'^A.^ 
 
 ^ 
 
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 7^
 
 L I h RA RY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVLR5ITY 
 
 or ILLI NOIS 
 
 C32-f 
 
 v: 
 
 I
 
 THE 
 
 FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 " Having flown over many knavish professions, he settled only 
 in a rogue."— Winter's tale. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. L 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 EDWARD CHURTON, 26, HOLLES STREET. 
 1836.
 
 LONDON: 
 SCHULZE AND CO. l3, POLAND STREET.
 
 ^ 
 
 V.I ^ 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 A considerable portion of the following 
 volumes has already appeared in the court 
 K MAGAZINE in a series of papers, under the 
 following title ; " Remarkable Escapes of a 
 
 > ' Predestinated Rogue. '^ 
 
 <T5
 
 THE 
 
 FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The birth of James Dillon — Where he came into the 
 world and how — ^The paternal home — Cheap lodgings 
 — Shown that the hero of these volumes had a father 
 and mother — Connubial harmony — The twins — A 
 prickly comparison — Effects of maternal longings — 
 Shown that the occiput of our hero's father was as flat 
 
 VOL.. I. B
 
 2 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 as a Normandy pippin — Whisky toddy — His mother 
 violates the command of the parish apothecary — The 
 christening of the twins — The first remarkable escape 
 of James Dillon. 
 
 James Dillon, known many years to a 
 considerable portion of the comitatus vnlgns, 
 under the facetious sobriquet of the Hobgobhn, 
 from his extraordinary adroitness and activity 
 of locomotion, or by the more characteristic 
 cognomen of Slippery Jim, from the eel-like 
 lubricity with which he escaped from the offi- 
 cial clutches of watchmen and thief-catchers. 
 Was born in Plumtree-street, St. Gileses, to- 
 wards the close of a hot night in June, some- 
 where about the latter end of the last century. 
 He first saw the light in the cellar of a small 
 house, which, with only eight rooms, and these 
 of very moderate dimensions, gave nightly 
 shelter to a hundred and ten squalid creatures, 
 exhibiting " the human form divine" under
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 3 
 
 the mask of that odious moral deformity 
 which echpses the divine, and degrades the 
 human into an object the most bestial and 
 revolting. Vice here held her nightly orgies in 
 unrestrained luxuriance; and so consummate 
 was the profligacy which unceasingly prevailed 
 in this moral pest-house, that it was com- 
 pletely shunned by the more respectable por- 
 tion of the king's lieges, as if it had been the 
 haunt of gnomes or devils. 
 
 The birth-place of our hero was the habita- 
 tion of eight men and four women, who, with 
 the true spirit of British freemen, severally 
 called it their castle, each claiming that portion 
 of the floor which his or her straw, as it might 
 happen, respectively covered, and to which 
 they individually maintained an indefeasible 
 right of possession, so long as they could 
 make good the terms of their tenure, by depo- 
 siting in the hands of the landlord — a native 
 
 B 2
 
 4 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 of Tipperary, with a carrotty poll and prodi- 
 gious muscles, those irresistible indications of 
 strength and agonistical capabilities — the fine 
 of one penny per noctem. This was at 
 times a matter of so much difficulty, that the 
 cellar frequently changed tenants ; for the 
 landlord, who carried upon his head the 
 emblem of that animal caloric with which his 
 explosive Celtic temperament was imbued, 
 would not relax the shadow of a hair from the 
 stern severity of his sumptuary enactments, 
 but immediately discharged the defaulter and 
 his straw, to make room for some one who 
 might chance to be more obedient to the finan- 
 cial discipline of his domestic establishment. 
 
 The father of James Dillon, who was no- 
 minally a tinker by profession, but a rogue, or 
 any thing you will, in practice, and his wife — 
 a washerwoman so called, but who turned her 
 woman's wit to the best account — were the
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 5 
 
 only wedded members of this social commu- 
 nity. Though united in law, they were, how- 
 ever, as little united in heart as the cat and the 
 bull-dog. The hymeneal chain had been rup- 
 tured in every link, and they were no more 
 *' one flesh" than the steer and the mushroom. 
 They, nevertheless, became the oracles of their 
 cellar companions, among whom there was a 
 perfect homogeneity of principles, though they 
 dwelt together in the luxury of perpetual dis- 
 cord. In their Tartarean abode, which was 
 a constant scene of the most disgusting Satur- 
 nalia, there was not a single atom of furniture, 
 save a large iron crock and a tinder-box. Its 
 inmates reposed upon straw, which was 
 changed about once a month, and the at- 
 mosphere confined within its murky walls, 
 would have been the very hot-bed of plague 
 and contagion, save that the broken windows, 
 in spite of the indifference of its inmates to
 
 6 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 any sanitary precautions, admitted a sufficient 
 circulation of pure air to dilute the pestilential 
 miasmata generated in, and exhaled from, so 
 many filthy animal surfaces; and thus, in 
 some degree, neutralised the mischief which 
 must else have ensued. 
 
 Here then, in this den of dirt and dark- 
 ness, James Dillon first exhibited his identity, 
 and was shortly followed into the world by a 
 brother, the very counterpart of himself in 
 form and lineament. They were both fine, 
 hale, hearty children, and as it was a mat- 
 ter of some difficulty even for the parents to 
 recognise them apart, the eldest, the hero of 
 our narrative, had a string constantly tied round 
 his left ankle, in order that his corporeity 
 might not be confounded with that of his 
 younger brother, betwixt him and whom there 
 was as exact a resemblance as there is between 
 two ripe blackberries of the same size and
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. / 
 
 from the same bramble. Both children had 
 a mark upon the sinister temple, much 
 like that just below the gills of a dory, which 
 has been chronicled by popular superstition 
 as the imprint of an apostolic finger and thumb. 
 The mother called these spots upon the tem- 
 ples of her sucklings, grapes, and accounted 
 for them in the usual way — ^having during the 
 period of gestation, as she gravely averred, 
 longed for grapes, which turned out to be the 
 sour grapes of the fable, and the reminder of 
 her disappointment was indelibly fixed upon 
 the foreheads of her two little blessings. She 
 had brought several children into the world 
 before this brace of duplicates appeared as 
 practical illustrations in favour of population, 
 in the very teeth of Mr. Malthus's and Miss 
 Martineau's speculative theories to promote 
 the extinction of the species — a system of poli- 
 tical economy admirably opposed to the maxim
 
 8 THE FELLOW COMMONER* 
 
 of the wise king of Israel, *^ in the multitude 
 of people is the king's honour." All the pre- 
 vious animal productions of Grace Dillon, as 
 her husband was wont to say, had luckily 
 died, and so he was in hopes would these 
 troublesome pledges, unless they should 
 happen to turn out hereafter a profitable 
 speculation, by being exhibited as natural 
 coorosities* 
 
 The boys throve daily, and the mother was 
 really proud of her oflfspring, though her hus- 
 band did not augur so well from their evidently 
 thriving aspect, as he had narrowed his mind 
 to that hungry philosophy of which it is a 
 cardinal maxim that the love of offspring is not 
 a feeling germane to poverty, since self-love is 
 the first law of nature, and many mouths are 
 apt to gape to little purpose over a scanty 
 mess, which is no strengthener of either filial or 
 paternal affection. In fact, if the truth must
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 9 
 
 be spoken, the philoprogenitive organ of Frank 
 Dillon's occiput was as flat as a Normandy 
 pippin. Grace Dillon was in this respect the 
 very antipodes of her husband. In spite of 
 her poverty she loved the dear little transcripts 
 of their paternal archetype, though she loved 
 not him, and the more because all the neigh- 
 bours told her they were the handsomest babes 
 in the parish. She was, in short, proud that 
 she had brought into the world two such pro- 
 mising representatives of future manhood ; and 
 all who descended into her underground tene- 
 ment, where these little grimy darlings first 
 saw light " through darkness visible," to con- 
 gratulate the rejoicing mother upon her " safe 
 deliverance," were regaled with whiskey toddy 
 so long as they could see, and the whiskey 
 lasted, which honest Frank had adroitly appro- 
 priated to his own use from the stock of a 
 good-natured publican, whom he had prevailed 
 
 B 5
 
 10 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 upon to take his word for it instead of his 
 money. 
 
 Grace Dillon, in spite of the cautions of the 
 parish apothecary, within the week after her late 
 signal triumph of maternity, in doubling " at 
 one fell swoop," — so thought Frank Dillon — 
 her claims to her husband's love, contrived to 
 get the wrong side of discretion and the whiskey 
 bottle, and to '^ kick up a row'' in the neigh- 
 bourhood, which obtained for her a more com- 
 modious lodging than her own in the parish 
 watch-house. 
 
 When little James and his brother were 
 about eight weeks old, they were christened, the 
 elder after king James of glorious memory, as 
 Frank Dillon used to maintain upon every an- 
 niversary of the royal birth-day — for he was a 
 staunch cathohc, though his wife was a lax pro- 
 testant—and the younger, Swithun, after the 
 potential and hilarious Saxon Saint of that
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 11 
 
 name. Upon this memorable occasion, no 
 sooner were the young Dillons received into 
 the bosom of the church, than the father and 
 mother determined to make it a festival, and 
 celebrate it by a carouse on whiskey, and 
 mealy potatoes. It chanced to be oyster- 
 day, and the parents resolved to add a few 
 of those cold testaceous luxuries to the warm 
 mealy potatoes and the whiskey, in order to 
 cool the smoking heat of the one, and qualify 
 the ardent spirit of the other. Accordingly, 
 within two hours of noon, the whole twelve in- 
 mates of the cellar, of which Frank Dillon and 
 his wife occupied one-sixth, were as perfectly 
 lapped in intoxicating forgetfulness, as if recol- 
 lection had never formed a part of their moral 
 organization. In the visionary elevation of her 
 hilarity. Mistress Dillon resohdng, as she said, 
 that her pretty minnikins should enjoy their 
 christening as weU as their elders, poured down
 
 12 THE FELLOW COMMONER* 
 
 the throat of each a tolerably copious mouthful 
 of her ehxir vitse, which^ like certain quack 
 potions, cures all patients by ultimately killing 
 them ; and this she repeated sundry times, 
 until the poor little sprawling urchins began to 
 wriggle, to pant for breath, to stiffen, to foam 
 at the mouth, and in short, to show every 
 symptom of speedy dissolution. The eldest, 
 James, afterwards so memorable in the annals 
 of furtive legerdemain, appeared rapidly ap- 
 proaching the climax of his mortal existence ; 
 for the gradual distension of his cheeks, the 
 rigid clenching of his mandibles, the forcible 
 compression of his eyelids, and the inky hue 
 of* his complexion, denoted a perilous propin- 
 quity to suffocation, when by the timely appli- 
 cation, to the child^s back, of the heavy hand 
 of a neighbour whose senses were a little less 
 opaque than those of Grace Dillon, the whiskey 
 was happily regurgitated, or the day of James
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 13 
 
 Dillon's christening would most certainly have 
 been that of his death. The father, who, 
 though fuddled, was quick-sighted enough, in 
 spite of his potations, to perceive that he 
 might have been relieved from a burthen, but for 
 the prompt interference of the burly dame who 
 had just saved the life of his eldest son, looked 
 at her with a dull, savage glare, at the same 
 time lolling out his tongue with bestial, serpent- 
 like ferocity, and muttered a curse so bitter that 
 it aroused the ire of the matron upon whom it 
 was imprecated. In the mid excitement of her in- 
 dignation, she instantly seized that iron fixture? 
 the crock, from the chimney corner, and launched 
 it, vi hominis, at the head of her host, and 
 laid him senseless upon his own straw. A gene- 
 ral storm followed, which terminated only by 
 the rioters being lodged in the watch-house. 
 
 Though the hero of our narrative was saved 
 a rapid exit from the stage of the world, he was
 
 14 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 nevertheless, in considerable danger for several 
 days after this piece of experimental jocundity. 
 Death by whiskey at eight weeks old, would 
 have been no common event, and an escape 
 from such a death was equally uncommon ; this, 
 therefore, may with truth be recorded as the 
 first remarkable escape which we have under- 
 taken to chronicle of the hobgobblin, alias Slip- 
 joery Jim.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 15 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The twins thrive upon their mother's milk — Their father 
 shewn to be a rogue — Commits a burglary, is tried and 
 condemned — Grace Dillon's philosophy' under trouble — 
 Her visit to the criminal, his reception of her — Why 
 she was guilty of such an act of conjugal civility — A 
 good reason given for her visit — Frank Dillon hanged — 
 Grace in jeopardy, and little Jemmy within an ace of 
 being smothered. 
 
 After the gala which had so nearly termi- 
 nated in the death of little James, the brothers 
 throve surprisingly, when, at the tender age of 
 three months, they were deprived of their father^
 
 1<> THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 not by the doom of nature^ but by the doom of 
 the law. In short, he was hanged. What a 
 finale ! — but of a rogue's life, appropriation is 
 the grand problem, and a halter the corollary. 
 He confessed before he was suspended — not 
 from the exercise of any official function, but 
 by the neck, as a trophy of the triumph of 
 criminal jurisprudence over the astuteness and 
 dexterity of roguery — that he had broken into 
 three hundred and seventeen houses during a 
 course of twelve years' practice, in conjunction 
 with five or six associates, and stolen property 
 to the amount of thirty-three thousand pounds, 
 seven of which had fallen to his share, and had 
 been dissipated in the most revolting de- 
 bauchery. He was detected at last (for how- 
 ever cunning the fox, there's always one more 
 cunning) as the principal in an extensive 
 burglary, and committed for trial upon the 
 capital charge. In due course he was tried and
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. IJ 
 
 condemned to death. Frank Dillon's nerves 
 were as rigid as a cast-iron chevaux de frise, and 
 the awful denunciation fell upon his ear, like the 
 roaring breakers upon the millennial rock, with- 
 out stirring a muscle of his imperturbable fea- 
 tures. He braved the dreadful issue of his 
 crimes with the indomitable ferocity of a savage 
 whose highest notion of magnanimity consists in 
 a brutal contempt of suffering, and an extrava- 
 gant defiance of death. He felt no contrition, 
 and wrestled with remorse, exhibiting the giant 
 energies of one accustomed to the strife, but 
 still more accustomed to conquer. From those 
 selfish fallacies which delude all bad men, he had 
 established his own rule of right. He contrived 
 to persuade himself — for sophistry steadily pur- 
 sued, but too often ends in positive aberration 
 of mind — that, having adopted robbery as a 
 profession, he had an indisputable right to follow 
 it, and that human laws therefore are only the
 
 18 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 ^' thews and sinews" of a despotic tyranny, when 
 exercised to abridge the natural prerogative of 
 man to act according to the suggestions of his 
 own unfettered will. Man, as he contended, is 
 born a free agent, with equal privileges and 
 equal rights ; he therefore cannot justly be re- 
 sponsible to man for the exercise of those 
 rights and privileges which nature has conferred 
 upon him. By these and similar reasonings, 
 the burglar had fully persuaded himself — 
 and his spiritual guide, a profligate priest, had 
 helped to strengthen this self-delusion — that 
 there was actually nothing criminal in robbery, 
 farther than its being made so by the laws of 
 the land, which he consequently held to be arbi- 
 trary laws, and not binding upon either the con- 
 science or the wiU of any one who had resolu- 
 tion enough to break them ; — and in his mind 
 such a resolution was a very approvable one. 
 He therefore robbed upon principle, as well as
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 19 
 
 for the benefit of his own interest, though both 
 principal and interest were at length summed 
 up in a halter. Frank Dillon died without be- 
 traying the slightest symptom of compunction 
 for his numerous delinquencies, but appeared 
 as indifferent upon the drop as if he were cer- 
 tain of a speedy transportation to a better con- 
 dition of things — as if heaven were about to be 
 his ULTIMA THULE, its blcssiugs the reward of 
 his adroitness in knavery, and he had nothing 
 to apprehend for the manifold outrages to be 
 charged against him at the great trial of the 
 last assize. Whatever might be his feelings 
 at this terrible moment, he coldly declared that 
 he should die happy. Insensibility, however, 
 is not happiness, and the pale haggard hue 
 of his features, the convulsive quiver of his 
 lip, and the occasional twitch of his heavy 
 eye-lid, showed legibly enough to the nearer 
 scrutiny of those who could look under the
 
 20 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 rigid crust of his brutal fortitude, that a some- 
 thing was written upon his heart which, if it 
 could be read, would not have displayed such 
 fair characters as he would fain represent to 
 be impressed upon it. 
 
 To his wife the loss of such a husband was 
 not a cause of serious regret. There is little 
 real sympathy in vice, and seldom any 
 true interchange of affection among vitally 
 depraved natures. Love, the source of every 
 virtue and of all that is excellent in human 
 feeling, is, with the single exception of self- 
 love, to them a terra incognita — a thing of 
 dreams and shadows. Mrs. Dillon visited the 
 culprit once in his cell after he had been con- 
 demned, but he received her with that sort 
 of sullen indifference which «o strikingly be- 
 tokened the inflexible obduracy of his nature. 
 He blessed neither his children nor their mo- 
 ther, but sternly forbade a repetition of her
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 21 
 
 visit. She rigidly obeyed his injunction, yet 
 chose to be present at his execution, how- 
 ever contrary to the strict requisitions of con- 
 nubial propriety — and actually saw him hanged. 
 She afterwards explained her motive. Her 
 younger boy being sick, she was obliged 
 to leave him at home in charge of an old 
 sybil one of her co-tenants, who, being an 
 adept in vaticination, had told her that 
 seeing his father dropped, as she technically 
 termed hanging, would act as a charm upon 
 the other boy, and secure him from a similar 
 suspension, and that thus, bearing a " charmed 
 life," he would escape many a disastrous con- 
 tingency. Upon this maternal plea, the wife 
 made a point of performing her last conjugal 
 duty, by being present at the execution of her 
 husband, and thus beholding his final struggle. 
 It was, however, very near turning out in sober 
 truth the performance of a last duty, since it
 
 22 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 had all but proved fatal both to herself and 
 the embryo knave, whose security from stran- 
 gulation by a halter she had taken such a 
 tender method of establishing. 
 
 Frank Dillon, as has been already shown, 
 was, what those among the elite of his profes- 
 sion significantly styled, " game to the last." 
 The knowledge of his resolute character and 
 celebrity in his art — for he was one of the most 
 dexterous burglars of his day — had assembled 
 an immense crowd to witness how he would 
 pay the penalty at once of his skill and of his 
 delinquency. No sooner was the bolt with- 
 drawn from the drop, and the criminal seen 
 dangling from the fatal beam, than there was a 
 simultaneous rush towards the spot. Many 
 of the anxious multitude who happened to be 
 afflicted with diseases which they could not 
 get rid of, came to obtain a touch of the dead 
 man's fingers, believing this to be an infallible
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 23 
 
 cure, whilst others were equally anxious to pos- 
 sess a narrow strip of his garments, as a 
 memento of jovial companionship now past, 
 and never to be renewed. Grace Dillon was 
 standing at a considerable distance from the 
 scene of inexorable justice, wedged in among 
 the crowd, with her arms encircling her infant, 
 and thus unable to use them for her own pro- 
 tection. Suddenly the dense mass began to 
 oscillate, in anothar instant it rolled forward 
 like a deluge, carrying every thing before it, 
 and she was borne along with the torrent. 
 Resistance was impossible. Little James 
 was almost smothered, but his struggling cries 
 were drowned in the din and turbulence of that 
 " sea of troubles" which continued to roll 
 onward and onward with frightful impetuosity. 
 The distracted mother raised the gasping boy 
 above her head in an agony of horror, when a 
 tall athletic fellow quickly seized him, and
 
 24 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 instantly flung him into the arms of another 
 a few yards oiF, who as speedily projected him 
 into the bosom of a third, and so he was 
 flung like a cricket-ball, from one to another 
 until he was finally pitched into the embrace of 
 a fat sanguine pubUcan standing at his window 
 to see the sight, and thus saved from destruc- 
 tion. This was the second remarkable escape 
 of James Dillon. Meanwhile, his mother had 
 escaped with difficulty from the suff'ocating 
 pressure of the crowd. She was carried for- 
 ward in the sweeping undulation to the very 
 foot of the scaffold, where she saw, with 
 revolting distinctness, the last struggles of 
 her delinquent husband. It was sometime 
 ere she could release herself from the crushing 
 contact of the multitude. She was nearly 
 borne down to the earth, and her uncertain- 
 ty as to the fate of her babe added tenfold 
 to the horrors which her extreme peril
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 25 
 
 poured in upon her soul. Her brain grew 
 dizzy, the breath hissed through her larynx in 
 its fierce struggles to escape, her jaws expanded, 
 and she felt herself fast sinking beneath the 
 populous flood that still rolled on, when she was 
 suddenly caught by the arm, drawn up into 
 a waggon, which happened for a moment 
 to stem the living torrent, and thus saved 
 from accompanying her husband into the 
 *"' place of graves.'^ She soon recovered her 
 boy, and after regaining her cellar in safety, 
 devoted the evening to a quiet carouse, in 
 order to signahse her joy at her own and her 
 little darling's fortunate escape. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 26. THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Grace Dillon's legacy — She proceeds with her babes to 
 Scotland — Her arrival and occupation — Harvest — 
 Reaping more agreeable than washing — The young 
 Dillons star-gaze because they can't help it, though there 
 are no stars visible — An eagle — His visit to the babes — 
 Jemmy's aerial journey — Grace in a quandary — Her 
 appeal to the eagle disregarded — Jemmy squeals — 
 The eagle inexorable — A stranger, a double -barrel gnn, 
 *-wo shots, a souse in the water and a rescue ; being 
 the third remarkable escape of James Dillon. 
 
 It happened some few weeks after the me- 
 morable death of Frank Dillon, that his relict
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 27 
 
 had occasion to go into Scotland, in order to 
 obtain a small legacy which had been bequeathed 
 to her by a distant relative. Through the 
 influence of one of the stipendanes of a steamer, 
 who, as she said, was a ^^ friend in need,^^ she 
 obtained a free passage to Edinburgh, whence 
 she walked to the place of her destination, 
 after having administered to her long agitated 
 internals a sedative of genuine Farintosh that 
 soon restored the tone of her troubled stomach, 
 the qualms of which subsided at the very first 
 dram. 
 
