rks are to be found. You had better search that
street, sir, whilst I continue my way."

I searched the street to which the publisher had pointed, and, in the
course of the three succeeding days, many others of a similar kind. I
did not find the description of literature alluded to by the publisher to
be a drug, but, on the contrary, both scarce and dear. I had expended
much more than my loose money long before I could procure materials even
for the first volume of my compilation.

CHAPTER XXXV.

Francis Ardry--Certain Sharpers--Brave and Eloquent--Opposites--Flinging
the Bones--Strange Places--Dog Fighting--Learning and Letters--Batch of
Dogs--Redoubled Application.

One evening I was visited by the tall young gentleman, Francis Ardry,
whose acquaintance I had formed at the coffee-house. As it is necessary
that the reader should know something more about this young man, who will
frequently appear in the course of these pages, I will state in a few
words who and what he was. He was born of an ancient Roman Catholic
family in Ireland; his parents, whose only child he was, had long been
dead. His father, who had survived his mother several years, had been a
spendthrift, and at his death had left the family property considerably
embarrassed. Happily, however, the son and the estate fell into the
hands of careful guardians, near relations of the family, by whom the
property was managed to the best advantage, and every means taken to
educate the young man in a manner suitable to his expectations. At the
age of sixteen he was taken from a celebrated school in England at which
he had been placed, and sent to a small French University, in order that
he might form an intimate and accurate acquaintance with the grand
language of the continent. There he continued three years, at the end of
which he went, under the care of a French abbe, to Germany and Italy. It
was in this latter country that he first began to cause his guardians
serious uneasiness. He was in the hey-day of youth when he visited
Italy, and he entered wildly into the various delights of that
fascinating region, and, what was worse, falling into the hands of
certain sharpers, not Italian, but English, he was fleeced of
considerable sums of money. The abbe, who, it seems, was an excellent
individual of the old French school, remonstrated with his pupil on his
dissipation and extravagance; but, finding his remonstrances vain, very
properly info