begin life anew with an indelible stain on his character. It was absurd
to give so young a man such a post; but it was absolutely wrong in Hook
not to do his utmost to carry out his duties properly. Nay, he had
trifled with the public money in the same liberal--perhaps a _more_
liberal--spirit as if it had been his own--made advances and loans here
and there injudiciously, and taken little heed of the consequences.
Probably, at this day, the common opinion acquits Hook of a designed and
complicated fraud; but common opinion never did acquit him of
misconduct, and even by his friends this affair was looked upon with a
suspicion that preferred silence to examination.

But why take such pains to exonerate Hook from a charge of robbery, when
he was avowedly guilty of as bad a sin, of which the law took no
cognizance, and which society forgave far more easily than it could have
done for robbing the State? Soon after his return from the Mauritius, he
took lodgings in the cheap, but unfashionable neighbourhood of Somers
Town. Here, in the moment of his misfortune, when doubting whether
disgrace, imprisonment, or what not awaited him, he sought solace in the
affection of a young woman, of a class certainly much beneath his, and
of a character unfit to make her a valuable companion to him. Hook had
received little moral training, and had he done so, his impulses were
sufficiently strong to overcome any amount of principle. With this
person--to use the modern slang which seems to convert a glaring sin
into a social misdemeanour--'he formed a connection.' In other words, he
destroyed her virtue. Hateful as such an act is, we must, before we can
condemn a man for it without any recommendation to mercy, consider a
score of circumstances which have rendered the temptation stronger, and
the result almost involuntary. Hook was not a man of high moral
character--very far from it--but we need not therefore suppose that he
sat down coolly and deliberately, like a villain in a novel, to effect