 Mrs. Dillon obtained her legacy, and as 
 harvest-time was about to commence, she 
 determined before her return to add to her 
 little store by enlisting herself among the 
 reapers. She accordingly soon got hired, and 
 repaired daily to the fields with her sickle, 
 which she had been for several years accustomed 
 to wield with considerable success in the corn- 
 
 c2
 
 2S THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 fields about the neighbourhood of London, as 
 she found it fully as profitable as washing, and 
 much more agreeable. About the latter end of 
 September, early in the afternoon of an exceed- 
 ingly warm, bright day, she was busily engaged 
 at her usual occupation in the corn-field. She 
 had carefully swathed her two babes and de- 
 posited them under the shade of a high hedge, 
 upon some well-dried sheaves. The field in 
 which she was at work was divided from the 
 neighbouring estate by a deep but rather 
 narrow and tranquil stream, which it was ne- 
 cessary to cross in order to reach the beach, 
 for they were on the coast. She was busily 
 engaged with her sickle and her ultimatum of 
 delight, the whiskey-flask, while the two little 
 Dillons were sucking their thumbs and 
 gazing at the sky — because, being upon their 
 backs, they had no other alternative so long as 
 their eyes were open — when a huge eagle made
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER, 29 
 
 a sudden gyration from behind a towering cliflf, 
 which stood like a giant sentinel of the land 
 to protect it against the encroachment of the 
 sea, and after soaring awhile over the field, 
 paused for a considerable interval, as if slum- 
 bering upon the buoyant air; then suddenly 
 pouncing down upon young Jemmy Dillon, it 
 incontinently stopped his star-gazing by bearing 
 him triumphantly aloft, to the surprise of the 
 astounded reapers, and the horror of his dis- 
 tracted mother. 
 
 The tiny victim of this huge " bird of Jove" 
 was seen to sprawl, though not heard to utter 
 a cry, and was soon borne to so dizzy a height, 
 that no mortal ear could have been accessible 
 to such appeals, had they been ever so acutely 
 made. The eagle continued to ascend for 
 many moments, with a slow and majestic 
 flight, then bore rapidly away towards the 
 cliff. The reapers raised loud and continuous
 
 30 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 shouts in order to induce liim to quit his 
 Drey, but he was deaf to such a clamorous 
 mode of persuasion. He had been too near 
 a neighbour of the thunder-storm, and too 
 famihar with the 
 
 " War of brumal hurricanes," 
 
 to heed the bellowing of a group of hungry 
 clowns in a corn-field. Onward he sailed, like 
 a floating cloud before the tempest, until the 
 little object of his plunder looked no bigger 
 than a mustard-seed. What was to be done ? 
 Tliere was no time for deliberation. The eagle 
 had already carried his victim to the clouds, and 
 was every moment waxing less and less to the 
 widely dilated eyes of the distracted mother. 
 For several moments she stood in motionless 
 despair — her mouth expanding as if in sympa- 
 thy with her eyes, which were stretched open
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 31 
 
 to their utmost point of extension. After a 
 brief pause^ her senses, which sudden surprise 
 and the whiskey had somewhat confounded, 
 gradually flowed into a clearer channel of per- 
 ception, when she recalled to mind the jeo- 
 pardy of her pretty Jemmy, and began to 
 reflect upon what was to be done in an emer- 
 gency so perplexing. She wrung her hands 
 in agony. She called franticly upon the 
 monster to rehnquish his prey ; but gallantry 
 is not the eagle's virtue, and he paid no more 
 regard to her supplications than if she had 
 been a creature of rags and straw — the terror 
 of sparrows and cock-robins, but the sport of 
 eagles. He still soared towards the cliff", over 
 which he hovered, sometimes saiUng in circles 
 round it, sometimes poised motionless on 
 the quiet air, as if mocking the agony which 
 he had caused upon the earth beneath. Re- 
 calling her paralysed energies, the wretched
 
 32 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 mother darted forward, and, with that indif- 
 ference to danger which is so frequently 
 the consequence of extraordinary excitement, 
 plunged undauntedly into the stream. She 
 had no fears. She heeded not her peril, but 
 dashed her arms through the clear element, 
 and rode buoyantly upon the surface, as if 
 she had been upheld by one of the invisible 
 genii of the current. She had never before 
 been in the water beyond her depth, and had 
 never even attempted to swim; but now, so 
 high was the tension of her mind, and so 
 resolved the one fixed purpose of her soul, 
 that she fiercely stemmed the deep placid 
 stream, unconscious of terror from personal 
 danger, and, after a few struggles, reached the 
 opposite side in safety. She scrambled up the 
 bank, which was rather precipitous, and with 
 the speed of thought, flew in the direction 
 which the aerial plunderer had taken in his
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 33 
 
 flight. He was still on the wing, as if his 
 burthen were a pastime, and he took delight 
 in looking down from his sublime elevation, 
 upon the anguish he had caused below. The 
 agonised mother happily gained the cliJBF before 
 the eagle had droop6d his pinions, but, spent 
 and breathless with her anxiety and her exer- 
 tions, she sank insensible at its base. The 
 rock, here forming a natural rampart, was high, 
 and inaccessible except from the upland, which 
 rose for a considerable distance along the coast, 
 full three hundred feet above the level of the 
 sea. The eagle now plunged suddenly down- 
 ward, and perched upon a craggy ledge near 
 the summit of the barrier, where he gently 
 deposited his victim, when a sportsman, who 
 witnessed what had taken place, hastening to 
 the spot just as the sanguinary robber was 
 about to commence the work of dismember- 
 ment and deglutition, discharged at him a shot 
 
 c 5
 
 34 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 from a double-barrelled gun, which instantly 
 frightened him from his helpless prey ; but 
 with the shock and sudden effort of his rising, 
 little Jemmy was forced over the ledge " into 
 the empty mr," at the height of two hundred 
 and fifty feet. It fortunately happened that the 
 crag from which he was thus rudely precipitated 
 beetled over the foundation of the rock, and 
 down came young Jemmy Dillon, swathed 
 to the very shoulders like a fi'esh mummy, 
 darting through the air with the rapid gravi- 
 tation of a plummet, his skull about to smash 
 upon the broad, round pebbles beneath— when 
 the eagle, which had recovered from its alarm 
 occasioned by the smart salute of the 
 stranger's gun, made a sudden swoop, and 
 with the velocity of a bolt from a crossbow, 
 once more seized the falling boy in its gi- 
 gantic talons, when within about thirty feet 
 of the earth and a fractured crown, and flew
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 35 
 
 with him in a horizontal direction over the 
 water. Another discharge from the gun, the 
 second barrel of which had been loaded with 
 ball, again obliged the bird to drop its victim, 
 who was received on the broad bosom of 
 the deep, and rescued from a watery death 
 by the gallant stranger. 
 
 Little Jemmy had not a single scratch 
 upon him ; he had been so securely swathed 
 that the talons of his ravisher had not left 
 even the shghtest puncture upon his clear 
 brown skin. The mother screamed with joy 
 as she embraced him, clung to the stranger's 
 knees, and poured forth a torrent of eloquent 
 gratitude. She returned to the field with 
 her restored treasure, and found his counter- 
 part asleep upon the corn-sheaf. Thus ter- 
 minated the third remarkable escape of Jemmy 
 Dillon.
 
 36 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Mrs. Dillon's return from Scotland — Corpuscularian Hy- 
 potheses — A middle aged spinster who turns out to be 
 an antecedent Mrs. Fry — Her introduction to our 
 hero's mother — Proves to be a female Apostle of St. 
 Augustin — Makes a convert of Grace who prefers the 
 spirit to the flesh, though a warm lover of both — She 
 comes to the Q. E. D. of a proposition, turns saint, and 
 sins in order that the divine mercy might be displayed 
 in her justification. 
 
 Mrs. Dillon, immediately on her return 
 from Scotland, being somewhat better oif in 
 circumstances than when she went thither, es-
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 37 
 
 tablished herself in quarters more respectable, 
 by a long scale of degrees, than the cellar in 
 which she formerly resided; still, however, 
 attached to the neighbourhood, because, so 
 long as she did not quit it, she should be 
 in the midst of her friends and pot companions, 
 she took an attic within a few doors of her 
 former abode; but she had no co-mates — herself 
 and the two young Dillons being the only 
 occupants. These two little corpuscularian 
 hypotheses* — for though they were a pair of 
 perfect axioms in material science, so far as 
 their infant identities were concerned, never- 
 theless each was a vital speculation with refe- 
 rence to the future man, — I say, these two 
 diminutives of man, that vast substantive in 
 spite of three letters, seemed to thrive greatly 
 
 * An improvement upon the atomic philosophy. — Con- 
 sult Boyle and Locke, ad loc.
 
 38 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 witli tlieir change of atmosphere and nutri- 
 ment, and soon proved to a demonstration, 
 that ox-clieek porridge and sheep's trotters 
 are a far more fattening kind of provender 
 for such babes of promise than mealy-potatoes 
 and red-herrings. Mrs. Dillon very soon dis- 
 covered an equal proclivity to an enlargement 
 of her outward woman, and shortly became 
 in her own person an a-priori argument in 
 proof of the trite old maxim, " the better you 
 live the fatter you grow." She in fact dis- 
 played, by a daily increasing obesity, the 
 triumph of good feehng. 
 
 Before she had been long established in 
 her new abode, she formed an acquaintance 
 who gave a very extraordinary^ colour and 
 direction to the events of her future life, and 
 especially to those of young James Dillon. 
 Shakspeare's glorious dogma here admirably 
 dovetails with the framework of this history —
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 39 
 
 There is a tide in the aflfairs of men 
 Which, taken at the flood leads on to fortune; 
 Omitted, all the voyage of this life 
 Is bound in shallows and in miseries. 
 
 On such a sea were the young Dillons, 
 especially Jemmy, now afloat; and their 
 mother, wisely concluding with the philosophic 
 bard of Avon, that 
 
 We must take the current when it serves. 
 Or lose our ventures, 
 
 determined to snatch the golden oppor- 
 tunity which she imagined had ofi'ered of 
 securing a wealthy friend for her minikins, 
 James and Swithun. 
 
 A middle-aged spinster, tall, lean, and spi- 
 ritualised by the fumes of supralapsarian 
 mysticism, had been in the habit of visiting 
 those parts of St. Giles's most distinguished 
 for riot and debauchery, in order to reclaim
 
 40. THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 the delinquents, or, in her own favourite 
 phrase, " to separate the sheep from the 
 goats,'' who were consigned and fast hurrying 
 to perdition, and bring back the former, pre- 
 destined by an especial grace to immortal 
 fruition, from the error of their ways to the 
 peace and sobriety of a godly life. Fond of 
 groping for spiritual pearls among the mud 
 and stench of moral and physical unclean- 
 ness, she devoted her mornings to this un- 
 gracious quest, and the issue of her search 
 was invariably more filth than pearls. Still 
 she persevered, and as disappointment gene- 
 rally attended her efforts, she frequently pur- 
 chased the jewel she could not find. She 
 practically experienced that money will, with 
 tahsmanic influence, soon make a neophyte 
 of the greatest knave alive. 
 
 This antecedent Mrs. Fry had reached 
 the matronly maidenhood of fifty-three. She
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 41 
 
 was grave in her address, saturnine in her 
 aspect, rigid in her morals, gaunt in her 
 body, and narrow in her mind. Her name 
 was Miss Biddy Mackinnon. She imagined 
 herself one of the elect angels, sent upon a 
 mission of love '* to turn the hearts of the 
 disobedient to the wisdom of the just,-^' that 
 she was endued -s^-ith a prodigious measure 
 of the holy spirit, and conmiissioned to teach 
 *• the acceptable way of the Lord." And teach 
 she did, with a vengeance, as in the sequel 
 will appear. 
 
 One afternoon she tapped at the door of 
 Grace Dillon's attic and readily obtained ad- 
 mittance ; for Grace was fond of a gossip, 
 and therefore never turned her back upon a 
 visiter. The offer of a dram was immediately 
 made, and as immediately declined, when 
 Miss Biddy, at the flattering invitation of her 
 obsequious hostess, allowed her body to gra-
 
 42 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 vitate, with the stiff angularity of the base 
 and sides of an isosceles triangle, until, her 
 chin, hanging over her knees like the pendu- 
 lous crag of a cliff loosened by the lashings 
 of many storms, she found herself quietly de- 
 posited in one of the two chairs which adorned 
 that scanty portion of a fourth story, forming 
 at once the dormitory and the refectory of the 
 Dillon family. After a nondescript sort of 
 guttural aspiration, at the same time depress- 
 ing the galled lids of her eyes over the flat 
 watery lenses that radiated with a glassy lustre 
 beneath, she began : 
 
 " Sad times, good woman ; wretched times 
 these; the roaring lion is abroad; there is 
 abundance of food for the foul feeder; his 
 maw is crammed with the ungodly ! The very 
 midriff is in a state of carnal dilatation ! Hah ! 
 a sad world— truly a sad world ; it Ueth in 
 wickedness, it abideth in iniquity ; but praise
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 48 
 
 be to Him who seeth and knoweth its back- 
 slidings — there is a remnant left/' 
 
 Grace Dillon stared at this spiritual rhap- 
 sody with an intensity and sudden dropping 
 of the nether jaw, which indicated as dis- 
 tinctly as the gnomon of a sun-dial, that she 
 was perfectly innocent of understanding one 
 single word which the elect lady had been 
 so enthusiastically uttering. 
 
 " How the lambs of the flock are worried 
 by the wolf/' continued Miss Biddy Mackin- 
 non ; '^ but they shall find a place of refuge 
 until this tyranny be overpast." 
 
 These, and similar ejaculations, were con- 
 tinued by this female apostle of St. Augustin, 
 as she proudly claimed to be, until her com- 
 phant auditor began to feel symptoms of 
 impatience ; for she had been accustomed to 
 look upon this world as a very agreeable 
 world upon the whole, and the sinners,
 
 44 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 against whom Miss Biddy pronounced such 
 a very unbecoming and undesirable doom, 
 as, in the main, a companionable sort of 
 creatures, with numbers of whom she had 
 frequently contrived to while away many a 
 social hour. 
 
 " Bless your sober heart,** said Grace, who 
 was a genuine Londoner, " why where's the 
 harm of sinning ? It does one's heart good. 
 How can one act against one's nature ? And 
 surely the good things o'this world warn't 
 given to be cast away like ofFal. Pleasure was 
 made to be enjoyed — that's my view of the 
 matter ; and to tell you the truth, I couldn't 
 be happy without what you pious folk calls 
 breaking the commandments. Them laws as 
 you talks of must have been made for niggers." 
 - " Aye, there it is now; you, too, are of 
 those who call evil good, and good, evil. But 
 listen to the advice of one who has the wel-
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 45 
 
 fare of your wicked, lost soul, at heart, and 
 who is wiihng to snatch a misguided sinner 
 from the coil of the serpent, in spite of her 
 determination to rush into it; for something 
 tells me, and I feel "'tis a prophetic commu- 
 nication, that thou art among the few reserved 
 to show forth the divine mercy in this cloudy 
 and dark day, in being the object of thy 
 Maker's gracious election to eternal life ; 
 ' who hath chosen you to salvation, through 
 sanctification of the spirit and belief of the 
 truth ;^* so that you shall be saved, do what 
 you will, and in spite of the most cunning 
 wiles of the tempter. Will you hsten to 
 me?^' 
 
 " Aye that 1 will," replied Grace with a 
 
 half credulous chuckle — " that I wdll, if you 
 
 can prove your good tidings, and show me 
 
 that I am sure of a quiet place in the next 
 
 ♦ Toplady.
 
 46 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 world ; for I confess that would add a mighty 
 relish to one's little harmless enjoyments in 
 this. Do you know I had always somehow 
 a notion that I was born with a silver spoon 
 in my mouth, or a golden nail on my great 
 toe, though I never could find either, for I 
 never yet got too much of Hodges^ cordial 
 into my head that any harm came of it." 
 
 " Did you ever feel a call of the spirit?" 
 asked the energetic Miss Biddy, beginning to 
 wax enthusiastic, and waving her head with 
 a pendulous swing, like a sixpenny Italian 
 image. 
 
 *' I certainly have had a call to imbibe the 
 spirit of malt many a time and often, and have 
 never refused to listen on those agreeable 
 occasions. ^^ 
 
 " But have you not sometimes heard the 
 busy monitor within, warning you against the 
 wi'ath to come ?'^
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER, 47 
 
 "Why as to that, I have often heard a 
 sort of a silent whispering within, persuading 
 me to take a drop of the great Lambeth dis- 
 tiller's best to fortify me against the wrath of 
 my late husband, Frank Dillon, as was hanged 
 last spring for housebreaking.'^ 
 
 " Shocking !" cried the maiden interlo- 
 cutor, pausing, as if this last communication 
 had swept her vernacular vocabulary from the 
 tablets of her memory, and left it like a sheet 
 of white paper, ruled, but without characters. 
 At length, starting as from a reverie, she 
 resumed — '' Did you never feel a knocking at 
 the door of your heart, and when it was 
 opened, become startled by the suggestions 
 of its new occupant dissuading you from fol- 
 lowing a multitude to do evil ?" 
 
 " I can't say as I have," replied Grace with 
 unwonted energy, '' for I've never done no- 
 thing to be ashamed of; and as to being a
 
 48 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 little fuddled now and then, 'tis a family 
 inheritance ; I took it from my mother before 
 me, who gave me the strong cordial with her 
 own milk. I love it, lady ; it mingles warmly 
 and cheerily with my heart's blood, and often 
 serves to soothe a wounded spirit^ for Pve 
 had my hard trials. Surely, then, it must 
 be a harmless indulgence ; and when our 
 betters set us the example, too, we can^t be 
 much behind the right to follow it.^' 
 
 Miss Biddy was silenced for a moment by 
 this puzzling deduction. She could not deny 
 the conclusion of Grace Dillon, who had come 
 triumphantly to the Q. E. D. of her proposi- 
 tion. After a long pause, the spiritual sister 
 of charity, thinking it would not do to be 
 knocked oflP her theological stilts by a washer- 
 Avoman of St. Giles's, endeavoured by an 
 induction of very heterogeneous particulars, 
 to persuade her that she was wrong. Her
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 49 
 
 reasonings fell loudly, for they were vehe- 
 mently urged, upon the ear of the spirit-loving 
 mother^ but rolled from her convictions like 
 water from the feathers of a duck. Not a 
 single argument against dram-drinking was ab- 
 sorbed; the sponge of her reason was too 
 constantly saturated with the overflowings of a 
 most potential prejudice. Her love of the 
 thing so steeled her heart against Miss Biddy 
 Mackinnon's eloquence, that it stubbornly re- 
 fused to be the recipient of her theological 
 postulates. With regard to the more palatable 
 doctrine of her chance of a better destiny in 
 the next world, Grace was far less pertina- 
 ciously incredulous, and listened with quiet 
 assurance to this part of her pious visiter's 
 declamation, who preached, in fact, a besotted 
 and perilous Antinomianism — a doctrine which 
 I verily believe has lost more souls than the 
 most degrading creeds of pagan superstition. 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 50 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 In the course of sundry visits, Miss Biddy 
 contrived to persuade the good easy bleacher 
 of unclean linen, that she and her babes were 
 born with that mysterious mark upon their 
 foreheads, invisible to vulgar ken, but pal- 
 pable to her as the nose above her own chin, 
 which showed them to be among the few 
 elected souls, plucked as brands out of the 
 burning, for an angelical transformation at 
 tlie " great and terrible day."
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 51 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Miss Biddy Mackinnon visits the elect washerwoman 
 and bribes her into the belief that she is born with the 
 fruit of the tree of life in her mouth, when she had not 
 
 a tooth in her head to chew it — Toplady — Dr. H , 
 
 Grace's spiritual predilection — Miss Biddy instructs the 
 boys — Some time elapses before they can spell that spirit 
 which consists of three letters and is not rum — Jemmy 
 and the cat — The heater, a burn, scraped potatoes, 
 and another remarkable escape. 
 
 The silly bigot from this time paid her ma- 
 tutinal visits to the attic of Grace Dillon, who 
 always received her with a fawning welcome, 
 
 D 2 
 
 ^*^^«I«v«fiiunoe
 
 52. THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 listening to her ^yith plausible attention, until 
 what Grace did at first from mere selfish po- 
 licy, became, after a while, so settled a habit, 
 that she ultimately declared herself a rigid be- 
 liever in exclusive predestination. She was, 
 in truth, a noble convert to the Antinomian 
 creed, that faith is the saddle in which the 
 chosen ride to heaven upon the flying dragon 
 of sin. 
 
 As, with the calculating cunning of her 
 class, Grace Dillon always pleaded poverty 
 whenever her patron appeared. Miss Biddy, in 
 the overflowing of her zealous exultation at 
 having discovered a hidden gem in the very 
 lazar-house of profligacy, never failed to leave 
 behind her a signal memento of this spiritual 
 transport in the shape of sundry circlets of 
 silver, stamped with the king's head. But 
 though her ready proselyte had been bribed 
 into belief, she really at length appeared to be
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER* 53 
 
 persuaded that she was foredoomed to an im- 
 mortahty of fruition, and that her oifspring, 
 being two integral portions of herself, must be 
 likewise in the same happy predicament. 
 Such was the consoling creed of the washer- 
 woman of St. Gileses, constantly laying it 
 down as an axiom of her new faith, that she 
 and her children were fated, as she termed it, 
 to a jocund life here, and to everlasting felicity 
 hereafter. 
 
