obliquity of vision, would suppose to be rather distorted. For
instance, when the sickening murder and mangling of a wretched
woman was affording delicious food wherewithal to gorge the
insatiable curiosity of the public, our friend the poetical young
gentleman was in ecstasies-not of disgust, but admiration.
'Heavens!' cried the poetical young gentleman, 'how grand; how
great!' We ventured deferentially to inquire upon whom these
epithets were bestowed: our humble thoughts oscillating between
the police officer who found the criminal, and the lock-keeper who
found the head. 'Upon whom!' exclaimed the poetical young
gentleman in a frenzy of poetry, 'Upon whom should they be bestowed
but upon the murderer!'-and thereupon it came out, in a fine
torrent of eloquence, that the murderer was a great spirit, a bold
creature full of daring and nerve, a man of dauntless heart and
determined courage, and withal a great casuist and able reasoner,
as was fully demonstrated in his philosophical colloquies with the
great and noble of the land. We held our peace, and meekly
signified our indisposition to controvert these opinions-firstly,
because we were no match at quotation for the poetical young
gentleman; and secondly, because we felt it would be of little use
our entering into any disputation, if we were: being perfectly
convinced that the respectable and immoral hero in question is not
the first and will not be the last hanged gentleman upon whom false
sympathy or diseased curiosity will be plentifully expended.

This was a stern mystic flight of the poetical young gentleman. In
his milder and softer moments he occasionally lays down his
neckcloth, and pens stanzas, which sometimes find their way into a
Lady's Magazine, or the 'Poets' Corner' of some country newspaper;
or which, in default of either vent for his genius, adorn the