ond at the expence of the public purse. The
disinterested Profligate here either consumes, corrupts, and festers,
under the brandy fever and despair, or is put up by a gambler, who sells
his art to his brother debtors, and thus lives in hope of yet turning
the honest penny in imitation of those who have gone before him. The
Cyprian, still exercising her allurements, lingers and decays
until persecution loses the point of its arrow, and drops from the
persecutor's hand, grasping more hardly after money, and opening from
the clenched attitude of revenge. Then, to conclude the picture, there
are youths living upon the open infamy of easy-hearted women, who
disgrace and ruin themselves without the walls, in order to pamper the
appetite and humour the whims of a favourite within, thus sacrificing
one victim to another. Partners carrying on trade in the world,
communing with their incarcerated partners in durance vile. Misery and
extravagance, rude joy and frantic fear, with more passions than the
celebrated Collins ever drew, and with more scenes, adventures, and
vicissitudes, than ever Jonathan Wild or any other Jonathan exhibited."

"Excellent description," exclaimed Bob.

"And you shall have ocular demonstration of its absolute existence; nay,
this sketch might serve for many other places of confinement, the Fleet,
&c. They are like the streets of the Metropolis, constantly varying in
their company, according to entrances and exits of their visitors."

"This, however," continued the Hon. Tom Dashall, "is rather a mental
picture of what we shall presently witness in reality, a sort of
introductory sketch by way of passport through the doors of this
Panorama of Beal Life, to which you will shortly be introduced; a sort
of ideal, or dramatic sketch of its inhabitants _en masse_, before the
drawing up of the curtain."

The eagerness of Bob to listen to his Cousin's sketches of London
society, on the one hand, and the earnestness with which Dashall
had been exercising his imaginary powers, on the other, had led our
perambulators to the ~39~~ foot of Blackfriar's Bridge, on their road
to the King's Bench, without any particular circumstance exciting their
attention; when Bob, suddenly twitching his Cousin by the arm, and
directing his eye at the same time to a thin spare figure of a man,
without hat or coat, who was rapidly passing towards Fleet market,
enquired who it was, and what was his occupation or calling.

"Don't y