 Toplady being Miss Biddy Mackinnon's 
 theological oracle, he also soon became the 
 oracle of her pupil. The latter understood about 
 as much of this Calvinistic autocrat as she did of 
 the institutes of his great prototype Calvin, who, 
 however, it must be confessed, has been greatly 
 misrepresented by his enthusiastic but indis- 
 creet admirers. Dr. Higgins, exclusive in faith 
 but a latitudinarian in works, was Miss Biddy's 
 favourite preacher 3 he, therefore, became also
 
 54 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 the favourite of Grace Dillon, who went re- 
 gularly to church every Sunday evening, and 
 as regularly concluded her observance of the 
 sabbath with so deep a potation of her fa- 
 vourite elixir, that she not only saw double, 
 but invariably reeled to bed in her best Sun- 
 day attire. In spite, therefore, of the improve- 
 ment in her spiritual condition, she never 
 relaxed a single scruple from her love of spirit 
 distilled by human hands, having become 
 righteous in behef only — not in practice. This 
 was perfectly in accordance with the exclusive 
 dogmas of her instructor, who was perpetually 
 growling in her ears the consoling text, " he 
 that believe th shall be saved ;'^ never failing, 
 however, to associate in her pupil's mind the 
 double proviso, by enunciating, with a lugu- 
 brious drawl, the other member of the sen- 
 tence, " but he that beheveth not shall be 
 damned."
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER, 55 
 
 The boys were by this time three years old. 
 Miss Biddy undertook to communicate to them 
 the rudiments of their mother-tongue, at the 
 same time expressing her determination, in 
 teaching 
 
 ** the young idea how to shoot/' 
 
 to see that it did not shoot beyond the mark, 
 nor explode in impiety. As the boys were 
 both quick, they readily got over the diffi- 
 culties of the alphabet, and could soon deci- 
 pher words of two letters with tolerable 
 accuracy, although, as the Anti-spelling-book, 
 by which the labours of one year are sur- 
 mounted in fourteen days, had not then come 
 into vogue, many a dull week elapsed before 
 they could spell their mother's favourite be- 
 verage and their own, though only a delicate 
 little word composed of two consonants and a 
 vowel.
 
 56 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 As the twins grew up, the same remarkable 
 resemblance with which they were born, con- 
 tinued, so that it was still necessary to distin- 
 guish them by some mark of identity, lest 
 Swithun should get the box on the ear intended 
 for Jemmy, who proved a sad pickle, and 
 evinced symptoms of the precocious rogue, 
 even before he was breeched. The eldest boy, 
 therefore, had his little finger adorned with a 
 copper ring, of which he was as proud as his 
 father had been of his skill in burglary, or 
 what he significantly called the transfusion of 
 property. 
 
 As Jemmy Dillon advanced in childhood, 
 he displayed those propensities to fun and 
 roguery which so eminently distinguish his 
 adult years. 
 
 One day, during Miss Biddy^s morning 
 visit, little James was seated in a corner of 
 the fire-place, teasing a poor unhappy kitten^
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. b^ 
 
 which had lately become one of the members of 
 his mother's domestic establishment. He was 
 delighted with the gnarling of the unhappy- 
 creature while he was pulling its ears and tail, 
 as if it were a like pastime to both. His 
 younger brother was seated on the bed, with 
 one thumb in his mouth, and the other at the 
 bottom of a pewter pot which his mother had 
 drained to the very shadow of a drop just be- 
 fore the entrance of the " elect lady" — a titular 
 appellative, by which Miss Mackinnon was 
 known, not only in Grace Dillon's attic, but 
 likewise in the cellars and attics of many a 
 neighbouring habitation. While her urchins 
 were thus employed, the industrious mother 
 was ironing some caps for her visiter, who 
 gave Grace all her washing, as she never em- 
 ployed any but such as she was sure to take 
 " sweet counseF' with in the next life, to do 
 for her those worldly necessities for which she 
 
 D 5
 
 58 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 was obliged to be dependant upon other 
 hands. 
 
 Miss Biddy was seated near the fire, with 
 her foot, a limb that would have served to 
 prop a brazen column of victory, gently re- 
 posing upon the hearth-stone, and by its 
 side purred the kitten which little Jemmy had 
 just released from its torment. The fair 
 apostle of Antinomian evangelism was busily 
 employed in discoursing with her obsequious 
 proselyte upon the exclusive rights of futurity, 
 to which they had the unaccountable good 
 luck to have an undefeasible claim>, when, 
 during a gesticulation of extraordinary energy, 
 her pious declamation was suddenly arrested 
 by a pang far more likely to put her in mind 
 of what was prepared in the next world for the 
 reprobate than for the elect. It was so ex- 
 cruciating as to cause the poor lady's nose 
 suddenly to shrink into such minuteness of
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 59 
 
 dimension, that it scarcely looked bigger than 
 a large pimple, placed there as a subsidiary, 
 in the temporary absence of the principal ; 
 nor did it gradually elongate into its natural 
 segment until the pang which produced her 
 nasal transformation had somewhat subsided. 
 The fact is, that little Jim, whose love of mis- 
 chief, even at the tender age of three years, 
 was as invincible as the love of mouse-torment 
 in an over-fed cat, had silently taken from the 
 fire a round heater with which his mother 
 warmed the cylinder used by her for the pur- 
 pose of ironing the fine cambric or lace frills of 
 Miss Biddy Mackinnon's caps. It was glowing 
 hot when the mischievous urchin drew it from 
 between the bars of the grate ; and whilst the 
 washerwoman's pious patron was in one of the 
 climaxes of her elocution, he popped it plump 
 upon her large brawny instep. In a moment the 
 agonised lady flung her foot upwards, with a ve-
 
 60 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 locity and momentum that could only be com- 
 pared to the kick of a dray-horse, scaring the 
 kitten from the arms of little Jemmy, who had 
 again seized it in the transport of his infantine 
 delight, though he himself remained undis- 
 turbed, watching, with a queer little baby grin, 
 the issue of his first practical joke. The iron, 
 urged by such a sinewy catapultum, flew di- 
 rectly towards his temples, and had he not 
 bobbed his head on one side, with instinctive 
 celerity, he would have been as surely laid low 
 as his father was raised high at the hour of his 
 death. As it was, the heated missile in its 
 rapid trajection, grazed the left ear of the 
 budding knave, giving him such a twinge of 
 retribution, and causing him to scream so 
 lustily, that his outcries completely smothered 
 those of the poor lady whom he had so griev- 
 ously tormented. The mother having given 
 him a box upon the seared member, which
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 61 
 
 only made him pipe the shriller, rushed 
 to the assistance of Miss Biddy, who was 
 writhing, like a choked alligator, under 
 the agonies of temporal burning. 
 
 Potatoes were scraped, and applied in the 
 shape of a bulbous cataplasm to the burn, 
 the obsequious Grace very irreverently calling 
 the Almighty to witness how grieved she was 
 at the good lady's mishap. With her toes 
 muffled, like a dish of roasted chesnuts, in a 
 ragged bandanna, the property of Mrs. Dillon 
 and a relic of her late husband's wardrobe, 
 Miss Biddy got into a hackney coach and 
 made the best of her way home,, were she 
 was laid up for six weeks, and little James 
 was then spared sundry taps on the head, 
 with which it was the custom of his instruc- 
 tress to visit him in the ardour of her zeal 
 to behold his tree of knowledge expand into
 
 62 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 righteous blossoms, and bring forth fruit unto 
 hohness. 
 
 Things went on much in the same way for 
 about a year after the affair of the heater, 
 when Grace Dillon died of typus fever, and 
 Jemmy and Swithun were consigned to the 
 parish workhouse. It appeared that the elect 
 washerwoman had many misgivings about the 
 state of her soul, when the fearful warning 
 came that she was about to yield it up to the 
 God who gave it. The assurances of Miss 
 Biddy, who, to do her justice, was daily at her 
 convert's side, cheering her with golden pro- 
 mises, fell upon her ear like the far-off boomings 
 of the thunder ; — they carried terror rather than 
 hope to her restless spirit. She had now no 
 passions, no selfish prejudices to bring to the 
 support of her preceptor's delusive creed, but 
 truth, strong as death and immutable as
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 63 
 
 eternity, knocked at the door of her heart 
 with an authority that no sophistry could 
 impugn. She Hved a hypocrite and died des- 
 pairing. Her unhappy death wrought no 
 change in the stubborn behef of Miss Biddy, 
 who rescued the eldest-born of the late Grace 
 Dillon's tmns from the parish workhouse, and 
 took him to her own abode, in order, as she 
 said, to prevent him from falling into the power 
 of the evil one ; though how this could happen 
 even to a predestinated rogue — predestinated, 
 be it remembered, to faith and eternal life, 
 not to petty larceny and the hulks — is more 
 than the wit of him who records this his- 
 tory, can enable him to conceive. 
 
 To the younger boy. Miss Biddy Mackin- 
 non paid no attention, and simply because 
 she had taken it into her pious head that one 
 twin of a pair was enough to be saved — 
 that a mystical but infallible sympathy would
 
 6'4 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 attach her to the elected one, and that as the 
 other must of necessity go to the devil for 
 the glory of God,* she should be guilty of 
 a sin by encumbering herself with an em- 
 bryo hell-kite. The young predestinarian 
 throve surprisingly in his new abode ; he grew 
 fat and impudent, and was an object of 
 vexation to the whole household, except only 
 his saintly patroness. He was perpetually 
 at loggerheads with a testy pug which shared 
 with himself the partialities of Miss Biddy, 
 and he consequently scrupled not, on every 
 convenient opportunity, to bestow upon this 
 canine rival sundry kicks on the ribs, which 
 the wrinkled-nosed brute never failed to 
 
 * The Supralapsarian Calvinists assume that God 
 created some men to be saved, and others to be damned, 
 in order to signalise his own glory. Alas ! that a God 
 of mercy should be so misrepresented !
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 65 
 
 acknowledge by leaving its mark on its 
 aggressor's legs, as a receipt in full. 
 
 Very shortly after the elected twin had 
 been transported, not to Van Diemen's Land, 
 but to Hart Street, Bloomsbury, an accident 
 happened, which had nearly put an end to 
 his prospects in this world — an issue that 
 would have saved him from a long catalogue 
 of malversations, and from many a recorded 
 act of dexterous roguery. Miss Biddy Mac- 
 kinnon had assigned for the especial con- 
 venience of our hero one of the garrets of 
 her habitation, to the windows of which she 
 had neglected to put bars; never dreaming, 
 good easy woman, that it could be possible 
 for a child scarcely four years old to tumble 
 out of window. But httle James, who was as 
 curious as he was mischievous, and marvellously 
 fond of observing what passed without the 
 house as well as within, being left alone one
 
 66 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 morning while the housemaid was making her 
 mistress's bed, cUmbed upon a chair, mounted 
 to the window, perched himself upon the sill, 
 and began to contemplate at his leisure what 
 was passing underneath. At first he remained 
 stationary within the window-frame, being un- 
 questionably on the discretion side of it ; but at 
 length — for who ever heard of discretion in so 
 young a head — in the excitement of his anxiety 
 to see a Punch that had just commenced its 
 gambols near the opposite pavement, he forced 
 himself out upon the stone ledge, which an 
 older head would have told him was the sinister 
 side of security, when, losing his equilibrium, 
 he fell from a height of full five-and-forty feet 
 into the street below. It fortunately happened 
 that a chimney-sweeper was standing imme- 
 diately under the window with a large bag of 
 soot upon his shoulders, eagerly gazing at the 
 sight, unconscious of any danger from above,
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 67 
 
 — when in an unexpected moment, souse came 
 a tremendous percussion upon his sack, which 
 sent him to the earth as if he had been 
 knocked from his perpendicular by a huge 
 granite shot out of a Turkish mortar. He fell 
 on his face with his head under the sooty in- 
 cumbrance upon which the young HobgobUn 
 was perched, as black as a little devil, being 
 pounced all over by the volumes of carbo- 
 nated dust which issued from the sack. He 
 had fallen from the window in his anxiety, as 
 already stated, to see the droll gambols of 
 Punchinello, and his head being so much 
 lighter than the converse extremity, he had, 
 during his rapid illustration of the centripetal 
 force, maintained his head uppermost, like a 
 bottle in a cistern. Thus was his neck saved 
 from dislocation, whilst the receptacle of con- 
 densed smoke saved the other extremity from 
 complete maceration against the curb-stone.
 
 (>S THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 When the black cloud, raised by the sudden 
 concussion of his little body, had subsided, 
 he appeared squatted like a tiny incubus upon 
 the back of the poor sweep, who lay, dark 
 and motionless, under him, whilst the eyes 
 of our astonished hero were opened to their 
 utmost extension, with a speechless stare, 
 expressing a vague emotion betwixt wonder 
 and alarm. His mouth was expanded into 
 a doleful gape, and when he saw a cunning 
 grin upon the countenances of some of the 
 bystanders, his teeth suddenly closed, big 
 tears forced their way through his compressed 
 eyelids, and he bellowed with all his heart 
 and voice to the no small amusement of Punch 
 and his company. He was perfectly free 
 from gash or contusion, though he had re- 
 ceived a terrible fright and a good shaking 
 into the bargain. The sweep, on the con- 
 trary, lay senseless under his sooty coverlid.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 69 
 
 and when it was removed, presented a piteous 
 sight to the numerous but unfeeling spectators. 
 His face was almost converted into a dead flat, 
 for the nose no longer protruded, but had 
 disappeared, like the horns of a snail ; and the 
 grim black surface of his physiognomy was 
 covered with blood. He had evidently swal- 
 lowed three of his teeth, which had manifestly 
 been just cashiered from the gory jaw, as they 
 were no where to be found. After a deep sob 
 or two, the unhappy rectifier of smoky chim- 
 neys, having wiped the perspiration from his 
 temples, the tears from his eyes, and the soot 
 from his face with the same diagonal motion 
 of his sleeve, took up his sack, threw it 
 bravely upon his shoulders, and proceeded on 
 his way. Meanwhile, Jemmy Dillon was taken 
 into the house, and received from his patroness 
 a long lecture upon the impropriety of looking 
 out of a window, together with many a grave
 
 70 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 rebuke for his stupidity in falling from the 
 house-top with the chance of pitching upon a 
 soot-sack ; all which " passed by him hke the 
 idle wind that he respected not." The boy 
 grew under the spiritual guidance of Miss 
 Biddy, but his furtive propensities so soon 
 began to develope themselves that had she 
 not been fully assured of his election, after a 
 life of roguery, to a life of glory, she would 
 most undoubtedly have determined to get rid 
 of him with the first convenient opportunity ; 
 for her charity was never found to continue 
 very energetic when it interfered with her own 
 personal comforts — save in behalf of the pre- 
 destinated.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 7l 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 James Dillon shows his skill in characters — Chalks the 
 walls with mottoes which have not yet been expounded 
 —An apple-dumpling — The lecture and its results — 
 '"What must be, must." — Sir Philip Sidney's dogma — 
 Liberty of the subject — Miss Biddy does not find out 
 that she has hatched a cockatrice's egg, though her 
 domestics do — Jemmy Dillon begins to form naughty 
 companionships, but Miss Biddy thinks nothing the 
 worse of him. 
 
 As Jemmy Dillon approached his first cli- 
 macteric, Miss Biddy did her best to advance 
 him in knowledge, as far as he was already
 
 73 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 advanced in grace ; and by the time he had 
 reached the earhest notable period of human 
 hfe^ which the wise consider one of moral 
 and physical mutation, namely, his seventh 
 year, — he read with a fluency that made his 
 patroness look forward to seeing him some 
 day or other a preacher, if not a doer, of the 
 word. He moreover acquired such caligra- 
 phical skill that the walls of her tenement 
 were perpetually ornamented with words, 
 chalked in a fine flowing hand, but selected 
 rather from the kitchen than the drawing-room 
 vocabulary. 
 
 These little flourishes of precocious talent 
 were, by the elect lady whose stockings had 
 a slight intermixture of blue in the weaving, 
 most philosophically considered the beautiful 
 rosy tints of a dawn that promised to open 
 into a glorious noon ; but as the growth 
 of a cabbage is eminently promoted by
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 73 
 
 stripping the superfluous leaves, by a course 
 of analytical induction, she came at length 
 to the conclusion, a fortiori, that young 
 Dillon's intellectual growth would be both 
 vastly accelerated and improved, if she docked 
 ofi" a few of the exuberant and supereroga- 
 tory buds of his rapidly fructifying intellect. 
 Having come to this practical conclusion, 
 she immediately grafted another upon it, which 
 was that the summary process of curtailment 
 she had determined to adopt could not be 
 too soon proceeded upon. She accordingly 
 summoned her charge into her presence just 
 as he was going to enjoy the liquorish re- 
 freshment of a hot apple- dumpling ! when, 
 parting the hair upon his forehead by way 
 of encouragement, she bade him be seated 
 on a low rickety stool purchased for the 
 repose of that foot which the mischievous 
 urchin had seared with a hot heater about 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 74 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 four years before. Wiping liis nose in tlie 
 sleeve of his pinafore, and with a lachrymose 
 ook of reproach at having been so unsea- 
 sonably withdrawn from the very unusual 
 luxury of a smoking apple dumjiling and 
 brown sugar^ little James looked up into her 
 face with a corrugation just above each eye 
 that plainly told his disappointment, and at 
 the same time with a ludicrous expression 
 at the corners of his mouth tantamount to 
 the anxious exclamation of Hamlet to his 
 father^s ghost : — " Speak, I am bound to hear." 
 The grave Miss Biddy Mackinnon poured 
 forth a volume of old maiden eloquence upon 
 the impropriety of chatking naughty words 
 upon the walls of her tenement, which, as 
 she very truly averred, was not only a waste 
 of time, but likewise a waste, as well as a 
 wanton dissipation, of money, because chalk 
 could not be had without paying for it, and
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 7^ 
 
 consequently ought not to be employed but 
 for some useful purpose — frugality being one 
 of the surest diagnostics of true wisdom. 
 
 The lecture continued so long that the apple 
 dumpling had for some time ceased to smoke ; 
 nevertheless the Hobgoblin was no sooner 
 dismissed from the penance of his patroness's 
 declamation than with a special inclination, 
 he sat himself down before the tempting 
 sphere of dough, and despatched it with an 
 appetite rendered the more keen by disap- 
 pointment and delay. This duty to himself 
 being performed, he seized his chalk, and 
 spent the remainder of the afternoon in illus- 
 trating the advantages of being taught to 
 write, and in practically confuting the moral of 
 Miss Biddy's lecture. This, however, had only 
 the effect of convincing Miss Mackinnon that 
 there was no conflicting with the decrees of 
 an especial predestination. " What must be.
 
 76 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 must be !'^ she exclaimed resignedly ; and, 
 therefore. Jemmy was permitted to scrawl on. 
 It became clear to her reason that chalking 
 her walls all over in vulgar English was a pre- 
 destined hallucination of young Dillon^s, and 
 that therefore no attempt should be made to 
 interrupt the course of the divine determi- 
 nation. She never allowed herself to reflect 
 ui:)on a subject too far removed from human 
 comprehension to make it a matter of mental 
 abstraction, subscribing literally to the philo- 
 sophical dogma of Sir Philip Sidney, that 
 " reason never shows itself more reasonable 
 than in ceasing to reason upon things above 
 reason." 
 
 " Reason to faith obedient homage pays. 
 Nor clouds with human wit diviner rays 
 Of wisdom infinite."* 
 
 * Tolson, Moral Emblems.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 77 
 
 Impressed with the behef that Sir PhiUp's 
 logic was oracular, Miss Biddy never for a 
 moment questioned the propriety of any 
 thing done by one of the elect, as, though 
 proper to be, it was quite above reason- — and 
 she therefore took it for granted that it would 
 be all for the best. Under this impression 
 her protege was allowed to do just as he listed, 
 so that instead of his natural propensities to 
 ill being corrected under the religious superin- 
 tendence of Miss Biddy Mackinnon, all his 
 evil tendencies were the more directly and 
 irremediably confirmed. 
 
 In less than three weeks there was scarcely 
 a spot upon the walls of the elect lady's first 
 story, within four feet from the floor, that was 
 not covered with the juvenile compositions of 
 Master James, which was the title of distinc- 
 tion now assigned to him by his maiden pro- 
 tector. The boy discovered a quickness of
 
 78 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 parts which made her vain of him to the last 
 degree ; and although he had been already 
 detected by the servants in one or two slippery 
 tricks, yet she could not be convinced against 
 her will of any thing to his disparagement. 
 Whatever he was represented as having done 
 amiss, she attributed to the envy of her domes- 
 tics, who, it must be confessed, thought, and 
 with sufficient justice, that she was by far too 
 fond of a brat, who as they protested with much 
 truth and more earnestness, would have been 
 a fitter inmate for a workhouse than for the 
 habitation of their mistress. They might, 
 however, as well have blown mustard-seed at 
 the clouds to bring down the eagles, as have 
 attempted to persuade the pertinacious Miss 
 Biddy that she had hatched the egg of a cocka- 
 trice, and had hitherto only escaped mischief 
 because the reptile was too young to sting. 
 She never would be persuaded that a predes-
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 7^ 
 
 tinated virgin could go wrong, and therefore 
 harboured Httle Dillon in spite of his roguery. 
 
 The boy grew strong and handsome. He 
 was compactly made, firm on his legs, mus- 
 cular, robust, and active. His limbs had much 
 symmetry, and there was about him an air of 
 natural ease which led at once to the conclu- 
 sion that had he been born a gentleman, he 
 must have turned out a very accomphshed one, 
 so far as the outward man was concerned. He 
 had light curly hair, a bold prominent fore- 
 head, a complexion fair, but glowingly ruddy, 
 with a deep, full, bright blue eye, which bespoke 
 fearlessness and an ardent spirit of enter- 
 prise. Every stranger that came to the house 
 remarked his laughing countenance ; nor was it 
 easy to detect under the boyish smile, which 
 continually played like a radiant halo upon his 
 open features, the sly under-current of purpose 
 that occasionally gave to every lineament an
 
 80 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 animation and an equivocal keenness of expres- 
 sion at once arch and penetrating. 
 
 Impatient of confinement, the boy used fre- 
 quently to escape from the restraints of Miss 
 Biddy's kitchen, and 'repair to the neighbour- 
 hood of his late father's cellar, where he had 
 formed a circle of acquaintance more likely to 
 lead him to the hulks than to heaven, whither 
 it was the decided belief of his protectress, as 
 she vehemently protested, that he would even- 
 tually go. These associates were babes of the 
 town, sent daily by their parents upon furtive 
 or begging expeditions, as it might happen ; 
 and so great was their adroitness from 
 practice, that each contrived to maintain a 
 large family of idlers in licentious and 
 bestial indolence. With such juvenile de- 
 linquents Jemmy was in a fair way of be- 
 coming any thing but a saint, though, according 
 to the creed of Miss Biddy Mackinnon, he car-
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 81 
 
 ried, and would carry to the end of the chapter, 
 the soul of a saint in the carcass of a sinner. 
 This is a theological paradox which antinomian 
 fatuity has grafted upon certain doctrines spi- 
 ritualised by Calvin from the grosser alembic 
 of St. Augustin, with whom originated the 
 dictum of the divine decrees, whence the mon- 
 strous dogma of exclusive reprobation and 
 election have emanated. Miss Biddy was in 
 truth, a devoted Calvinist, though had she 
 happened to have known as much of the early 
 writings of the far-famed Bishop of Hippo as 
 she did of those of the Genevese divine, she 
 would have been as likely to have proclaimed 
 herself a Manichee as a Calvinist. 
 
