thieves of every description, depots both
for the ~343~~plunder and the plunderer; where, if an unthinking or
profligate victim once entered, he seldom came out without experiencing
treatment which operated like a severe lesson, that would leave its
moral upon his mind as long as he continued an inhabitant of the
terrestrial world.

[Illustration: page343]

The attempt to describe the party around us baffled even the descriptive
powers of old Crony; some few, indeed, were known to the man of the
world as reputed sharpers,--fellows who are always to be found lingering
about houses of such resort, to catch the inexperienced; when, having
sacrificed their victim either by gambling, cheating, or swindling,
they divide the profits with the keeper of the house, without whose
assistance they could not hope to arrive at the necessary information,
or be enabled to continue their frauds with impunity; but, thus
protected, they have a ready witness at hand to speak to their
character, without the suspicion of his being a confederate in their
villany. Here might be seen the woman of pleasure, lost to every sense
of her sex's shame, consuming the remaining portion of the night by
a wasteful expenditure of her ill-acquired gains upon some abandoned
profligate, bearing, indeed, the outward form of man, but presenting a
most degrading spectacle--a wretch so lost to all sense of honour and
manhood as meanly to subsist on the wages of prostitution. One or two
characters I must not omit: observe the fair Cyprian with the ermine
tippet, seated on the right of a well-known _billiard sharp_, who made
his escape from Dublin for having dived a little too deep into the
pockets of his brother emeralders; here he passes for a swell, and has
abandoned his former profession for the more honest union of callings,
a pimp and playman, in other words, a finished _Greek_. The lady was the
_chere amie_ of the unfortunate youth Hayward (designated as the modern
Macheath), who suffered an ignominious death. He was betrayed and sold
to the ~344~~officers by this very woman, upon whom he had lavished the
earnings of his infamy, when endeavouring to secrete himself from the
searching eye of justice. The unhappy female on the other side was early
in life seduced by the once celebrated Lord B----, by whose title, to
his lasting infamy, she is still known: what she might have been, but
for his arts, reflection too often compels her to acknowledge, when
sober