property. For this reason, and by no special masonic precautions
of his own, the pickpocket is allowed to keep the admirable devices
of his nomenclature for the familiar uses of himself and his mates,
until a Villon arrives to prove that this language, too, was
awaiting the advent of its bully and master. In the meantime, what
directness and modest sufficiency of utterance distinguishes the
dock compared with the fumbling prolixity of the old gentleman on
the bench! It is the trite story,--romanticism forced to plead at
the bar of classicism fallen into its dotage, Keats judged by
Blackwood, Wordsworth exciting the pained astonishment of Miss Anna
Seward. Accuser and accused alike recognise that a question of
diction is part of the issue between them; hence the picturesque
confession of the culprit, made in proud humility, that he "clicked
a red 'un" must needs be interpreted, to save the good faith of the
court, into the vaguer and more general speech of the classic
convention. Those who dislike to have their watches stolen find
that the poorest language of common life will serve their simple
turn, without the rich technical additions of a vocabulary that has
grown around an art. They can abide no rendering of the fact that
does not harp incessantly on the disapproval of watch-owners. They
carry their point of morals at the cost of foregoing all glitter
and finish in the matter of expression.

This sort of slang, therefore, technical in origin, the natural
efflorescence of highly cultivated agilities of brain, and hand,
and eye, is worthy of all commendation. But there is another kind
that goes under the name of slang, the offspring rather of mental
sloth, and current chiefly among those idle, jocular classes to
whom all art is a bugbear and a puzzle. There is a public for
every one; the pottle-headed lout who in a moment of exuberance