 E 5
 
 82 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Grumio's speech — Our hero's first essay in a new cha- 
 racter — The exquisite — His Panang-lawyer and silk 
 pocket handkerchief — Narrow escape of an audacious 
 sparrow — Jemmy Dillon bobs his head and saves his 
 crown — He visits the workhouse, meets his brother, and 
 persuades him to put his finger upon the tail of a dilem- 
 ma — Swithun smarts for it — James's adventures at the 
 workhouse — The grapes, and what followed — Caught 
 on a tenter-hook — Unhung with a broom— Walks off 
 in time— Swithun perplexed. 
 
 One morning young Dillon was at the 
 corner of Hart-street, surrounded by a troop
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 83 
 
 of young urchins who always swam with the 
 tide of circumstance, and had been early 
 initiated into the mystery of appropriation, 
 when an elderly gentleman chanced to pass 
 on the opposite side of the way. It was easy 
 for a quick observer to perceive that there 
 was mischief brewing among this little 
 viUanous confraternity. As Grumio once 
 said, or we may eschew all faith in Shak- 
 speare, " Here's knavery ! See, to beguile 
 the old folk, how the young folks lay their 
 heads together ! Master, master, look about 
 you. Who goes there ! Ha ! *" Poor old 
 gentleman ! With all the unconsciousness of 
 a sucking babe, he left the street minus a silk 
 pocket-hankerchief and a tortoise-shell snuff- 
 box. 
 
 Under such ready instructors. Jemmy soon 
 
 * Taming of the Shrew.
 
 84 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 grew an adept in these petty larcenies. He 
 daily spent several hours with the chums of his 
 babyhood, unobserved by Miss Biddy, who 
 either fancied he was in the kitchen, or, 
 which was by far the most probable, did not 
 trouble herself about the matter. One spring 
 mornins:,— 
 
 " Whanne that April with his shoures sote. 
 The droughte of March hath perced to the rote. 
 And bathed every veine in swiche licour> 
 Of whiche vertue engendred is the flour ; 
 When Zephirus eke with his sote brethe 
 Enspired hath in every holt and hethe 
 The tendre croppes ; and the yonge sonne 
 Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne ;"* 
 
 — on such a morning Jemmy Dillon and two of 
 his adolescent coadjutors were standing at the 
 
 * Chaucer. See Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 85 
 
 end of Southampton-street, Bloomsbury-square 
 at the corner which abuts upon High-street, 
 Holborn, watching for an opportunity of exer- 
 cising the skill of their craft upon some simple- 
 ton who had never dreamed of the abstraction 
 of a pocket-handkerchief. They had not re- 
 mained long upon the watch before a supreme 
 exquisite strutted past them with a swell of 
 manner and magnitude of pantaloon that spoke 
 volumes both for his posture-master and for 
 his tailor. His right-hand was armed with a 
 huge Panang-lawyer,* which he flourished in the 
 air^ to the consternation of all commoners who 
 happened to " pass between the wind and his 
 nobility.^' James Dillon, nothing daunted by 
 the swagger of this man of broad-cloth, seeing 
 
 * A thick ground rattan walking-stick, called a Panang- 
 lawyer from its summary mode, when judicially exercised, 
 of settling questions of assault and battery by nothing but 
 knock-down arguments.
 
 86 THE FET.LOW COMMONER. 
 
 the end of a fine silk bandanna peeping tempt- 
 ingly from the corner of his pocket, advanced 
 warily, lifted up the skirt of his coat, and dex- 
 terously extracted the gaudy prize, which he 
 immediately handed to one of his companions. 
 Not content with this successful issue of his 
 enterprise, he thrust his hand with adept 
 celerity into the very bottom of the pocket 
 which he had already lightened by withdrawing 
 the whole of its contents in the shape of a 
 newly-starched square of painted taffeta, when 
 the sturdy Bobadil, in an ecstasy of frolic, 
 making a sudden lunge with his judicial rattan 
 at an audacious sparrow that happened to 
 fly within four yards of his nose, the unex- 
 pected curvature of his body prevented the 
 Hobgoblin, as Jemmy Dillon was hencefor- 
 ward designated among his chums, from disen- 
 gaging his feelers with his usual adroitness 
 from the posterior depository of his tall victim.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 87 
 
 The latter feeling that a stranger's hand was 
 fixed in that part of his outer garment which had 
 been expressly designed for his own — for when 
 he wanted to give either hand a furlough he 
 was sure to stick it there — -he made a sudden 
 gyration, bringing, into precisely the same 
 figure of rotation, his Panang-lawyer, which 
 was only stopped from describing a complete 
 circle by coming in violent contact with 
 the skull of a young knave who was standing 
 at the moment behind Jemmy Dillon as a 
 ready recipient of whatever the invaded pocket 
 might produce. The alert Hobgoblin escaped 
 the ponderous visitation by dexterously bob- 
 bing his head the moment he perceived the 
 rapid direction of the stick, thus allowing it to 
 crack the crown of a very little urchin, but a 
 very great rascal, who had frequently merited 
 hanging before he had numbered his eighth year. 
 No sooner did sHppery Jim — for from this
 
 88 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 time henceforward he became one of those 
 pol}Tiominous members of society who have 
 an ahas for every week in the year — no sooner 
 I say, did Jemmy Dillon, likewise called the 
 Fellow Commoner, perceive the issue of his 
 rash experiment than he slipped through the 
 crural gap formed by the curved shanks of the 
 enraged exquisite, and made his escape down 
 a narrow street_, a little above the scene of his 
 associate's disaster. After a while he paused to 
 recover his breath, which had been suspended 
 by the united operation of alarm and extreme 
 rapidity of locomotion. Finding himself se- 
 cure from pursuit, he proceeded at a leisurely 
 pace towards the workhouse, where his brother 
 Swithun was quietly domiciliated, and de- 
 manded admittance, upon the undeniable plea 
 of seeing his relative. He was accordingly 
 admitted without question or demurrer ; 
 though the janitor of the parish refuge for
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 89 
 
 the destitute eyed him with a keenness of 
 scrutiny as he passed that made him feel not 
 quite so sure of his security. 
 
 The brothers met and embraced, when the 
 elder, having, with all the apparent warmth 
 of brotherly affection expatiated in the ears 
 of the hungry younger upon the delicacies of 
 Miss Biddy Mackinnon's kitchen, persuaded 
 him to exchange clothes and repair to the elect 
 lady's house, — for the likeness born with the 
 twins had not in the slightest degree abated — 
 where he might enjoy the luxury of a day or 
 two's sumptuous living. The unsuspicious but 
 delighted Swithun was soon equipped in his 
 brother's habiliments, and, starting off from the 
 workhouse, repaired with his best speed to the 
 house of feasting, as he imagined it ; and 
 in truth it was so to him, for no sooner 
 did he reach Miss Biddy Mackinnon's abode 
 than he intuitively repaired to the pantry,
 
 9t) THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 which he was not long in discovering — for 
 hunger has a very discerning instinct — and 
 there attacked the remnant of a roast goose 
 with such prodigious fervour that a fit of 
 indigestion was the consequence. This was 
 likely to have been a fatal indulgence, for 
 had not one of the maiden members of 
 Miss Biddy's establishment drenched the 
 little Sybarite with copious draughts of warm 
 water, which happily caused him instantly 
 to disgorge the goose, poor little Dillon 
 the younger, would never, in all human pro- 
 babihty, have been any further incumbrance 
 upon the parish. 
 
 Although he appeared in the dress of 
 Jemmy, and bore so perfect a resemblance 
 to him, that the inmates of Miss Biddy's 
 establishment did not for a moment suspect he 
 was not really the boy of their mistress's 
 adoption, — nevertheless, there was something
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 91 
 
 about him so different from his usual habits, 
 that they could not at all account for such 
 an extraordinary moral transformation. He 
 was so much more tractable than they had 
 ever before found him to be, that they were 
 delighted with his improvement, though what 
 puzzled them extremely was, he appeared 
 quite a stranger in his own home. He did 
 not even know the way to his bedchamber. 
 The domestics, however, after a few hours' 
 wonder, made up their minds upon the 
 suggestion of the cook, who was not only 
 considered a culinary phenomenon, but Uke- 
 wise the oracle of her mistress's kitchen, 
 that this was nothing more than one of 
 the boy's pranks — for in good sooth Jemmy 
 played so many that they had almost ceased 
 to be astonished at anything he said or did — 
 while the elect lady reconciled herself to the 
 notion, which never failed to be uppermost 
 in her thoughts upon such occasions, that the
 
 92 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 Fellow Commoner was destined to be a funny 
 fellow all his life long. At the same time 
 she thought that the proverb, " What is bred 
 in the bone will never come out of the flesh," 
 must have emanated from Solomon himself, for 
 it had all the verisimilitude of a perfect 
 oracle. She was sure, in her own fancy, that 
 the devil had no chance of having her 
 young ward for a subject, and therefore 
 sensibly came for a hundredth time to the con- 
 clusion, that he had better go on his own way, 
 since he could not go wrong. A noble old 
 poet has said, 
 
 *' A thousand times I haue herd men tell 
 
 That there is joie in heven and pain in hell. 
 
 And I accord it wele that it is so : 
 
 But nathelesse, yet wot I wele also 
 
 That there 'n is non dwelling in this countre 
 
 That either hath, in heven or hell, ibe*." 
 
 * Chaucer. See Prologue to the Legende of Good 
 women.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 93 
 
 Although to this dictum of the bard Miss 
 Biddy Mackinnon would readily have sub- 
 scribed, it was nevertheless her firm belief 
 that nine-tenths of the people " in this 
 countre'^ would eventually go to the latter 
 place, whilst the former was almost ex- 
 clusively reserved for herself and Jemmy 
 Dillon. 
 
 As I have said, the complete resemblance of 
 Swithun to his brother placed his identity above 
 the reach of suspicion. In the course of the 
 afternoon, after his arrival in Hart-street, having 
 cashiered the goose from his stomach, with which 
 it had taken such disagreeable, though not 
 unprovoked, liberties, as he was standing on 
 the step of the front door, gaping at a 
 half-famished monkey playing its unwdlling 
 gambols to the piping of a screeching Dutch 
 organ, his grinning was suddenly subdued 
 by an arrest as summary as it was to him
 
 94 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 unintelligible. A constable, who had ob- 
 served his brother on his flight from the 
 scene of his morning's depredation, taking 
 the amazed Swithun to be the delin- 
 quent, seized him unceremoniously by the 
 collar, and, in spite of ^Miss Biddy's voci- 
 ferations, and the grinning of her maids, 
 bore him off to a neighbouring police-office, 
 and brought him up before his worship of 
 the quorum upon the grave charge of hav- 
 ing picked the pocket of a gentleman un- 
 known. As the officer had not witnessed 
 the theft, the boy was remanded for two 
 days, in order to give the robbed exquisite 
 an opportunity of coming forward. The 
 innocent twin was amazingly perplexed at 
 this unaccountable proceeding. He protested 
 and blubbered in vain. He was committed 
 to prison for two days, to his inexpressible 
 astonishment and alarm.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 95 
 
 Meanwhile Jemmy was snug at the work- 
 house, where no one suspected the change, 
 though many of the paupers could not help 
 exclaiming that they wondered what had come 
 to Swithun Dillon, he was such a lively 
 little kid, and so much more frolicsome than 
 he had been wont. Several, however, of the 
 poor inmates of this college for the pennyless^ 
 soon began to miss halfpence, scissors, knives, 
 thimbles, now and then a sixpence, together 
 with sundry other things, for the absence of 
 which they could not account, but no one enter- 
 tained the slightest suspicion of little Dillon, 
 as Swithun had hitherto maintained a good 
 character for probity throughout the pauper 
 asylum. There happened to be among the 
 old female inmates of the establishment a 
 quondam housekeeper of an Irish lord, who 
 had dismissed her from his service in her old 
 age^ because she had been guilty of the un- 
 pardonable sin of getting stone-blind. The
 
 96 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 fact is, she had suiFered from cataract in the 
 right eye since she was twenty-five years old, 
 and she was now seventy-six. For the last 
 seven years the sight of the left eye had likewise 
 entirely failed. According to the advice of a 
 celebrated oculist she had waited one-and-fifty 
 years for the ripening of the cataract, which 
 still remained just as unfit for extraction 
 as it had been half a century before. There 
 was now no chance of its being removed 
 but by a far greater than any human operator 
 — Death. The poor old woman consequently 
 quitted her place, when she became quite 
 blind, for the parish workhouse. Unhappily for 
 this venerable soul, Mr. Stevenson was either 
 then unborn, or else only in statu pupilari, and 
 his admirable system of removing this dread- 
 ful disease by an operation of two minutes 
 duration, unknown.* 
 
 * See an excellent little treatise on Cataract by John 
 Stevenson, Esq. 1834.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 97 
 
 This old housekeeper was known to be in 
 possession of a purse, which was duly depo- 
 sited in the bottom of her pocket every morn- 
 ing. It contained five golden guineas. These 
 she had scraped together, the surplusage of a 
 very niggard salary, in order that they might 
 be added to the parish allowance for her burial ; 
 for she felt a good deal upon the matter of 
 being decently as well as " quietly, inurned." 
 The Hobgoblin had, somehow or other, ob- 
 tained information of this minted treasure ; 
 and in the morning, as the venerable matron 
 was groping her way up stairs, he offered her 
 his assistance, which she readily accepted. 
 During the ascent he contrived to lighten her 
 pocket of the purse, leaving in its room a 
 small linen bag containing four copper counters, 
 which he had found in his brother's fob, 
 and were generally known throughout the 
 house to have been tlie property of Swithun 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 98 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 who daily practised with them his favourite 
 game of chuck-farthing, of which he had 
 acquired a tolerably competent knowledge, 
 since his residence there under the auspices 
 of the parish authorities. The dexterous 
 rogue, having consummated this profitable 
 exchange, and conducted his infirm compa- 
 nion to her chamber in the third story, with 
 that unconcern for which he was at all 
 times remarkable, proceeded to the window 
 for the mere purpose of gaping into the paved 
 court beneath ; but he had no sooner lifted 
 the sash than his longing eyes were fixed up- 
 on several bunches of ripe grapes which hung 
 in tempting maturity, on a vine that nearly 
 covered the whole end of the building. With- 
 out balancing a moment between prudence 
 and inclination, and mentally disdaining to 
 allow his thoughts to be occupied by a cow- 
 ardly peradventure, he darted his legs out of
 
 THE FELLOVv^ COMMONER. 9^ 
 
 the window with a rapidity equal to his appe- 
 tite, fixed his toes upon the slender branches 
 of the \dne, to which he clung like a snail, 
 and advanced eagerly, but without the slightest 
 precaution, towards his prize. Having got 
 within reach of the nearest cluster, he raised 
 his hand with too rough an eagerness to grasp 
 it. At this moment the branch gave way 
 under his feet, and down he came with the 
 inverse-ratio velocity of a sky-rocket. His 
 head, which had considerably increased in 
 ponderosity since his former perilous descent 
 from the attic window in Hart-street, was now 
 foremost to gravitate towards the pavement, and 
 he was within six feet of leaving the impres- 
 sion of hisbrains upon a diagram of coarse granite, 
 when his progress was arrested by a long hook 
 projecting from the wall, placed there for the 
 support of a washing-line which was fastened 
 
 F 2
 
 100 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 to it every Monday morning. In young Dil- 
 lon's rapid gravitation, the hook fortunately 
 caught his collar, which gave way, and his 
 progress was finally arrested by the waistband 
 of his breeches, for breeches are part of the 
 poor-house liver}", he the while roaring for help 
 to the full pitch of his lungs, and dangling like 
 the coffin of the lying prophet of Mecca, 
 between earth and sky, until he was released 
 from his perilous exaltation by a strapping 
 serving-wench of the establishment, who 
 unhung him with a broomstick, and let him 
 drop from the crook upon a heap of old 
 blankets which happened to be in the court 
 for the benefit of the air. This ominous 
 fall shook from Jemmy's pocket the stolen 
 purse, which was immediately picked up 
 by the girl, who was naturally enough at 
 a loss to account for a workhouse brat, as
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER, 101 
 
 she very pertinently designated the young 
 Fellow Commoner, being in possession of a 
 purse of gold. 
 
 Jemmy sprang upon his legs, and shaking 
 his ears, as if to discover whether his head 
 was in the right place, instantly quitted 
 the court, contrived to steal out of the work- 
 house, and made the best of his way to 
 Miss Biddy Mackinnon's dwelling. It happened 
 that this very morning his brother had been 
 released from confinement and brought up for 
 re-examination, but as no prosecutor ap- 
 peared, and as the officer who apprehended 
 him had not witnessed the theft, he was 
 sent about his business, with a grave repri- 
 mand, by the worshipful functionary who 
 received from his majesty's lieges eight 
 hundred a year for dispensing justice to rogues 
 and vagabonds. He had just reached Hart- 
 street, when Jemmy arrived glowing hot and
 
 102 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 panting from the work-house, and shortly 
 resumed both his clothes and his character. 
 Scarcely had Swithun got on his coarse grey 
 jacket and breeches, badges of charity with 
 which long habit had rendered him happily 
 familiar, when an officer, sent by the parish 
 authorities, came to seek him. Little sus- 
 pecting what awaited him at his old home, he 
 quietly proceeded with the burly messenger, 
 who maintained a dignified silence the whole 
 way, as if it were beneath the dignity of 
 a parish delegate to exchange breath with 
 an urchin who had earned, as he imagined, 
 the title of rogue and the castigation of a 
 scourging. No sooner had the younger twin 
 arrived at his destination than he was seized 
 and charged with sundry thefts and malver- 
 sations, every one of which he most vocife- 
 rously denied. All, however, would not do. 
 The purse of gold had been seen to fall from
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 103 
 
 his fob ; his own four copper counters had 
 been found in the pocket of the old woman, 
 and against such irrefragable evidence what 
 could his assertions of innocence avail? He 
 was pronounced guilty of this and sundry- 
 other misdemeanours, and given over to the 
 disciphne of the broom, with a large bunch 
 of which he was so lustily belaboured upon 
 the sperical organ of repose that he could not 
 sit at his ease for, at least, fourteen days, 
 which were to him, in truth, a fortnight 
 without a Sabbath. His slippery brother all 
 this while was laughing in his sleeve at his 
 own ingenuity, though he had his retribution 
 in the loss of the bhnd pauper's guineas^ which 
 he deplored with unusual sincerity.
 
 104 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A grave reflection or two — Our hero proves to a demon- 
 stration that he was every inch as good a man as 
 Hamlet, shewing that " he knows a hawk from a 
 handsaw" — A new adventure — The moist sugar — How 
 obtained — Arrives home — Shows that no one should 
 step upon a cistern without first ascertaining if the 
 lid is secure — Dillon soused, not like a gurnet, because 
 that is soused in sauce, but he was soused in Thames 
 water — The sugar dissolved — The grocer baulked — Miss 
 Biddy pays the piper, but has no tune for her money. 
 
 The singular escapes which had hitherto
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 105 
 
 distinguished the career of Jemmy Dillon, 
 served but to render him the more reckless? 
 and from the daily lecturings of Miss Biddy 
 he had come to the conclusion that he was 
 predestined to roguery as well as to heaven, 
 and that, therefore, to attempt to interrupt 
 the course of destiny would be a piece of 
 gross moral dereliction. " What must be 
 must be," was the postulate from which all 
 his reasoning had been taught to diverge as 
 from one common centre. He was very regu- 
 lar in saying his prayers, in going to church, 
 in listening to the scandal which Miss Biddy 
 heaped upon her neighbours, whom she ge- 
 nerally condemned to a very undesirable plight 
 in the next world ; — in fact no one could be 
 more orderly than he was in going the round 
 of a set of ceremonials which his oracle, the 
 elect lady, persuaded him was good for his 
 soul and positively necessary to make his 
 
 F 5
 
 106* THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 election sure. Strange contradiction ! Do 
 what he would he could not be damned, and 
 yet it was necessary to do something to be 
 saved, because he was a sinner ; for all elected 
 sinners, though foredoomed to salvation, must 
 still work it out to shame of the devil, 
 though do what they will he can no more 
 clutch them than he can topple down the 
 throne of omnipotence. How many has such 
 theological logic, such ghostly blasphemy 
 driven mad ! What an unhappy instance was 
 poor Cowper the poet ! His was a mind 
 shrouded in its own dark misgivings until its 
 fervid and glowing light was utterly quenched 
 in the gloom ; the genial warmth of his kindly 
 and pious nature having been chilled by the 
 icy contact of a morbid and paralysing fa- 
 naticism. 
 
