else is in the wind; and the excellent "Newgate Calendar," which
contains the biographies and thanatographies of Hayes and his wife,
does not say a word of their connections with any of the leading
literary or military heroes of the time of Her Majesty Queen Anne.
The "Calendar" says, in so many words, that Hayes was obliged to
send to his father in Warwickshire for money to get him out of the
scrape, and that the old gentleman came down to his aid. By this
truth must we stick; and not for the sake of the most brilliant
episode,--no, not for a bribe of twenty extra guineas per sheet,
would we depart from it.

Mr. Brock's account of his adventure in London has given the reader
some short notice of his friend, Mr Macshane. Neither the wits nor
the principles of that worthy Ensign were particularly firm: for
drink, poverty, and a crack on the skull at the battle of Steenkirk
had served to injure the former; and the Ensign was not in his best
days possessed of any share of the latter. He had really, at one
period, held such a rank in the army, but pawned his half-pay for
drink and play; and for many years past had lived, one of the
hundred thousand miracles of our city, upon nothing that anybody
knew of, or of which he himself could give any account. Who has not
a catalogue of these men in his list? who can tell whence comes the
occasional clean shirt, who supplies the continual means of
drunkenness, who wards off the daily-impending starvation? Their
life is a wonder from day to day: their breakfast a wonder; their
dinner a miracle; their bed an interposition of Providence. If you
and I, my dear sir, want a shilling tomorrow, who will give it us?
Will OUR butchers give us mutton-chops? will OUR laundresses clothe
us in clean linen?--not a bone or a rag. Standing as we do (may it
be ever so) somewhat removed from want,* is there one of us who does