pretty much the same person--yet in the eye of the world a far
less criminal man. Not that his desires would have been a jot more
innocent, but they would have taken a different direction. Instead
of the recklessness of course, such as seems to have distinguished
the conduct of our present subject--instead of his loose indulgences--his
smart, licentious speeches--the sheep's-eye glances, right and
left, which he was but too prone to bestow, without prudence or
precaution, whenever he walked among the fair sisters--he, the said
Alfred, would have taken counsel of a more worldly policy, which
is yet popularly considered a more pious one. He would have kept
his eyes from wandering to and fro; he would have held his blood
in subjection. Patient as a fox on a long scent in autumn, he would
have kept himself lean and circumspect, until, through the help
of lugubrious prayer and lantern visage, he could have beguiled
into matrimony some one feminine member of the flock--not always
fair--whose worldly goods would have sufficed in full atonement
for all those circumspect, self-imposed restraints, which we find
asually so well rewarded. But Alfred Stevens was not a man of this
pious temper. It is evident, from his present course, that he had
some inkling of the MODUS OPERANDI; but all his knowledge fell
short of that saving wisdom which would have defrauded the social
world of one of its moral earthquakes, and possibly deprived the
survivors of the present moral story--for moral it is, though our
hero is not exactly so.

It would be doing our subject and our theory equal injustice if we
were to suppose that he had any fixed purpose, known to himself,
when he borrowed the professional garment, and began to talk with
the worthy John Cross in the language of theology, and with the
tongue of a hypocrite. He designed to visit Charlemont--that was