 Young Dillon, however, ran no risk of 
 being driven crazy by rehgion, which was
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 10? 
 
 quite a secondary matter to him. Upon the 
 question of madness he might have said with 
 the notable prince of Denmark, " I am but 
 mad north, north-west 5 when the wind is 
 southerly 1 know a hawk from a hand-saw.'^* 
 He had not long escaped the whipping to 
 which his brother had been subjected for 
 roguery not his own, when he made a capture 
 in his usual way that had nearly brought him 
 to the quotient of his reckoning. He was one 
 day playing with a ragged little rascal before a 
 grocer's shop, when he espied a paper-bag 
 containing six pounds of moist sugar just 
 weighed out in order to be sent to a neigh- 
 bouring coffee-house. The wily twin always 
 on the watch for an opportunity to pilfer, 
 perceiving that the shopman had left the 
 counter, flung his cap into the shop close by 
 
 ♦ Haratet
 
 108 THE FELLOW COMMONEH. 
 
 the spot where the sugar stood. This he had 
 no sooner done than he began to abuse his 
 associate for having thrown away his cap, 
 with such well counterfeited earnestness that 
 no one could have suspected the subterfuge. 
 Upon pretence of regaining it, he boldly en- 
 tered the shop, and whilst the man's attention 
 was withdrawn from the object of which 
 Jemmy Dillon had resolved to obtain posses- 
 sion, he adroitly slipped the bag from the 
 counter and decamped unobserved with his 
 prize. So soon as he had gained the street 
 he quickened his pace towards his home, and 
 as it was now dusk he was not long in ac- 
 complishing his purpose. Afraid to knock at 
 the door with stolen property about him, he 
 got over the area rails, and was crossing the 
 roof of the cistern, when the lid, having no 
 fastenings, slipped from under him and in he 
 fell, sugar and all, sinking to the bottom like
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 109 
 
 a plummet. It fortunately happened that the 
 cistern was not only very old, but likewise 
 very rotten, the bottom being just strong 
 enough to hold together without any additional 
 weight or violence ; but the young delinquent's 
 body was an additament which it could not 
 support, and, fortunately for him, giving way, 
 let him and about two hogsheads of water 
 immediately through the rent, flooding the 
 area in a few seconds, and sousing him Hke a 
 fresh gurnet. The saccharine luxury was so 
 cunningly mixed with Thames water, that not a 
 trace of his theft remained to convict him. 
 The grocer, who soon missed his sugar, after 
 the Hobgoblin had quitted the shop, instantly 
 commenced a pursuit, and arrived just in time 
 to witness the dissolution of his property and 
 the pilferer's escape from a petty drowning ; 
 but representing to Miss Biddy Mackinnon the 
 knavery of her ward, and threatening an im-
 
 110 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 mediate prosecution, she reluctantly paid the 
 damage by an impulse of predestination, and 
 thus saved the young varlet from that punish- 
 ment which usually precedes the tread-mill.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER, 111 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A moral axiom from Shakspeare — Colloquy of the sol- 
 dier's confession, from which a very knotty question is 
 propounded — The Hind and Panther — Miss Biddy 
 begins to sicken, and Jemmy Dillon begins to think 'tis 
 high time. — She proves to be in the seventieth year of 
 her virginity — Considers nevertheless that Death is in 
 a mighty hurry to settle his paltry account — Likes to 
 think a little more of heaven before she goes there- 
 Gets worse — Begins to imagine predestination a theo- 
 logical bubble — Visited by Dr. Higgins — Entertains 
 scruples — Takes to her bed, and Jemmy takes her bank- 
 notes. 
 
 By the time our hero had reached his six-
 
 112 THE FELLOW COMMONER, 
 
 teentli year, he had obtained a reputation in 
 roguery seldom enjoyed by one who had num- 
 bered so few summers ; and it is remarkable, 
 that although engaged for the last six years 
 of his youthful life in the daily commission of 
 some offence against the laws, he had hitherto 
 contrived to escape detection. This but served 
 to render him the more confident, and he had 
 a quiet way of applying a salvo to his con- 
 science by adopting the maxim of the jealous 
 Moor — 
 
 " He that is robb'd, not wanting what is stoFn, 
 Let him not know it, and he's not robb'd at all — "* 
 
 a moral axiom which would do honour to the 
 most memorable rogues that ever figured in the 
 Newgate Calendar. The professional dex- 
 terity of James Dillon was quite extraordinary, 
 
 • Othello.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 113 
 
 and the manner in which he evaded the keen 
 vigilance of the police functionaries was no 
 less marvellous than his adroitness in practi- 
 cally illustrating his favourite postulatum, 
 that appropriation is a natural light, — a notion 
 imbibed with the first glimmerings of reason, 
 as it was a favourite, if not a ^* wise saw" of his 
 father before him. 
 
 Although Miss Biddy was daily pestered 
 with accusations against her knavish ward, she 
 determined not to credit a word to his dispa- 
 ragement, especially as these were accusations 
 not substantiated by evidence, which they 
 could not well be, for he had never yet been 
 actually and substantively detected in a viola- 
 tion of the criminal code. He therefore pur- 
 sued his career with the greater recklessness, 
 whilst the idea of an absolute predestination to 
 eternal life had so fixed upon his conviction, 
 that he claimed to himself impunity from sin as
 
 I 14 THE FELLOV/ COMMONER* 
 
 a matter of divine and indefeasible privilege. 
 Impelled by the confidence which such a con- 
 clusion naturally awakened, he cast himself 
 into all sorts of peril without once looking to 
 the issue ; and to Erasmus's question in the 
 colloquy of the soldier's confession, " Do you 
 never think what will become of your soul if 
 you are knocked on the head ?" he would no 
 doubt have exclaimed with the murderous 
 thane — 
 
 " I bear a charmed life !"* 
 
 The venerable Miss Mackinnon, who had 
 now attained a period of most respectable 
 senility — for she was by this time fast verging 
 upon seventy — though she became at times 
 excessively peevish when the tricks of her 
 ward were made the topic of discourse, dog- 
 gedly adhered to her old conclusion that a pre- 
 
 * Macbeth.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 115 
 
 destinated sinner must make an elected saint ; 
 and, therefore, no matter to her how the dogs of 
 the world, who had " neither part nor lot'^ with 
 him , represented his backslidings, she felt satisfied 
 nevertheless, that he was perfectly secure of a 
 communion with Calvin in the world of beati- 
 fied spirits, where he would exult over the fall 
 of Arminius and his three able defenders, 
 Barnevelt, Grotius, and Hoogarbetz_, whom the 
 Oudewater heretic had seduced from the sim- 
 plicity of the truth, and involved in that ever- 
 lasting doom which he had brought down upon 
 himself. 
 
 A change was soon to take place which 
 made a material alteration in the temporal 
 condition of the Fellow Commoner he, however, 
 anticipating no change but for the better, so 
 far as he was concerned, boldly pursued his 
 career of antinomian freedom, and strong in 
 faith, would more than probably have taken up
 
 116 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 the query of old John Dry den, had he been 
 aware that he had ever written such a parable 
 as the Hind and Panther — 
 
 " Why choose we then, like bylanders, to creep 
 Along the coast, and land in view to keep. 
 When safely we may launch into the deep !" 
 
 And launch he did with the most energetic 
 resolution, until he was fairly at sea in the 
 wide ocean of profligacy, with nothing better 
 than his own cunning and quickness of per- 
 ception as rudder and compass to direct his 
 bark through those troubled waters in which he 
 had so venturously plunged her. 
 
 About this time, Miss Biddy, who had been 
 long ailing, began to manifest symptoms of a 
 very rapid approach towards " that bourne 
 from whence no traveller returns ;" which dis- 
 covery did not, it must be confessed, project 
 the shadow of sorrow over the usually hilarious
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. Il7 
 
 countenance of Jemmy Dillon, as he calculated 
 and not unreasonably, upon a comfortable le- 
 gacy. This being the case, according to the 
 suggestions of his own selfish casuistry, he 
 naturally looked forward to the poor old elect 
 lady's departure hence with any thing but 
 symptoms of immedicable grief. He was 
 once, at least, heard to say, " Well, dear old 
 soul, 'twill be a happy release when she's 
 dead 5' but whether he meant for herself or for 
 him, he did not think proper to specify. 
 
 The venerable maiden, in the seventieth year 
 of her virginity, was pronounced to be labour- 
 ing under the influence of dropsy in the chest. 
 Not-^dthstanding the evidently fatal tendency 
 of her disease, she could not for a moment 
 prevail upon herself to think that it was 
 likely to have a fatal termination. Although 
 her mind had been so long daily engrossed by 
 these religious contemplations, yet it were too 
 exclusive and confined, to admit of any idea so
 
 118 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 all absorbing as that of death, which is apt to 
 lay an incubus upon the spirits, when they 
 are not sustained by " that anchor of the soul, 
 sure and stedfast,'^ a " faith that worketh by 
 love" — the two pillars of which are love towards 
 God and love towards man. Universal cha- 
 rity is the buttress of vital religion, which main- 
 tains the fabric erect, and by which " the 
 foundation thereof standeth sure.^^ Miss Biddy 
 saw the approach of death, but did not notice 
 it. Is this to be wondered at ? She was a 
 living paradox ; she knew that she bore upon 
 her narrow scalp the frost of sixty-nine win- 
 ters ; she was conscious also of being very ill, 
 yet was loth to persuade herself she was going 
 to die. But man's common creditor is no 
 trifler ; when he demands his due it must be 
 paid, and his receipt in full is " bliss or bale." 
 
 *' Death, great proprietor of all, 'tis thine 
 To tread out empires and to quench the stars !*'* 
 
 * Young.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 119 
 
 Miss Biddy, however, seemed prepared to con- 
 test his supremacy, and was at least determined 
 not to yield without a struggle. Her great- 
 grandmother, she said, had lived to the age of 
 ninety-two, and she saw no earthly reason 
 why she should not live just as long. In 
 fact, the apprehension of quitting this wicked 
 world, although so sure of a happy condition 
 in that to which she was rapidly hastening, 
 was to her one of terror, not of assurance ; she 
 consequently never allowed her mind to enter- 
 tain it, when she could manage to repudiate so 
 unwelcome an intruder. Her medical attend- 
 ant flattered her with hope of a long remnant 
 of existence; so did her spiritual adviser, who 
 assured her, as Goodwin did the Protector 
 Cromwell upon a somewhat similar occasion, 
 that the elect could neither fall nor suiFer final 
 reprobation. Hence it logically followed, that 
 Miss Biddy, being one of the elect could not be
 
 l20 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 damned. This assurance, notwithstanding that 
 it came from such a high spiritual authority, 
 was far from satisfying the anxious mind 
 of Miss Biddy Mackinnon, who, although she 
 had been in the daily habit for the last half 
 century of exclaiming against this ungodly 
 world as utterly unfit for an elect lady to dwell 
 in, was nevertheless sadly unwilling to receive 
 the dismal summons to quit which death was 
 about to serve upon her, and would fain, at 
 the age of three score and nine years, live a 
 little longer among the reprobate, for the quiet 
 of her own soul, if not for the benefit of her 
 fellow-creatures. Bad as this world is, and no 
 one thinks it a paradise, it is astonishing how 
 reluctant to leave it are many of those who 
 claim to be exclusively elected, although it be 
 for the possession of that promised inheritance 
 which is " incorruptible and undefiled, and that 
 fadeth not away.'' They prefer the enjoyment
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 121 
 
 of that which is actually in possession^ with all 
 its varieties of evil and of contingency, to that 
 which is only in expectancy, though bright 
 with the most transcendant glories which the 
 imagination can depict; and when about to 
 dejmrt to their everlasting heritage, how often 
 are their convictions confounded by the dim 
 and shadowy delusions of their preposterous 
 creed ! 
 
 The miserable invalid became every day more 
 and more doubtful whether the doctrines, 
 which she had been accustomed to cherish 
 for so many years, were tenable when sub- 
 mitted to the test of Scripture. She began to 
 question whether those interpretations to which 
 she had so long given ear, were sound evange- 
 lical expositions. Nevertheless, she felt it no 
 easy matter to relinquish at once the stubborn 
 prejudices of a tolerably extended life; and 
 these prejudices either relaxed or continued 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 122 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 stationary, according as her pains increased or 
 abated. In her intervals of suffering, when her 
 hopes of recover}^ seemed for a moment to per- 
 meate and refresh her sinking soul, like so 
 many rays of celestial light, she would occa- 
 sionally pester her ward with a dull lecture 
 upon the necessity of showing to the world by 
 his actions that he was in a state of grace ; yet 
 no sooner did the paroxysms of her disorder 
 return, than it became to her a bitter question 
 whether those doctrines which she had laboured 
 to instil into him from his birth were really 
 the truths of that gospel, upon the sincere ac- 
 ceptance of which the Christianas prospects in 
 eternity are based. She could not help feeling 
 that her aUiance with a party of a strong sec- 
 tarian bias might have narrowed her views, by 
 allowing only a portion of di-vdne light to pene- 
 trate through the natural darkness of her mind ; 
 and the doubts which now continually mingled
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 123 
 
 with her thoughts, hke storm-clouds in an 
 autumnal sky, turned all into confusion and 
 gloom. 
 
 Watts has excellently well said, " Let us 
 learn to abstract as much as possible from cus- 
 tom and fashion, when we would pass a judg- 
 ment concerning the real value and intrinsic 
 nature of things."* This Miss Biddy had 
 never done, but servilely subjected her judg- 
 ment to the bondage of an overweening bigotry, 
 becoming the feeble echo of a fev/ self-elected 
 separatists. And even when the reality began 
 to pass like a brightening glory over the shal- 
 lows of her understanding, so fixed had been 
 her habit of looking at the doctrines main- 
 tained by the supralapsarian Calvinists as the 
 oracles of divine revelation, that she could not 
 altogether divest her conviction of their truth ; 
 
 * Watts's Logic. 
 
 G 2
 
 124 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 though whenever the image of death, in its 
 dire array of consequences, was presented to 
 her imagination, her confidence invariably gave 
 way, and apprehensions rushed in upon her 
 soul, which did not at all tend to minister 
 peace to her distracted mind. 
 
 She was daily visited by Dr. Higgins, who did 
 his best to re-assure her, but in vain ; — she 
 continued dissatisfied and unconvinced. As 
 she found no consolation in her views of reli- 
 gion at a period when consolation was so 
 especially needed, she naturally entertained 
 suspicions of their validity. It occurred to 
 her at last — the only wonder is how she could 
 ever have thought otherwise — that to create 
 creatures to be damned, merely to maintain 
 the glory of God's vindictive justice, could 
 not be consistent with the perfection of bene- 
 volence and of mercy. As the fallacy of such 
 a proposition intruded upon her startled appre •
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 125 
 
 hensions, now quickened into morbid activity 
 by the potent operation of her terrors, she 
 felt that the foundation of her hope, which 
 she had been industriously laying for upwards 
 of half a century, was utterly insecure, and 
 that the fabric erected upon it was tottering 
 to its fall. 
 
 As her disorder increased, her fears aug- 
 mented in more than an equal ratio; the 
 oppression of her chest was at times dreadful 
 in the extreme, and syncope so frequently 
 supervened, as the doctor affirmed in the 
 technical eloquence of his wisdom, that her 
 condition became one of momentary peril. 
 She often felt a sense of suffocation, 
 which filled her with instant and terrifying 
 alarms. Occasionally the violence of her 
 symptoms abated, when her physician led 
 her to hope that a favourable turn had 
 taken place, and she might still look for a
 
 126 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 respite from that fearful issue which she 
 never thought of but with dreadful pertur- 
 bation of spirit. 
 
 *' When threatening death uplifts his pointed dart. 
 With what impatience we apply to art 
 Life to prolong amid disease and pains ! 
 Why this, if after death no sense remains ? 
 Why should we choose these miseries to endure. 
 If death could grant an everlasting cure?"* 
 
 The question is easily answered, so far as poor 
 Miss Biddy was concerned : her creed had 
 failed at the hour of her extremity to realise 
 its golden promises. 
 
 Young Dillon, whose mind was fully im- 
 bued with those doctrines which from his 
 infancy he had been daily taught to receive 
 as the oracles of inspiration, felt somewhat 
 
 * Jermyn's translation of Brown's poem on Immor- 
 tality.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 127 
 
 puzzled at beholding his spiritual guide and 
 temporal guardian so extremely reluctant 
 to quit a bad world for a better, now that 
 she had evidently lived out her time, and a 
 good long lease of life, she had enjoyed, as he 
 thought. Still it never for a moment occurred 
 to him that her convictions were wavering 
 under the influence of a new light. To do 
 him justice, he really felt for her sufferings, 
 now and then sitting by her as she reclined in 
 her easy chair, gasping under the influence of 
 her grievous malady. She once or twice 
 took occasion to express her doubts as to 
 the orthodoxy of those opinions she had 
 hitherto maintained, but in so excited a man- 
 ner and with such strange agitation of aspect, 
 that he concluded her head was aff'ected by 
 the torments of her body. His early impres- 
 sions were therefore not in the slightest degree 
 eff"aced by what he considered the half-crazy
 
 128 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 tergiversation of poor Miss Biddy. Every 
 hour her strength abated, and every hour her 
 terrors increased. She had scarcely a respite 
 from either mental or bodily anguish. In the 
 morning she would cry, with the afflicted 
 sinner in Scripture, " would God it were even, 
 and at even, would God it were morning.*'* 
 Nevertheless, Jen^my Dillon could not refrain 
 from exercising his furtive dexterity in spite 
 of his occasional good feeling, even while his 
 patroness was suffering under such an awful 
 visitation. In this instance, however, he prac- 
 tised his ingenuity, as it soon after appeared, 
 to his own disparagement. 
 
 He knew that the poor old lady was in the 
 habit of keeping sundry notes of the Bank of 
 England in a drawer in her bed-room. One 
 niglit, when he concluded she must be fast 
 
 * Deuteronomy, chap, xxviii., verse 67-
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 129 
 
 asleep, as it was long past waking time, he 
 entered stealthily into her chamber and having, 
 as he imagined, fully ascertained that her 
 senses were too profoundly absorbed in sweet 
 unconsciousness to give her the chance of 
 becoming a witness against him, he cautiously 
 applied a skeleton key to the lock of a 
 drawer which contained her money, and having 
 secured possession of his prize, effected a 
 noiseless retreat. Although he had managed 
 the matter with the ingenuity of an adept, he 
 had not, as he fancied, appropriated the pro- 
 perty unobserved. Long before he entered 
 her room, the invalid had been Ijang awake in 
 a tolerably composed state, the medicine she 
 had taken having reliev^ed her pains, and her 
 hopes of recovery having in consequence con- 
 siderably revived. Whilst her thoughts were 
 engrossed by the delightful anticipations of a 
 speedy restoration to health, she saw the door 
 
 G 5
 
 130 THE FELLOW COMMONER, 
 
 gently opened, and, notwithstanding her gene- 
 ral dimness of vision, plainly distinguished 
 Jemmy Dillon advance deliberately into her 
 chamber. Not immediately suspecting any 
 mischief, but having frequently heard of his 
 knavish tricks, though she had hitherto dis- 
 countenanced every report to his prejudice 
 which had met her ear, she lay perfectly still, 
 in order to discover what would be tlie issue of 
 this nocturnal visit. Jemmy cautiously ap- 
 proached the bed, pronounced her name in 
 the gentlest and kindest tone, and placed his 
 hand before her mouth to ascertain if she was 
 conscious of his presence. As he received no 
 answer, and perceiving that her breath came 
 hard and regular, he concluded she was sound 
 asleep. With this too premature conclusion 
 he proceeded to possess himself of two ten- 
 pound notes and seven guineas in gold, which 
 were folded within them. When Miss Biddy
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 131 
 
 became an eye-witness of her ward's delin- 
 quency, she lost all command of speech, 
 while the rogue was robbing her in fancied 
 security. She lay unable to utter a sound, 
 though more from agitation than astonish- 
 ment, and he quietly decamped with his 
 booty. The very next morning the elect 
 lady sent for her lawyer, with whom she was 
 closeted for several hours. Numerous were 
 the whispers and surmises respecting the cause 
 of such a visit, as she was known to have 
 made her will several years before, and young 
 Dillon had very good reason for believing 
 that he had not been forgotten. The mys- 
 tery was soon after solved, though it gave 
 rise to much busy conversation for the 
 moment.
 
 132 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Surmises in the kitchen — Inward tumults — Dr. Higgins's 
 visit — Miss Biddy's alarms — Her bodily sufferings — 
 Her creed sinks under its feeble prop, and is over- 
 thrown by the weight of new convictions — A very 
 instructive theological discussion — The Calvinist de- 
 feated — The victor vanquished — The doctor's astonish- 
 ment — Death threatens — The invalid's terrors — The 
 crisis — Her death-bed — The insecurity of a false 
 belief. 
 
 Shortly after the departure of her legal 
 friend, the poor old lady's symptoms returned 
 with increased asperity, occasioned, as it was 
 naturally enough surmised, by the excite-
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 183 
 
 ment she had undergone during her interview 
 with the lawyer. Such a visiter was not 
 Hkely to pour wine and oil into the wounds 
 of her lacerated spirit; she required that 
 medicament which the physician of souls can 
 alone administer. The keenest tortures of 
 mind returned with her bodily agonies. She 
 had now no interval from distracting reflec- 
 tion; the idea of death was a dread^ and of 
 God a terror. To lie down with the worm in 
 that dark and narrow bed, where all things are 
 forgotten, until the last trump shall raise the 
 scattered particles of the once hving dust, and 
 endue them again with consciousness and, alas ! 
 with memory, was to her a thought that made 
 every fibre of her frame quiver with horror. 
 To moulder in the silent sepulchre, in the 
 midst of darkness and of corruption, the 
 body forming at once a banquet and a tene- 
 ment for the most disgusting reptiles, was a
 
 134 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 picture which she could not efface from her 
 imagination, and it sent a thrill of anguish 
 through her soul. She vehemently protested 
 that she was the chief of sinners ; she mag- 
 nified her slightest errors into the greatest 
 enormities ; all the good deeds of her past 
 life she, with a morbid obliquity of percep- 
 tion, looked upon as actions which should lie 
 in the balance against her, when she should 
 be " weighed and found wanting." Hope 
 seemed to mock her with a thousand momen- 
 tary fantasies, which only ended in a fierce 
 and settled dread. She declared herself to be one 
 of the doomed ; she distractedly called upon 
 God to visit her with his mercy, but her prayer 
 returned into her own bosom. Tlie prop of 
 rehgion was stricken from beneath her ; — the 
 spiritual edifice which she had reared was 
 suddenly toppled down, and all her fondly 
 cherished expectations were crushed beneath
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER 135 
 
 the unsightly ruins. She found no peaceful 
 shelter for her bereaved spirit. She resorted 
 to her bible, she read and read, but the recoil 
 of her mind was dreadful ; — her soul staggered 
 at the shock. When she ventured to look 
 abroad into the future, nothing was presented 
 to her warped imagination but one mighty 
 void of repulsiveness and gloom. All was 
 dreary and desolate before her ; not one bright 
 spot to cheer her onward ; not a single oasis 
 amid the unvarying blank of the howling 
 wildnerness through v/hich she would have to 
 pass to those limitless shores, where the 
 mighty current of time is lost in the un- 
 fathomable ocean of eternity. What a bereave- 
 ment is it, when the words of inspiration fail 
 to impart a solace to the sinner's heart 1 Such 
 was her state at this sad hour. She had 
 never put a right construction upon the words 
 of that blessed book, and it therefore afforded
 
 136 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 her now no consolation. The riches of divine 
 wisdom therein contained had been to her as 
 a gilded counterfeit ; she had endued them 
 with a fictitious radiance, of which she knew 
 not how to divest them. She had rendered 
 them, to use the words of a wise king, " like 
 a potsherd covered with silver dross," and 
 although she began to detect her error, she 
 knew not how to come at the true mintage. 
 What could she do ? 
 
