occupy other men's estates, have latterly illustrated the logical
possibility of such an offence; but they were quite unknown at the era of
Gebir. Even Dalica, who knew as much wickedness as most people, would have
stared at this unheard of villany, and have asked, as eagerly as _I_
did--'What is it now? Let's have a shy at it in Egypt.' I, indeed, knew a
case, but Dalica did _not_, of shocking over-colonization. It was the
case, which even yet occurs on out-of-the-way roads, where a man, unjustly
big, mounts into the inside of a stage-coach already sufficiently crowded.
In streets and squares, where men could give him a wide berth, they had
tolerated the injustice of his person; but now, in a chamber so confined,
the length and breadth of his wickedness shines revealed to every eye. And
if the coach should upset, which it would not be the less likely to do for
having _him_ on board, somebody or other (perhaps myself) must lie
beneath this monster, like Enceladus under Mount Etna, calling upon Jove
to come quickly with a few thunderbolts and destroy both man and mountain,
both _succubus_ and _incubus_, if no other relief offered. Meantime, the
only case of over-colonization notorious to all Europe, is that which some
German traveller (Riedesel, I think) has reported so eagerly, in ridicule
of our supposed English credulity; viz.--the case of the foreign swindler,
who advertised that he would get into a quart bottle, filled Drury Lane,
pocketed the admission money, and decamped, protesting (in his adieus to
the spectators) that' it lacerated his heart to disappoint so many noble
islanders; but that on his next visit he would make full reparation by
getting into a vinegar cruet.' Now, here certainly was a case of over-
colonization, not perpetrated, but meditated. Yet, when one examines this
case, the crime consisted by no means in doing it, but in _not_ doing it;
by no means in getting into the bottle, but in _not_ getting into it. The
foreign contractor would have been probably a very unhappy man, had he
fulfilled his contract by over-colonizing the bottle, but he would have
been decidedly a more virtuous man. He would have redeemed his pledge;