Bolingbroke has said that "Man is his own sharper and his own bubble;"
and certainly he who is acutest in duping others is ever the most
ingenious in outwitting himself. The criminal is always a sophist;
and finds in his own reason a special pleader to twist laws human and
divine into a sanction of his crime. The rogue is so much in the
habit of cheating, that he packs the cards even when playing at
Patience with himself.--STEPHEN MONTAGUE.

The only two acquaintances in this populous city whom Glendower
possessed who were aware that in a former time he had known a better
fortune were Wolfe and a person of far higher worldly estimation, of
the name of Crauford. With the former the student had become
acquainted by the favour of chance, which had for a short time made
them lodgers in the same house. Of the particulars of Glendower's
earliest history Wolfe was utterly ignorant; but the addresses upon
some old letters, which he had accidentally seen, had informed him
that Glendower had formerly borne another name; and it was easy to
glean from the student's conversation that something of greater
distinction and prosperity than he now enjoyed was coupled with the
appellation he had renounced. Proud, melancholy, austere,--brooding
upon thoughts whose very loftiness received somewhat of additional
grandeur from the gloom which encircled it,--Glendower found, in the
ruined hopes and the solitary lot of the republican, that congeniality
which neither Wolfe's habits nor the excess of his political fervour
might have afforded to a nature which philosophy had rendered moderate
and early circumstances refined. Crauford was far better acquainted
than Wolfe with the reverses Glendower had undergone. Many years ago
he had known and indeed travelled with him upon the Continent; since
then they had not met till about six months prior to the time in which