 " Try what repentance can ; what can it not ? 
 But what can it, when one cannot repent?"* 
 
 And she had no longer a thought or feeling 
 that was not dictated by despair. The 
 sins of omission were those which lay heavy 
 upon her soul ; if she had done Uttle evil, 
 she had neglected to embrace many opportu- 
 
 * Hamlet,
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 137 
 
 nities of doing good* This was the food of 
 her remorse. To think that her bible should 
 afford her no consolation ! What a state of 
 abandonment in the hour of extremity ! But 
 she had never interpreted it truly, and now she 
 sought too late for the true interpretation. It 
 showed the spiritual delusion under which she 
 had so long Uved, presenting to her fevered 
 imagination the possibility of that reprobation 
 for herself, which she had been in the habit of 
 assigning to those whom the exclusive doc- 
 trines of her own creed had given over, without 
 a single reservation, to eternal death. 
 
 One day, when she was visited as usual by 
 Dr. Higgins, she declared to him the misgivings 
 which pressed with the weight of an ocean 
 upon her tortured imagination, excluding the 
 fair light of hope, and pouring upon her 
 agonised spirit a flood of appalling anticipa- 
 tions. It is true her life had not, in the general
 
 138 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 view of it, been mispent ; but she had con- 
 lined her good offices towards her fellow crea- 
 tures to the few whom she looked upon to be 
 the objects of an especial election to eternal 
 life ; and many a time had she withheld her 
 aid from the suffering and the bereaved, whom 
 she could not persuade to adopt the tenets 
 which she had herself embraced, and who, she 
 therefore fancied, were not among the exclusive 
 few having the divine signet of election stamped 
 upon their foreheads. The remembrance of 
 this priest- and-levite-like neglect of many who 
 had been cast upon the high-way of the world 
 like the poor Jew in the parable, " naked and 
 half dead," now smote her recollection with a 
 powerful oppression. She could not call to 
 mind that she had ever taken the good Sama- 
 ritan for her prototype ; — an apologue in which 
 the obligation of universal benevolence is 
 most beautifully illustrated, and the unsocial
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 139 
 
 doctrine of partial charity practically con- 
 demned. She felt that she had never done 
 her duty to her neighbour in the full and 
 evangelical sense of the term, and consequently 
 never could have fulfilled her duty towards God, 
 as a defalcation in the one is a positive neglect 
 of the other. 
 
 It was the day after the consultation with 
 her lawyer, that the poor invahd declared the 
 state of her conscience tothelearnedDr.Higgins. 
 He had called for the purpose of affording her 
 that spiritual alleviation which, though in truth 
 it was sadly needed, she was not hkely, in the 
 present state of her feelings, to attain. She 
 had for several days occasionally taken up 
 Whitby's powerful refutation of the five points 
 of Calvinism, and read it during the intervals 
 of calm which she at times obtained, after the 
 irruptions of terror had subsided. She was^
 
 140 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 therefore, armed with a few arguments against 
 the Doctor's grave declamation in favour of 
 the Genevese dogmas. In the course of con- 
 versation she expressed her doubts as to the 
 orthodoxy of that doctrine which she had for 
 many years allowed herself to beUeve the very 
 essence of evangelical truth. 
 
 " If," said she, in answer to one of the 
 Doctor's luminous expositions of the creed of 
 Geneva, " Christ died for all, how can it 
 happen that any are positively excluded from 
 salvation, provided they fulfil the conditions 
 of the Christian covenant, seeking God's aid 
 in their holy calling, and doing his will from 
 the heart ? If Christ died for all, surely to all 
 are the means of salvation offered !" 
 
 " Nay," quoth the Doctor, " Christ died 
 sufficiently for all, but intentionally only for 
 the elect. He died so far for all as to procure
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER, 141 
 
 for them pardon and salvation, if they will 
 beheve and repent ; but he died, moreover, 
 to procure for the elect faith and repentance." 
 
 " Does not this leave all men, the elect only 
 excepted, under an impossibility of pardon^ 
 and therefore of salvation ? And if so, does it 
 not follow that it cannot be the duty of any 
 but the elect to believe in Christ; since no 
 one can be required to do what will profit 
 him nothing, either morally or spiritually; 
 for every duty, both moral and spiritual, 
 sujDposes an advantage derivable from the 
 performance of it, as tending to secure the 
 final object of all human endeavour — the con- 
 summation of happiness in a world eternal/' 
 
 '^ You mistake the spirit of the proposition. 
 Christ died for all, and by his death procured 
 to all the means of working out their own 
 salvation; yet he withholds his preventing 
 grace from all but the elect, for " he hath
 
 142 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 mercy on whom he will have mercy, and 
 whom he will he hardenetli* ;" and as without 
 his preventing grace, the reprobate cannot 
 obtain his assisting grace, since these bless- 
 ings can only ojDcrate in conjunction, they 
 who are pretermitted must be inevitably 
 damned, although they have the choice of 
 working out their own salvation." 
 
 " But if they are denied that by which alone 
 they can make God's assisting grace available, 
 what does the choice benefit them ? Is it not 
 mocking them with a shadow ? How should 
 they choose but fall, if the means of standing 
 are withheld ?" 
 
 " The means are not withheld ; they have 
 a choice of alternatives, and sufficient motives 
 are proposed to them to embrace the right ; 
 so that they go •v^Tong by their owti will, and 
 
 * Romans ix. 18.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 143 
 
 not in consequence of the divine decrees. 
 Their absolute pretermission is not the cause 
 of their failing to work out their salvation, 
 but the divine prescience of their disobedience 
 is the cause of their being pretermitted. ' God 
 leaving them under the want of that special 
 grace and effectual guidance, proceeding from 
 divine predestination, they never fail of run- 
 ning themselves wittingly and willingly upon 
 their own damnation.*' " 
 
 " But what are their means of preservation ? 
 It appears to me clear that if a man must fall, 
 in spite of any effort he can employ to stand, 
 to punish him for so falling is an act of merci- 
 less tyranny, incompatible with the perfections 
 of a just and benevolent God.'^ 
 
 " To question the divine justice, however 
 it may be dispensed, is an act of presumption 
 
 * Bishop Davenant.
 
 144 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 of which one of the elect could not be guilty. 
 ^ Hath not the potter power over the clay, of 
 the same lump to make one vessel unto 
 honour and another unto dishonour?*' What 
 can be stronger than this, and various other 
 texts of the same nature? Will any one dare 
 to deny the express declaration of the Divinity 
 himself, through the mouth of the prophet of 
 Pathor — ' Hath he spoken, and shall he not 
 make it good ?'t ^' 
 
 " True ; 1)ut surely he never spoke any 
 thing, the consummation of which would be an 
 act of injustice ; and it forcibly strikes me that 
 wherever an interpretation of Scripture, how- 
 ever apparently true, places the Almighty at 
 variance with his acknowledged attributes, 
 that exposition cannot be a sound one, and, 
 
 * Romans ix. 21. 
 t Numbers xxiii. IQ.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 145 
 
 therefore, some other must be sought, which 
 will not put him in direct opposition to his own 
 immutable and perfect nature. I have but 
 this morning been reading a commentary on 
 the very passage you quoted of St. PauPs 
 epistle to the Romans, of which I made a me- 
 morandum. You shall hear it. ' It is God's 
 power and sovereignty only that is described 
 by the figure of the potter.' ' The same lump' 
 signifies the mass of mankind, out of which 
 particular nations are formed; consequently, 
 the ' one vessel' means, not any particular 
 person, but a nation or community. And 
 ' a vessel to honour,' or an honourable use, 
 means a nation made great and happy by the 
 favour and protection of God. On the other 
 hand, ^ a vessel to dishonour' signifies a nation 
 which God depresses, by denying it the advan- 
 tage bestowed on others, or by depriving it of 
 the advantages it formerly enjoyed. (Acts xiii. 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 146 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 17.) The meaning of this question is, 'may not 
 God, without injustice, exalt one nation by 
 bestowing privileges upon it, and depress an - 
 other by taking away the privileges which it 
 has long enjoyed.'* If this be a just inter- 
 pretation, the passage before quoted from the 
 ninth chapter of the same inspired Scripture, 
 must likewise be understood of nations." 
 
 " Bless me, Miss Mackinnon," exclaimed 
 the half-astounded divine, " what can have 
 produced so singular a revolution in your 
 sentiments within the last few weeks ? Your 
 faith, which I had always considered to have 
 reached the highest degree of spiritual tem- 
 perature, seems all of a sudden to have fallen 
 below zero." 
 
 " Why, Doctor, the fact is," and she 
 trembled as she spoke, " my former creed 
 
 * Macknight, Note on Romans ix. 21. See Whitby 
 edso on the same chapter.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 147 
 
 affords me no consolation at this hour of divine 
 visitation, when reUgion ought to be my balm 
 and strong stay. Instead of a support, I feel 
 it to be a stumbling-block : I am therefore 
 apprehensive that I have mistaken a mere 
 dumb and hollow idol for the living principle. 
 I feel as if I were torn by the recoiling eddies 
 of hopelessness and despair from the rock of 
 salvation, and were about to be engulfed in 
 an abyss where nothing meets the eye l)ut 
 ' the blackness of darkness' and the shadow 
 of death. Finding that my former conclusions 
 have sunk before the terrors which encompass 
 my soul at the near prospect of dissolution, I 
 have sought for other expositions of the sacred 
 text than those with which I have been so 
 long, and I now find vainly, familiarised. I 
 have applied to other sources of information, 
 and these powerfully impel me to the decision 
 that I have been hitherto wandering in a laby- 
 
 H 2
 
 148 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 rinth of error^ though I make this discovery at 
 a perilous time, when I am about to be sum- 
 moned to that ^ still and populous city,' where 
 * the prisoners rest together, and hear not the 
 voice of the oppressor.*' I tell you candidly, 
 I have a dread of death which I cannot sur- 
 mount, and every nerve quivers within my 
 frame when this fearful image rises before me. 
 My soul rests with no strength of confidence 
 upon the equivocal assurance of an especial elec- 
 tion. I do not at this moment find my hopes 
 sustained. I have a frightful presentiment 
 til at I shall die in utter abandonment — that 
 my spirit will exhale its last respiration amid 
 a storm of horrors." 
 
 During the whole of this conversation, her suf- 
 ferings were so excessive that she was frequently 
 obliged to pause and gasp for breath. She had 
 
 * Job iii. 18.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 149 
 
 become so exhausted that she sank upon her 
 couch in a paroxysm of mental and bodily 
 agony. Doctor Higgins tried in vain to con- 
 sole her; her anguish of mind increased in 
 proportion as she strove to subdue it, and 
 every reference to the doctrines of the creed 
 which she had so recently abjured, seemed to 
 make her writhe with pangs too dreadful for 
 description. The excitement caused by this 
 interview had evidently heightened the fatal 
 symptoms of her malady. The effect upon 
 her frame was almost immediately visible, and 
 for some time after the holy man's departure 
 she struggled for breath with a momentary 
 fear of suffocation. The violent exacerbation 
 at length subsided, and she obtained compa- 
 rative ease, though evidently in a state of great 
 mental disquietude. She could not endure the 
 perpetual reproaches of her conscience. She 
 found no solace in reflection. Every thought
 
 150 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 was a burning brand, which seared and withered 
 her heart to the very centre. That reprobation 
 — those everlasting burnings, to which she 
 had so often declared others to be doomed, 
 now appeared ready to engulf her. Her 
 mind was tossed about amid the whirl and 
 lilasts of an excited and distempered fancy; 
 she saw visions of tortured spirits, and heard 
 the bowlings of the damned. What an 
 awful thing is a misprision of sacred truth ! 
 Religion is either our bane or antidote. It is a 
 light that " shineth more and more unto the 
 perfect day ;" but it may be converted into a 
 vehicle of peril and delusion. To Miss Biddy 
 Mackinnon it had been only a penance and 
 a mystery. She had accepted the counterfeit 
 for the true — she had mistaken the mask 
 for the natural face. And it will ever hap- 
 pen that, where religion is either distorted 
 from her fair proportions, or warped from her
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. l5l 
 
 pure purposes, she will infallibly delude her 
 followers, whose end will be " gall and bitter- 
 ness of soul." 
 
 The poor invalid's suflferings hourly increased. 
 She was so thin and shrunken that there 
 appeared little more than the hard outline of 
 a human figure ; whilst her naturally sharp 
 features had become so haggard, that she 
 looked more like a resuscitated corpse than 
 '^ a thing of life." Her eyes were constantly 
 raised in utter hopelessness towards heaven. 
 " Oh God!'^ she would suddenly exclaim, 
 with her hands clasped fervently together, 
 " shall I be saved? What have I done to 
 merit this affliction ? ' Thou knowest my 
 downsitting and mine uprising ;' but what has 
 been my offence, that I am thus overborne at 
 this trying hour by the apprehensions of eter- 
 nity ?" She shuddered. " Lord of all power 
 and might, who art at once the fountain of
 
 152 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 mercy and of love, am I to be cast among 
 those who are doomed to everlasting groans ? 
 I cannot look forward into the shadowy vista 
 of the future, without a dread that appals my 
 spirit, and freezes the very spring of life within 
 my heart. My senses recoil at the shock of 
 anticipations which press upon my brain like 
 mountains.^' 
 
 This continual agitation of mind soon 
 brought her disorder to a crisis; she had not 
 a moment's respite from suffering, either men- 
 tal or bodily. It was piteous to see her 
 wrestling with the mighty conqueror. How 
 fearful a thing it is to look upon a dying 
 delinquent, who has rendered religion nuga- 
 tory by torturing its halcyon promises and 
 blessed revelations, into a creed which can 
 afford no solid ground of expectation at the 
 hour of extremity! Such was Miss Biddy's 
 state of spiritual abandonment at this awful
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 153 
 
 period^ that even the Word of God spake no 
 comfort to her agonised heart. She had her 
 bible, indeed, constantly before her, but her 
 thoughts were so abstracted by her terror, 
 that it left no more impression than a stroke 
 upon water. 
 
 It must be confessed that young Dillon, 
 in spite of his roguery, was not insensible to 
 the common sympathies of humanity. His 
 eyes frequently filled with tears as he beheld 
 the extreme suffering of one who had been 
 the protector of his infancy, and the kind 
 guardian of his boyhood; but she was in- 
 sensible to his sympathy. The one absorbing 
 idea so entirely engrossed her, that she could 
 not even pray, without aggravating the mor- 
 bid sensitiveness of her mind. In the midst 
 of her most earnest obtestations, the irruptions 
 of tempestuous thought would break in upon 
 her startled soul, and leave it overwhelmed 
 
 H 5
 
 154 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 with a flood of the most frightful imaginings. 
 It was evident that her last struggle was nigh. 
 She was hourly declining ; and as she grew 
 weaker, the energy of her terrors imparted 
 so high a stimulus to her physical powers, 
 that she appeared to meet death with the 
 resistance of a giant. Dr. Higgins was at her 
 bedside when she died. It was a sight to appal 
 the stoutest heart. She almost sprang from 
 the bed, threw her arms desperately round the 
 neck of her spiritual adviser, and screeched 
 in his ear — " Save me from this agony !" 
 After a short pause she fell back upon her 
 pillow exhausted, but, speedily rallying, sud- 
 denly raised herself, and, supporting her body 
 with her right hand firmly planted on the bed 
 beneath it, fixed her dark sunken eyes, now 
 sparkling -with intensely dazzling lustre, upon 
 the holy man, and uttered, with a hoarse 
 half-choked expression of horror — " Do you
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 155 
 
 see death in my countenance?" The Doctor 
 shuddered. The bony prominence of her 
 attenuated features — the bloodless clayey hue 
 of her skin, contrasted with the keen, quick 
 lustre of her wild, restless eye, for the moment 
 struck him dumb. 
 
 '^ What !" she muttered gaspingly, " am I 
 dying? Where is my election now? I shall 
 be the companion of devils! Down — down 
 to the fathomless gulf of perdition ! Oh, 
 horror — horror !" 
 
 '^ Nay, why this despair," said the reverend 
 Doctor, soothingly; " who ever called upon 
 the Lord, and was forsaken ?" 
 
 " I — I have called, but he has not heark- 
 ened 1 I have supplicated, but he has re- 
 fused ! I am betrayed — deluded — abandoned ! 
 Save me !— raise me— I am falling — fall- 
 ing " 
 
 She was lifted from the pillow upon which
 
 156 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 she had again sunk, when her eyes dilated 
 into an intense glassy stare. She gasped for 
 a few moments as if she was suiFocating. The 
 paroxysm again subsided, and she said, with 
 a faint gurgling scream — " Oh ! this is death ! 
 —keep me — from the darkness — that is — 
 closing in around me, I dare not — die ; — I can- 
 not — Mercy! mercy!" 
 
 All efforts to soothe her were utterly un- 
 availing* She had no ear for the voice of 
 comfort. The sharp fetters of despair were 
 upon her, " and the iron entered her soul." 
 A cordial was administered ; a small quantity 
 only passed beyond her lips; it was evident 
 the great struggle was over. Her eyes closed, 
 she threw her left arm suddenly over the bed- 
 side, and a slight convulsive trentor of the lip 
 announced that the spirit had passed from its 
 tabernacle of clay, let us hope to be clothed upon 
 anew in another and a better world.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 157 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Miss Biddy's Will — Our hero loses a legacy, attends the 
 funeral, and contrives how to repair his loss — " No 
 man can live happily that does not live well," a tenet 
 to which he does not subscribe — The strong box — Dil- 
 lon's skill in subtraction and multiplication — It is not 
 probable that he will progress further towards the 
 rule of three, having halted dead short at division — The 
 disguise —He makes a brick-kiln his dormitory — Sleeps 
 in spite of the sulphur, and creeps forth like an ugly 
 lizard to hail the sunshine. 
 
 The day after the death of poor Miss
 
 158 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 Biddy, her will was read — somewhat pre- 
 maturely^ as it was whispered by several of 
 the neighbours, to whom the circumstance 
 was almost immediately made known — when 
 young Dillon was more surprised than angry 
 at finding that he was a legatee for six pounds 
 only, w^hich the testator had kindly bequeathed 
 to him for the purchase of suitable mourning, 
 and in order to obviate the scandal of cutting 
 him off with a shilling, which the elect lady 
 had mercifully intended to do within twenty- 
 four hours of her death. When our hero ex- 
 pressed his surprise at the extreme moderation 
 of the late Miss Biddy Mackinnon's bequest, 
 the lawyer, who was sole executor, took 
 care to tell him that there was a former 
 will in existence, rendered of course invalid 
 by one of a later date, in which he, James 
 Dillon aforesaid, had been nominated an an- 
 nuitant for no less a sum than a hundred and
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 159 
 
 fifty pounds, in four quarterly payments, of 
 thirty-seven pounds ten shillings, on four given 
 days, every year during his life. Such were the 
 terms of the will which had been cancelled in 
 consequence of his mis-timed visit to the sick- 
 chamber, and his consequent appropriation of 
 the notes and gold, as already related, when 
 his venerable patroness was upon her death 
 bed. 
 
 When the surprise of our hero had in some 
 degree abated at his unexpected position in the 
 late Miss Biddy's last will and testament, he 
 expressed no feeling of vexation, but at once 
 conscientiously admitted that he had no claim 
 to a more profitable boon. With an impulse 
 of overflowing tenderness — for he had his mo- 
 ments of strong and generous feeling, in spite 
 of his proclivity to roguery in some of its worst 
 forms — he confessed, without reserve, his utter 
 unworthiness of a benefaction so liberal as that
 
 16*0 THE FELLOW rOMMOXER. 
 
 originally intended for him by one whom he 
 had so grievously wronged. He frankly ac- 
 knowledged that her conduct to him had been 
 aifectionate in the extreme; from the time of 
 his early infancy up to the moment of her de- 
 cease, and a tear started into his eye as he 
 recalled her almost maternal kindness as 
 far back as his recollection could pierce 
 into the past. But although this impulse 
 of awakened sensibility for an instant passed 
 with the warmth but suddenness of a summer 
 exhalation over his heart, breaking the cold 
 uniformity of its temperament, seldom excited 
 to a flush of emotion, and only now warmed 
 by solemn and tender memories, the gentle im- 
 pression soon died away, like the hush of the 
 summer breeze with the sinking sun, ^ caving 
 behind no memorial of its existence. It was 
 
 " In the vapour of his glory smother'd ;"
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 161 
 
 for the great intent and aim of his ambition 
 was to be pre-eminent in thief-craft,— a propen- 
 sity as common as poverty and self-afFection; 
 the one suggesting, the other urging, to many 
 an act the issue of which is a halter. Although, 
 as I have said, our hero not only felt, but con- 
 fessed that his late guardian had been kind, and 
 that he had owed her a heavy debt of gratitude, 
 which, up to the present hour, remained un- 
 liquidated, stiU he seemed to think that in thus 
 acknowledging what was due from him, he had 
 at length fully discharged the obligation, and 
 therefore considered himself justified in dis- 
 missing Miss Biddy Mackinnon from his me- 
 mory for ever. He, nevertheless, for the sake 
 of decency, attended the funeral in deep mourn- 
 ing ; but his thoughts, which by this time had 
 recovered their tone and elasticity, after the 
 shock received by the reading of the will, were 
 engrossed by matters very remote from the
 
 162 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 solemn scene then passing before him. The 
 array of death was to him a pastime rather 
 than a lesson, and he inwardly smiled at the 
 lugubrious faces which crowded round the 
 grave of the departed spinster. She is gone, 
 he thought, and all her alarms are now quieted 
 for ever : 
 
 The kneil, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave, 
 The deep damp vault, the darkness, and the worm ; — 
 These are the bugbears of a winter's eve. 
 The terrors of the living, not the dead. 
 
