimable lives. Since the abovetimes Animal Magnetism and
Mesmerism have followed in the wake of what has been; and now, just as
despair, already poised upon its outstretched sable wings, was hovering
for a brief moment previous to making its final swoop upon the External
Doctrine, Peter--our Peter--Peter Laurie--the great, the glorious, the
aldermanic Laurie--makes despair, like the Indian Juggler who swallowed
himself, become the victim of its own insatiate maw.

Our quill trembles as we proceed; it is unequal to the task. Oh, that we
could write with the whole goose upon the wondrous merits of the wondrous
Peter!

We are better. That bumper has restored our nerve.

Reader, fancy the gifted Peter seated in the dull dignity of civic
magistracy: the court is thronged--a young delinquent blinks like an owl
in sunshine 'neath the mighty flashing of his bench-lit eye. His crime,
ay, what's his crime? it can't be much--so pale, so thin, so woe-begone!
look, too, so tremulous of knee, and redolent of hair! what has he done?

Here Roe interprets--"Please your worship, this young man, or tailor, has
been assaulting several females with a blue bag and a pair of breeches."

_Sir Peter_.--"I don't wonder at it; that man would do anything, I see it
in his face, or rather in the back of his head, that's where the
expression lies--look at his hair!"

The whole court becomes a Cyclops--it has but one eye, and that is fixed
upon the tailor's locks.

"I say," resumes our Peter, "a man with that head of hai