 Jemmy Dillon looked upon it quite as a matter 
 of course sort of thing ; and when he returned 
 to his late home in Hart-street, Bloomsbury 
 but no longer to offer him an asylum, he had 
 as completely discharged from his memory 
 everything of a solemn or melancholy nature, 
 as if that memory had been a slate just
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 166 
 
 cleaned with a new sponge, or a sheet of white 
 paper not yet traced upon by the great chroni- 
 cler — Time. Nothing sepulchral remained 
 
 *' Within the book and volume of his brain." 
 
 He was as jocund as if death had given no proof 
 of his dismal supremacy, in taking a sealed pre- 
 destinarian from the world, so sore against her 
 will. The Fellow Commoner in spite of his 
 indifference to her remains, had no more doubt 
 of her going to heaven than he had of his own 
 final ascension to the Paradise of the pre- 
 destinated ', and therefore, he fancied the maxim 
 of old Erasmus a wise one : " I have no more 
 any anxious thoughts upon the consideration 
 of death than upon the day of my birth. I 
 know 1 must die, and to live in fear of dying 
 may shorten my life, but can never prolong 
 it.'^* Our hero, however, did not practically 
 illustrate the latter part of the maxim, and 
 * Old Man's Colloquy.
 
 164 THE FELLOW COMMONER* 
 
 therefore would scarcely have subscribed to the 
 corollary which lies at the end of it — " so my 
 only care is to live honestly and comfortably, 
 and leave the rest to Providence ; no man 
 can live happily that does not live well."^ He 
 left all to Providence, having warped his mind 
 to the incongruous conclusion that he should 
 be a saint in heaven when the measure of his 
 roguery upon earth should be full. 
 
 " Who could believe that wicked earth, 
 When nature only brings us forth 
 To be found guilty, and forgiven. 
 Should be a nursery for heaven ?"f 
 
 In reply to the poet's question, it may cer- 
 tainly be predicated of James Dillon, that 
 
 • Old Man's Colloquy. 
 
 t Butler's Satire upon the weakness and misery of 
 man.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 165 
 
 he most devoutly considered himself one of 
 the nm-slings. 
 
 It appeared upon examining the will of 
 the late Miss Biddy Mackinnon, that, some 
 short time before her death, she had depo- 
 sited within a small iron box, fixed in the 
 wall at the head of her bed — a secret repo- 
 sitory for money or other precious commo- 
 dities — three fifty pound notes of the Bank 
 of England, together with sundry gems of 
 various size and value. Jemmy Dillon deter- 
 mined to appropriate the former in his usual 
 way, but to leave the latter, being well 
 aware that detection was much more likely 
 to follow the purloining of jewels than of bank 
 notes, which last, unless the numbers should 
 have been ascertained, were a sure booty. 
 Now, it did happen that the numbers, in the 
 present instance, if known to the elect lady 
 who had so lately gone to have her election
 
 166 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 consummated among " saints made perfect," 
 were not so either to any of her friends 
 who had attended the funeral, or to any of 
 the legatees who had not, because none of 
 them had opened the iron chest, and there- 
 fore could not have inspected its contents. 
 The very night after the interment, our hero 
 proceeded to the bed-room so lately tenanted 
 by the living and the dead, and with his 
 accustomed dexterity opened the lock of the 
 iron box, having previously taken an impres- 
 sion of the wards, and provided himself with 
 a duplicate key, by means of which he 
 soon managed to remove every impediment 
 betwixt his fingers and the bank notes. These 
 he unceremoniously rolled up into as smaU a 
 compass as he conveniently could, and thrust 
 them into his breeches pockety leaving the 
 gems that had been polished and set for at 
 least three centuries, as he did not think
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 167 
 
 them of sufficient value to increase the hazard 
 of detection. No sooner had the cunning 
 rogue possessed himself of the treasure, than 
 he quitted the apartment, took the notes from 
 his pocket, and sewed them within the lining 
 of a very antiquated pair of trowsers, which 
 he had provided for the occasion. These had 
 formerly been drab colour, but were now 
 a perfect russet-brown, muddy in complexion, 
 and ragged in character. One of the legs 
 had been abstracted, as high as the knee, and 
 in a drunken brawl, the seam of the other 
 was ripped up nearly to the hip. This part 
 of the knave's wardrobe he drew over his 
 inferior person and clothed his superior in a vest 
 and coat which corresponded so perfectly 
 that the suit might be said, by a metaphor 
 only, which often expresses practically by 
 contraries^ to be all of a piece, though flapping
 
 168 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 to the gentle breeze in a hundred tatters. 
 He now plastered his hair with a white 
 paste, which was to exercise the convenient 
 virtue of turning it black, drew an oil-skin 
 cap upon his head, over which he put an 
 old hat without a crown, and showing a deficit 
 of at least one-third of its brim, the remain- 
 ing portion being of vast width, and coated 
 with certain fatty incrustations which fully 
 indicated the squalid misery of those whose 
 heads it had previously covered. He had 
 lost a front tooth from the upper jaw in a 
 professional skirmish two years before; it 
 had, however, been skilfully supplied by a 
 dentist of repute, and so exactly matched 
 the lost one, that the most cunning scrutiny 
 could not have detected the counterfeit. 
 Taking this ahen from the socket, he stained 
 its dental associates wath a brown dye, thus
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 169 
 
 giving them that carious appearance so com- 
 mon to teeth which are daily smoked with 
 the fumes of tobacco, or bathed with the 
 spirit of malt. He now fixed over his right 
 eye a glass copy of some other original, which 
 matched so imperfectly with his left, hat they 
 looked like twins from a Dutchman and a 
 Hottentot, one being black, and the other 
 a smoky yellow, having a grey pupil peering 
 with a broad saffron stare, as if it had been 
 tinted with the jaundice. He next slipped 
 two pieces of rounded ivory, something like 
 a pair of castanets, between his gums and 
 cheeks, in order to project them to an appro- 
 priate fulness, then smearing his eyebrows 
 with the same paste that covered his hair, 
 the disguise was so complete that there re- 
 mained not a single mark of identity by which 
 he could be recognised. His precautions 
 against detection had 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 170 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 " Taught kira to shift 
 Into a poor man's rags ; to assume a semblance 
 The very dogs disdained*" 
 
 and he could not have resorted to a surer 
 j)rotection. 
 
 The Fellow Commoner having completed his 
 disguise, quitted the scene of his depredation, 
 and repairing to the neighbourhood of Ken- 
 tish Town, passed the night under a rude 
 shed near a brick-kiln where, after he 
 had withdrawn the plumpers from his 
 cheeks, that he might not swallow them, he 
 slept profoundly, hushed to a most comfort- 
 able repose by the agreeable assurance of 
 having reclaimed, by a feat of knavish dex- 
 terity, part of the legacy of which an unlucky 
 after-thought had deprived him. He said 
 his prayers before he slept, a practice so 
 associated with early habit that he never 
 
 * Lear.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. I7I 
 
 neglected it, thinking that the observance of 
 a mere idle form, in which the heart bore no 
 share, was a sort of quit-rent service, and a 
 sufficient acknowledgment to the Giver of all 
 good, for the rare distinction of election to 
 eternal life. The next morning he fearlessly 
 repaired to the vicinity of Hart-street, having 
 previously cast aside the oilskin cap, and 
 brushed out his full curly hair, which was 
 now turned from a light flowing flaxen to an 
 intense black. Relying .on the completeness 
 of his incognito, early in the day he placed 
 himself with a broom in his hand at a crossing 
 not far from the door of his late abode, and 
 boldly exposed his countenance to the gaze 
 of every passer by, shrewdly concluding that 
 he could never be suspected by the parties 
 whom he had robbed, or by those employed 
 to capture him, to be so near the neighbour- 
 hood of his successful but lawless enterprise. 
 
 I 2
 
 17^ THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 Meanwhile, a hue and cry was raised after 
 him, so soon as it was ascertained that he 
 had absconded from Hart-street, and that the 
 iron box already spoken of had been lightened 
 of three fifty-pound bank-notes belonging to 
 the various legatees of his late guardian.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 1/3 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Sharks in pursuit of the dolphin — Baffled — Our hero shakes 
 his nose at them — They mistake him for what he is 
 not — Dillon quits London with a wardrobe procured 
 from Monmouth-street — Meets a traveller — Pumps 
 him, and finds there is something more solid than 
 water at the bottom of the cistern — The number of 
 Wopping Joe's fingers — The ' Muffled Drum' — Hog's 
 puddings and mulled stout ; the latter too stout for 
 Wopping Joe — He knocks under, and is carried to bed 
 by the landlord and serving- wench — Our hero com- 
 fortably stabled. 
 
 A STRICT search was made after the delin-
 
 174 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 quent, but so perfect was his disguise, that it 
 baffled the penetration of the greatest adepts in 
 thief-catching, and his near propinquity to the 
 scene of his depredations entirely disarmed sus- 
 picion. He passed the whole day at the cross- 
 ing where he had taken his stand in the 
 morning, and by the plausible tone of suppli- 
 cation he assumed, skilfully adapting the in- 
 flexions of his voice to the disposition which he 
 read in the countenance of the passer by, at 
 which he had an acquisitive tact peculiarly his 
 own, he managed to scrape together many shil- 
 lings during the day's employment in his new 
 vocation. He had an extraordinary power of 
 contracting the muscles of his nose at will, by 
 which he could abridge that useful member of 
 nearly one-third of its ordinary longitude, at 
 the same time flattening the tip by the same 
 process of muscular contraction, and so ex- 
 panding the nostrils that the nasal protube-
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 175 
 
 ranee no longer retained the least portion of its 
 natural symmetry. He exercised this singular 
 power upon the present occasion, placing upon 
 the flattened extremity a piece of sticking plais- 
 ter, having first scratched off the skin with a 
 pen-knife ; and so confident was he of the im- 
 penetrability of his disguise, that he made a 
 point of poking his distorted nose into the face 
 of every police-officer who happened to pass 
 him. — 
 
 " Bringing his face into the open sun 
 
 For all mankind to gaze their worst upon, 
 As eagles try their youu-g against his rays. 
 To prove if they're of generous breed or base."* 
 
 In the evening he quitted his post, and re- 
 pairing to Monmouth-street, procured a suit of 
 respectable second-hand habiliments, which had 
 been ^' the property of a gentleman lately de- 
 
 * Butler.
 
 176 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 ceased," and having provided himself with a 
 few other necessaries, he resolved to leave 
 London for the present at least, and exercise 
 his dexterity in some of the large provincial 
 cities, where he was unknown. His resolution 
 was, no doubt, a provident one, for, like the 
 unjust steward in the parable, whom he often 
 quoted as a prototype, and always represented 
 as having obtained the divine sanction — thus 
 perverting the obvious meaning of the parable 
 to authorise his own delinquencies — he inva- 
 riably exercised so prudent a foresight as to 
 keep clear of the horns of a dilemma, when- 
 ever it threatened to overthrow him. He was 
 too well known to many of the police officers 
 to render London a safe abiding-place for him 
 at the present conjuncture ; for, although his 
 disguise was a sufficient security against im- 
 mediate detection, still it would be almost im- 
 possible to continue it for any length of time.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 1.77 
 
 He consequently quitted the metropolis with 
 his bundle of second-hand apparel under his 
 arm^ and took the road to Bath, intending to 
 pass the night at the first public-house he 
 should reach on the road-side when he got 
 clear of the suburbs. He maintained his in- 
 cognito not only to obviate the chance of 
 detection, but likewise with a view of availing 
 himself of any opportunity that might turn up 
 for exercising the mysteries of his calUng ; and 
 one soon presented itself beyond his expec- 
 tation. Although evening had long set in, the 
 stars were bright in the heavens, and their 
 multiplied reflections so softened and subdued 
 the darkness, that there was no difficulty not 
 only in distinguishing near objects, but in 
 tracing the form and almost the lineaments of 
 the human countenance. Dillon had not pro- 
 ceeded far beyond the suburbs, when he was 
 joined by a person who seemed rather more 
 
 I 5
 
 178 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 than usually exhilarated after a good dinner, 
 and entered into conversation with freedom and 
 good humour. Our hero had a remarkably in- 
 sinuating manner, and, taking advantage of the 
 stranger's communicative vein, soon threw 
 him off his guard, and drew from him that 
 information which determined him to add to 
 his professional gains by reversing the plus and 
 minus. His companion did not hesitate to 
 inform him that he was then upon his return 
 home from Smithfield market, where he had 
 disposed of cattle to the amount of a hundred 
 and seventy-three pounds. " But," inquired 
 the wary Predestinarian, " you hav'nt got the 
 cash about you ?" 
 
 "Aye, I have!" 
 
 ''' It aint wise to travel with so much money 
 loose upon you.'' 
 
 " Oh 1 never fear, I've pinned it up in my 
 fob ; 'tis unpossible to take it out on the sly.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. l79 
 
 and as for any one daring to lay hand on me 
 to filch it in spite of my will, I'm as good a 
 man as any he in the king's land. I'm called 
 VVopping Joe in our village, and there's them 
 as knows it well." 
 
 The choler of the cattle-vender was rising 
 like mercury on a July noon, when DiUon 
 soothed him with the skill of an eastern jug- 
 gler, who, with a celerity almost magical, calms 
 the ire of the most venemous reptile, which he 
 had previously excited to the highest pitch of 
 exasperation. What had just dropped from his 
 companion made the ears of our hero tingle 
 under the excitement of anticipation ; but with 
 a quiet earnestness, which he assumed with 
 wary discretion, he advised Wopping Joe to 
 secure his money inside his waistcoat, as there 
 were always rogues abroad, and a hundred and 
 seventy-three pounds made a large sum ; '^ Be- 
 sides," he continued, " though you might
 
 ISO THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 thrash one rascal or even make two keep their 
 distance, what could one pair of fists do against 
 a dozen }'' 
 
 " Let 'em come/^ said the countryman, 
 flourishing above his head a set of knuckles 
 that looked as if they could have made greater 
 havoc on a hard skull than the cestus of the 
 ancient Athletes — " let 'em come," said he, 
 elevating his voice to a roar, " and they shall 
 soon learn that Joseph MuUer has got more 
 nor one hand with five fingers, and, moreover, 
 knows how to use 'em." 
 
 The travellers had by this time arrived at a 
 public-house, bearing the somewhat equivocal 
 sign of the Muffled Drum. Over the door 
 were enumerated in respectable English, the 
 various potables which the house afforded ; and 
 from these the variety and quality of the 
 eatables might be taken for granted. Jemmy 
 Dillon now separated for a few moments from
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 181 
 
 the rustic village champion, in order to put his 
 bundle into a place of security. Having, un- 
 seen by any one, bestowed it behind an old 
 wall, which lined a neighbouring hedge, he 
 entered the pot-house. The publican eyed him 
 with a glance of sinister inquiry, scanning him 
 from head to foot, and mutely indicating that 
 he did not look upon him as a man to be 
 trusted. Dillon, however, affected to be ut- 
 terly unconscious of the suspicious scrutiny of 
 the landlord, and seated himself without further 
 ceremony before the fender in the tap-room, 
 which happened to be without visiters, save 
 Joseph Muller and himself. The former, in 
 the hilarity of his recent success at Smithfield, 
 treated his travelling chum, as he facetiously 
 called James Dillon, to a supper of hogs' pud- 
 ding and mulled stout. The Fellow Commoner 
 partook very sparingly of the liquor, as he re- 
 quired clear wits for the accomplishment of a
 
 182 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 project upon which his mind was brooding, 
 even at that moment, while his companion was 
 indulging in copious draughts of his favourite 
 beverage. By the time the hour of ten had 
 been announced by a cuckoo clock that hung 
 in a corner of the tap-room, where, for the 
 last thirty-two years come next Candlemas, as 
 the landlord averred, it had exhibited " the 
 triumph of machinery," Wopping Joe had so 
 much stout in his head as to increase the cen- 
 tripetal force to such a degree, that but for the 
 landlord and a strapping serving-wench who 
 carried him up stairs to bed, he would have 
 dropped downward, like a lump of dried dough, 
 to the peril of the floor, if not of his own skull. 
 When the countryman was safely disposed of. 
 Jemmy Dillon, with great humility, bargained 
 for a night's lodging in an empty stable, where 
 he was supplied with straw for fourpence, as 
 he could not afford the more desirable luxury
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 183 
 
 of a bed-room, which, in truth, would have 
 been denied to him by the suspicious Boniface, 
 even had he tendered a good shilhng for a 
 night's occupation. 
 
 Before he retired to his straw, the provident 
 knave took care to acquaint himself where the 
 rustic slept, having officiously oiFered his aid 
 in getting him up stairs, which was no easy 
 matter, Wopping Joe being "a tun of man'^ 
 though with barely " a kilderkin of wit." The 
 situation of his victim^s bed-room being pre- 
 cisely ascertained. Jemmy resolved to pluck the 
 goose bare before morning. He crept into his 
 lair, but not to sleep, carefully watching the 
 twinkling of the stars through a hole in the 
 roof, and thus impatiently awaiting the moment 
 when sleep should have fairly cast its fetters 
 upon the whole pot-house establishment. The 
 chamber upon which our hero meditated a 
 nocturnal tresspass, was lighted only by a small
 
 184 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 lattice, reticulated like an old church casement, 
 with small diamond-shaped panes, and over- 
 looking the stable in which slippery Jem was 
 watching the opportune moment for a profitable 
 adventure. As the room was small, and the 
 blood of its inmate up to fever heat, in conse- 
 quence of the stimulating potions he had 
 swallowed, Margery, the maid, had no sooner 
 seen him safely deposited upon his bed, than 
 she opened the window, "to keep un from 
 smootherin in his own steam,'^ as she artlessly 
 expressed it ; and, although it was a chilly 
 November night, the sot was too well fortified 
 against cold, both within and without, to be 
 sensible of it. The night was beautiful ; there 
 was no moon, but the stars studded the hea- 
 vens, diffusing their serene light over the slum- 
 bering earth, and in the radiance of their un- 
 clouded glory, mutely addressing to the heart 
 a language which, when it finds an echo there,
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 185 
 
 lifts it in adoration to its God. By James 
 Dillon their voice was unheard, and all he felt 
 about the stars was, that they now seemed 
 propitious, and he valued them no further 
 than their light was favourable to his unholy 
 purpose.
 
 ~IS6 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The domiciliary visit — Plucking a goose — a respectable 
 sura total of professional gains — the Transformation — 
 Honor and a happy quotation from the Roman orator — 
 Wopping Joe awakens — His surprise — Rushes into the 
 tap-room — The uproar — Dillon's sympathy — Scouts 
 sent in pursuit of the thief who laughs in his sleeve, 
 eats his breakfast, pays for it like an honest man and 
 departs on the Bath coach — His various adventures 
 until he gets benighted on a common, where he says 
 his prayers. 
 
 About two hours before day-break, our
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 187 
 
 hero having previously provided himself with a 
 strong cord to which a short thick hook was 
 attached, adroitly flung the armed end within 
 the window, and the hook catching the frame, 
 he was instantly provided with the means of 
 ascent. He paused not a moment, but seizing 
 the cord, drew himself up the wall with the 
 agility and ease of a cat. Having reached the 
 casement, he rested for an instant to take 
 breath, then silently entered the chamber. It 
 was perfectly dark, the window being small and 
 situated in one corner ; he soon, however, was 
 directed to the situation of the bed by the hard 
 breathing of its occupant. He approached 
 stealthily, but the sleep of Joseph Muller was 
 too profound to render the chances of being 
 "caught in the fact^' very formidable. Dillon, 
 nevertheless, warily groped his way, and upon 
 reaching the bed-side, gently disengaged a par- 
 cel of notes and guineas from the fob into
 
 tS8 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 which they had been somewhat roughly 
 crammed, then regaining the window, let him- 
 self down by the cord, which he disengaged as 
 soon as he stood firmly upon mother earth, and 
 immediately quitted the house. He passed the 
 remainder of the night under a temporary shed 
 erected for the occasional shelter of cattle in a 
 field about a mile distant. He was too cautious 
 to sleep, and, indeed it is likely the flush of 
 success would have " murdered sleep,'' how- 
 ever he might have tried to keep it alive by 
 offering his senses for a banquet. He now had 
 leisure to count the whole gains of his pro- 
 fessional life, and the sum total was no less 
 than seven hundred and eighty-four pounds, 
 thirteen shillings, and two-pence. Though a 
 plunderer, both wholesale and retail, our hero 
 was neither prodigal nor intemperate ; he saved 
 his unhallowed thrift, and regularly became the 
 proprietor of so much stock, whenever he
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 189 
 
 could muster a fresh hundred to purchase. 
 He had a friend upon 'Change, who managed 
 his pecuniary matters in a manner perfectly 
 satisfactory. 
 
 As soon as it was day^ the wily depredator 
 cast aside his old coat and trousers, cut them 
 into strips, and scattered them in various di- 
 rections. Having put on the suit with which 
 his bundle was provided, he removed his coun- 
 terfeit eye, withdrew the ivory plumpers, res- 
 tored his front tooth, and expunged the stains 
 from its neighbours, elongated his nose to its 
 natural dimensions, stripped the patch oiF its 
 apex, when, from a very ordinary man, appa- 
 rently of one and forty, he was suddenly trans- 
 formed into a handsome youth of eighteen. 
 Having washed himself in a narrow stream that 
 watered the field, and deposited his plunder in 
 a place of temporary concealment, without the 
 slightest apprehension, he returned to the pub-
 
 190 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 lie-house in which he had despoiled the vender 
 of cattle^ and entering as a traveller, desirous of 
 proceeding by coach to Bath, ordered breakfast, 
 to which he sat down with a moderate and 
 leisurely appetite. His conscience was neither 
 disturbed nor his relish blunted by the robbery 
 he had so lately committed. Honesty, accord- 
 ing to his notion, was an *' empty bubble," and 
 honour merely what FalstafF defined it to be, — 
 " a word." He was not learned in the dead 
 languages, or he might have adopted a different 
 creed : for true honour, according to Cicero, 
 '^ is the concurrent praise of good men ; the 
 incorrupt approbation of those who form a 
 correct judgment of eminent virtue ; it is the 
 echo of virtue." Dillon^s answer to the Roman 
 orator, had he heard his definition of true 
 honour, would, no doubt, have been, that " the 
 better part of it is discretion," and that the 
 only true discretion which best provides against
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 191 
 
 " the natural ills that flesh is heir to," by what- 
 ever means, these being always sanctified by 
 the end. This was, in short, the brief moral of 
 his philosophy. 
 
 He had not been seated at his breakfast 
 more than a few minutes, when a roar of painful 
 astonishment was heard above stairs, and 
 almost immediately afterwards Wopping Joe 
 rushed into the tap-room, his eyes projecting 
 from their sockets, like those of an over driven 
 steer, his nose twitched upwards and the 
 nostrils ludicrously gaping, his jaws expanded 
 to such an angle of elevation and depression as 
 to exhibit the whole capacious inclosure within, 
 his lips quivering in a delirium of consterna- 
 tion, and his whole countenance expressing the 
 most violent commotion. He stamped his 
 thick hobnail shoes upon the floor^ bellowed 
 out the most tremendous oaths, gnashed his 
 teeth till his mouth was covered with foam and
 
 192 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 blood, and exhibited the fiercest paroxysms of 
 desperation. Dillon calmly inquired the cause 
 of such an unexpected irruption ; and when he 
 had been informed by the officious publican, in 
 a tone of ludicrous self-possession he declared 
 there could be no doubt that the tattered 
 vagrant was the robber. The replacing of 
 his front tooth had so perfectly restored our 
 hero's articulation, that no one could have 
 detected him to be identical with the object of 
 his accusation, towards whom he did not spare 
 those ungentle abuses which, upon such oc- 
 casions, pass for the fervour of sympathy. 
 
 A dozen scouts were dispatched in pursuit of 
 the delinquent, in whose capture the Hobgoblin, 
 which cognomen Jemmy DiUon had by this 
 time fairly entitled himself to, appeared to take 
 a very earnest interest, declaring that he should 
 defer his journey, and remain at the public- 
 house to see the issue. The parties returned
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 193 
 
 after some hours' search, but no clue had been 
 obtained to the robber's retreat, and all hope 
 of a capture gave place in the heart of Wop- 
 ping Joe to " cursing and bitterness." He 
 renewed his imprecations : the plunderer had 
 not left him a sixpence, so that he could pay 
 neither for his board, nor his bed, and Dillon 
 was too wary to offer him any pecuniary assist- 
 ance, lest such apparent generosity to a 
 stranger should arouse suspicion. He therefore 
 allowed the countryman to depart with nothing 
 but his sympathy and good wishes, and the 
 publican was obliged to put up mth the loss 
 of six shillings and seven pence halfpenny. 
 Our hero had been so securely trenched behind 
 his disguise, that suspicion did not for one 
 moment attach to him ; and having passed the 
 following night in the very room where he had 
 committed the robbery, he proceeded the next 
 morning on the coach towards Bath. He se- 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 194 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 cured a place no farther than to the nearest 
 market town, purposing to walk the remamder 
 of his journey, as it would keep him more 
 aloof from the prying eyes of strangers. On 
 arriving at the next stage^ he took up his tem- 
 porary abode at the meanest looking inn he 
 could find, as there he was more likely to avoid 
 the contact of unknown companions. Here he 
 carefully packed up in a parcel, well secured 
 with stiff brown paper and sealed with a stag's 
 head, the unla\N^ul fruits of his late enterprise. 
 The money stolen consisted chiefly of one 
 pound notes, among which were seven guineas ; 
 the numbers of the notes did not happen to be 
 known to the robbed party, so that no risk 
 could arise from paying them into the bank, 
 and Dillon, as I have said, had a friend at head 
 quarters, upon w^hom he could rely, to convert 
 this new accession of property into Bank stock. 
 To him the parcel was despatched, Dillon re-
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 195 
 
 taining only the seven guineas for immediate 
 use. He determined to keep out of the way 
 for a time, at least until the affair should be 
 somewhat blown over, thinking that a couple 
 of years added to his present youth would make 
 such an alteration in his person, that with dyed 
 hair and the appendage of bushy whiskers, 
 which were by this time rapidly thickening, he 
 should be quite a new man. 
 
 Next morning he quitted the inn, and pur- 
 sued his journey, resting at small public-houses 
 on the road-side, where he took his meals, and 
 in one of which he passed the succeeding night. 
 On the evening of the second day he entered a 
 common. The night promised to be dark, for 
 the twilight had set in with an asperity and 
 gloom unusual even in the dreary month of 
 November. As he advanced, a thick mist en- 
 veloped every thing around him with so dense 
 
 K 2
 
 196 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 a covering, that five yards before his nose 
 he could scarcely discern an object of whatever 
 size, and by the time twilight had given place 
 to the deeper shades of evening, he could not 
 clearly distinguish the path under his feet. The 
 heath was of considerable extent, and being 
 utterly unacquainted with the route, he was 
 perplexed and uneasy; but, shaking off the de- 
 pression which was gradually seizing upon his 
 spirits, as well as the cold upon his limbs, he 
 determined to push forward at all hazards. To 
 sleep in the open air was to him neither a 
 novelty nor a penance. He wandered out of 
 the high road, and of this he was soon con- 
 scious by the interruptions which the heather 
 occasionally offered to his progress. Still 
 he pursued his course in the direction 
 that his mere instinct suggested. He had 
 not been long bewildered when he per-
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 197 
 
 ceived a light, apparently at a short dis- 
 tance, — a sight, indeed, of welcome, as it 
 promised shelter for the night, or at 
 least a guide to the next town. He quick- 
 ened his pace, but the pale, sickly ray 
 seemed to retreat as he advanced, and at 
 length suddenly disappeared. It now oc- 
 curred to him that it must have been fur- 
 ther oiF than he had apprehended, being 
 seen through a heavy mist which, Hke the 
 lenses of a telescope, magnifies objects and 
 brings them apparently nearer to the eye. 
 Supposing, nevertheless, that the light might 
 have been removed by the inmates of some 
 neighbouring cottage, he proceeded onward 
 with cautious celerity, hoping that it would 
 shortly reappear. His expectation, however, 
 was not realised, and he stood in the midst 
 of a wide and barren heath, uncertain which
 
 198 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 direction to pursue. He paused, and, with 
 daring impiety, offered up a prayer to the 
 God of mercy for a shelter in this hour of 
 perplexity.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 199 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 How Dillon feels on the common — Not only cold but 
 uncomfortable — A question between entity and non- 
 entity — Entity settles the question in the shape of a 
 gipsy — A dialogue in the moon-shine through a mist — 
 Nomadic courtesy — A family of browns — Their dwel- 
 ling — Doubts — The supper — James Dillon more wise 
 than his host ; supping upon bread and cheese, and 
 washing it down with a draught of running water. 
 
 We left our hero upon a wide heath, offering 
 up a prayer to heaven for a night's lodging 
 anywhere, so long as there was a covering be- 
 tween him and the deep blue sky, in which not
 
 200 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 a single star was visible. After he had put up 
 his presumptuous supplication^ he pondered 
 upon the chances of a shelter from the cold, 
 when his eye was attracted by a tall gigantic 
 object, which seemed to emerge from the mist, 
 and advance towards him. He silently awaited 
 its approach. Its outline was dim and sha- 
 dowy, and it was evidently endowed with the 
 power of locomotion , but whether it were a 
 goule or a mortal was yet to be discovered. 
 The action of his heart increased, and smote 
 almost audibly against his side. He did not 
 absolutely quail, but his courage swerved. He 
 was in a new position, and, although habi- 
 tually bold, he was nevertheless somewhat 
 superstitious, and, Uke conscience, supersti- 
 tion 
 
 *' Doth make cowards of us all." 
 
 As the figure approached, it appeared to dimi-
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 201 
 
 nish, the outline becoming less tortuous and 
 undefined. It had at length advanced to 
 within a few feet of the spot where Dillon 
 stood^ when he discovered the object of his 
 apprehension to be a man, "in form as pal- 
 pable'^ as the moon which was beginning to 
 glimmer through the fog. No sooner did 
 he perceive that the figure exhibited evidence 
 of living flesh and blood, than the palpita- 
 tions within subsided. A rough, coarse voice 
 demanded who was there. 
 
 " A traveller,'^ replied our hero, " who has 
 lost his way, and would fain know where he 
 may be likely to obtain a night's lodging." 
 
 "On the heath here, where you may get 
 lodged without paying for't ; and you wouldn't 
 be the only beast on the heath that slept 
 without a bolster." 
 
 This was no very courteous greeting, and 
 
 K 5
 
 202 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 there was a sulkiness and sibilant hoarseness 
 in the man's tone, those infalHble indications of 
 heartless selfishness and habitual intemperance, 
 which satisfied our benighted wayfarer that he 
 had no courtesy to expect from the stranger. 
 Nothing abashed, however, by the churlish- 
 ness of the greeting, he replied — - 
 
 '^ Hospitality, my friend, is the English 
 peasant's virtue. I am overtaken by the night, 
 and have lost my way; could you either 
 direct me to a night's lodging, or furnish me 
 with one ?" 
 
 " I am not an English peasant, the more's 
 my pride, but a straight-forward descendant 
 from the Pharoahs, who taught the world 
 wisdom when your ancestors, like toads, 
 skulked in the trees for shelter, and ate acorns 
 like hogs, though now some among them 
 walk in ermine, and look upon the sun and
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 203 
 
 moon as their servitors. Go and lie where 
 the hogs may be your bedfellows 3 there are 
 plenty around ye 1" 
 
 " You refuse to lodge me ?'* 
 " And suppose I did, what then ?" 
 " Come, be for once a benefactor, and shel- 
 ter a weary traveller.'^ 
 
 "The gipsy's abode is spurned by the sleek 
 of the earth, those minions of fortune, who go 
 about in fine linen, hke foul corpses in a shroud, 
 and ^* fare sumptuously every day,^^ as it is writ- 
 ten in their book of wisdom." 
 
 " But I am one of those citizens of the world 
 who would at any time prefer a gipsy's dormi- 
 tory to the open air; so come, show me the 
 way to your tenement." 
 
 "Thank ye for nothing; I'm not so blind 
 as a sucking whelp, though there's darkness 
 and a mist between thee and me, nor so big 
 a fool as to do a man's bidding who can't do
 
 204 THE FELLOW COMMONER. ' 
 
 better than ask for a benefit. Hark ye, my 
 saucy petitioner, I've too many mouths to feed 
 to provide either victuals or a night's lodging 
 for the love of humanity. Benevolence was 
 never the virtue of poverty — 'tis too expensive 
 a quality. Take the bed that thy Maker 
 provides for thee, and be content." 
 
 ^' I don't seek from thee a favour without a 
 quittance. Provide me a shelter, and I'll give 
 thee more than the worth of anything thou 
 canst bestow, and something over for thy 
 good will." So saying, Dillon took half-a- 
 crown from his pocket, and placed it upon 
 the rough palm of the gipsy, who clutched it 
 with an eagerness that most expressively pro- 
 claimed his love of the precious metals. Dark 
 as it was, he had a sensibility of touch when 
 a piece of gold or silver bearing the king's 
 image, happened to be placed beneath his 
 fingers, that would have done honour to the
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 205 
 
 most subtle, in the mysteries of mintage, of 
 the remnant of the ten tribes. 
 
 *' Follow," said the man, as soon as he had 
 
 secured the coin within the pocket of a tattered 
 
 waistcoat, "follow;" and he stalked sturdily, 
 
 but in silence, before his new guest. The 
 
 common here gradually sloped until at length 
 
 upon a sudden the descent for several yards 
 
 became extremely steep. As they reached the 
 
 bottom of this precipitous dell, the moon 
 
 glimmered more distinctly through the mist, 
 
 which had by this time partially dispersed, 
 
 and discovered the entrance of the gipsy's 
 
 tenement. Following his guide, our hero 
 
 passed into a deep and capacious chalk-pit. 
 
 About six feet from the bottom was the 
 
 stranger's abode, to which there were steps 
 
 cut in the chalk. This singular dwelling was 
 
 a square vault harrowed out of the bosom of 
 
 the hill. Dillon's host ascended the steps, and
 
 206 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 passing into the hovel, invited him to enter. 
 The entrance was so low that he was obliged 
 to stoop his head ; but a single step brought 
 him within this troglodyte retreat. He could 
 see nothing ; there was not a glimmer of light 
 to guide his footsteps; he stood perplexed. 
 He heard the din of many voices, but an 
 intensely black vacuum was before his eyes, 
 which yearned for an object to rest on. 
 
 Here no dear glimpse of the sun's lovely face 
 Strikes through the solid darkness of the place ; 
 No dawning morn does her kind reds display ; — 
 One slight, weak beam would here be thought the 
 day:* 
 
 At length a light was suddenly kindled by 
 the stirring of some embers in the middle of 
 the cell, and the apphcation of a small quan- 
 
 • Cowley's Davideis, Book I.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 2(>7 
 
 tity of gunpowder. In a few moments there 
 was a feeble blaze, when the surrounding 
 objects became visible. The dark area within 
 which Dillon stood, appeared to him, as he 
 measured it with his eye, to be about twelve 
 feet square. Though cut from a bed of chalk, 
 it was as dingy as if it had been prepared for 
 the devil and his angels. The smoke of three 
 months had imparted to it that hue which is 
 considered a symbol of all that is melancholy 
 and miserable. The fire now began to bum 
 briskly from the cover of an old tin kettle, 
 and our hero soon found the smoke so oppres- 
 sive that he could scarcely breathe. It was a 
 far worse evil than the darkness, being so 
 thick and pungent as to force the water in 
 streams from his eyes. In a short time it 
 became less distressing, and he was able to 
 examine with a more deliberate scrutiny the
 
 208 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 objects by which he was surrounded. He was 
 surprised to find, within this den of poverty, 
 eight inmates besides himself and his host. 
 Around the ruddy blaze sat the gipsy's mother, 
 his wife, and a young person, but of what sex 
 it was not possible upon so hasty an examina- 
 tion and in so unstationary a light to deter- 
 mine. Within the vault were five children, 
 from the ages of two to fourteen years, 
 stretched upon straw, and that they were 
 not awake was soon fully ascertained by those 
 heavy respirations with which young and sound 
 sleepers usually accompany their slumbers as a 
 gentle lullaby ; though in the present instance 
 the lullaby was the exact converse of gentle, 
 for the snoring was so hard and continuous as 
 to exceed in harmony the carols of the dis- 
 turbed piggery. Every successive interval of 
 time was filled up with a snore that would
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER* 209 
 
 have awakened the echoes anywhere, but in a 
 chalk cavern, whither they are not in the habit 
 of seeking a sanctuary. 
 
 The gipsy now demanded his supper in a 
 tone so peremptory and abrupt, that it was 
 evident no one could say of his Httle common- 
 wealth, 
 
 ** The specialty of rule hath been neglected." 
 
 His wife was on her legs in a moment, and the 
 supper instantly placed before him. It con- 
 sisted of a piece of broiled hog's flesh, cut 
 from the chine of a huge porker that had died 
 of measles, and been cast on the common to 
 the crows ; to which was added a lump of 
 stale barley bread, a half-fermented onion, and 
 some rancid mutton fat as a substitute for 
 butter. Dillon's host was professionally a tinker, 
 and it was upon part of the principal imple-
 
 210 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 ment of his craft, the portable stove, — which 
 was nothing more than a tin boiler, the cover 
 supplying the only kitchen range to be found 
 in the gipsy's establishment, — that the culi- 
 nary processes of this nomadic family were 
 completed. Our hero partook not of the 
 unpalatable provisions which had been set 
 before his host, but taking a roll and a piece of 
 cheese from his pocket made a tolerably hearty 
 meal, washing it down with some water, which 
 one of the snoring urchins had been awakened 
 to fetch in a fractured pipkin from a neigh- 
 bouring brook.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 211 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 What followed the supper — Darkness and a tobacco- 
 pipe — A bed prepared without a bolster for the new 
 lodger — A problem which is not solved until the 
 morning — Our hero's reflections, and a very apt 
 quotation from Dr. Young — Dillon awakens and dis- 
 covers that chalk walls are not white — Accounted for — 
 Sundry portraits of old and young — A pretty girl like 
 a diamond in a mine may be hid in a chalk-pit — Be- 
 reavement — Gipsy propensities — A tinker. 
 
 Supper being concluded, without a grace, 
 except from Dillon, who never neglected the
 
 21^ THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 forms of holiness, and often prayed for success 
 while he was planning a robbery, the fire was 
 allowed gradually to exhaust itself, and although 
 the smoke soon found its way through the com- 
 mon entrance, it was nevertheless as quickly 
 succeeded by a vapour equally dense and far 
 more pungent, which arose from the pipe of 
 the host, who smoked with a vehemence and 
 love of narcotic fumigation altogether new to 
 his guest; for though the latter occasionally 
 indulged in inhaling the fumes of tobacco, he 
 had been accustomed to a long pipe and a 
 milder leaf. 
 
 " Dame,'' said the gipsy, after the grossness 
 of his refection had been somewhat qualified by 
 the " hackee," " this is a traveller who has lost 
 his road, and seeks shelter with the vagrant ; 
 he's the first that ever crossed our threshold. 
 He must have a bed as well as a shelter, for he 
 had rather sleep upon chalk than upon heather.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 213 
 
 Make him welcome, and pick him some new 
 straw for a bed. He has paid for his night*s 
 rest, and must have the best corner of our 
 hovel." 
 
 The old woman to whom this was addressed 
 spoke not, but rising from the ground with 
 indolent deliberation, as if she felt little 
 interest in administering to the comforts of a 
 guest, took some straw from a bundle upon 
 which she had been previously seated, shook 
 it out against the wall, and within two minutes 
 announced to her son^s guest that his bed was 
 prepared. By this time the cavern was again 
 in total darkness, and so indistinct had been 
 every object from the first moment of Dillon's 
 entrance, or at least after the fire had been re- 
 kindled, that he had no power to distinguish 
 very accurately either the persons or figures of 
 the family into whose abode he began to think he 
 had somewhat rashly committed himself. The
 
 214 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 gipsy continued to smoke, and the small 
 glowing spot of fire in the bowl of his pipe, 
 rendered visible with every inspiration, was the 
 only object that broke the intensity of the 
 darkness. Our hero being much fatigued, for 
 he had walked five and thirty miles during the 
 day, threw himself upon his straw for a night's 
 sleep. He soon perceived that he had bed- 
 fellows on either side within a few inches of 
 him, but whether male or female was a pro- 
 lilem which he had neither the curiosity nor the 
 desire to solve. He guessed they were the 
 children of his host, but had no wish to 
 make impertinent inquiries, believing that the 
 urchins were too young to be mischievous, 
 however strong might be the animal propen- 
 sity. 
 
 The gipsy, as soon as he had smoked out 
 his pipe for the sixth time, with a loud, tight 
 yawn lay down upon his straw, having first
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 215 
 
 placed a moveable door before the aperture by 
 which, entrance into the hovel was obtained. 
 Meanwhile, James Dillon thought upon the 
 various accidents of his life with much self- 
 complacency, as sleep was rather slow in seahng 
 his eyelids ; and when he recalled to mind the 
 numerous remarkable escapes which he had 
 already experienced, he felt only the more con- 
 fident of his absolute predestination. " ' The 
 lot is cast into the lap,' said he mentally, ' but 
 ': hwhole disposing thereof is of the Lord ;' 
 and has not mine turned up favourably where- 
 ever I have drawn ?^' He offered up a thanks- 
 giving. But can such aspirations ascend as 
 welcome memorials before God ? Alas ! that 
 so gross a perversion of the subhmest creed 
 ever offered to the faith of man should be tole- 
 rated for one instant in a rational community 
 of Christians ! The religion that sanctions 
 crime cannot emanate from the fountain of all
 
 216' THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 good ; it is nothing better than a delusion con- 
 jured up by the all but omnipotent enemy 
 of mankind, to betray those naturally prone 
 to vice into the meshes of temptation, whence 
 they easily fall into the toils of the des- 
 troyer. And yet how often have the sanctions 
 of religion been audaciously set up as a plea for 
 some of the worst failings of the human heart. 
 
 "Oyefallnl 
 
 Lords of the wide creation and the shame. 
 
 More senseless than the irrationals you scorn. 
 
 In the coarse drudgeries and sinks of sense. 
 
 Your souls have quite worn out the make of heaven." 
 
 " Did people consider as they ought," writes 
 the eloquent Cicero, " they would not, as they 
 so commonly do, admire a crafty set of knaves, 
 and esteem that to be wisdom which in truth is 
 no better than roguery. This error, therefore, 
 should be wholly eradicated from the minds of
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 21/ 
 
 men, and all made sensible that if ever they 
 hope for success in any human undertaking, they 
 should not attempt to compass it by knavery 
 and fraud, but employ integrity both in their 
 actions and designs/'* 
 
 After a while, our hero, overcome by fatigue, 
 sank into a profound and refreshing repose. 
 Upon awaking, he found that the whole family 
 had risen, a labour of no great complexity, as 
 they had no toilette to perform, and ablution 
 was a ceremony of periods, 
 
 *' Like angels' visits, few and far between." 
 
 The obstruction had been removed from the 
 entrance, and the Ught of heaven partially 
 admitted into this miserable den of hcentious- 
 ness and bereavement. Our hero now per- 
 ceived that the walls, if they may be so called, 
 
 « Cic. Offic. lib. 2, cap. 3. 
 VOL. I. L
 
 218 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 though by nature intensely white, were smoked 
 to such a degree as to be soot black. As the 
 morning advanced, the sun shone out vividly, 
 and Dillon's sight being better accustomed 
 to the dinginess and gloom of the cavern, he 
 could survey with tolerable accuracy the diffe- 
 rent objects within it. The gipsy was a thick set 
 muscular person, his age about five and forty, 
 with black wiry hair, and bushy, grizzled 
 whiskers. He had one bUnd eye, the orb 
 hideously prominent ; the other was deeply 
 sunk beneath a fierce shaggy brow, under which 
 it absolutely glared. The man was a perfect 
 type of cruelty and hearties sness. His mother, 
 whose age, from her withered decrepitude, did 
 not appear much less than ninety, would have 
 represented a gorgon to the life. Her ta^vny 
 skin, and bony angular frame, squahd to the 
 last degree, and trembling with continual 
 palsy, were pitiably frightful ; and yet the hag-
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 219 
 
 ish, nay, the almost fiendish expression of her 
 features stifled every emotion of pity the mo- 
 ment it began to awaken. 
 
 " Her face most foul and filthy was to see 
 With squinting eyes contrary ways entended. 
 And loathly mouth, unmeet a mouth to be 
 That nought but gall and venim comprehended. 
 And wicked words that God and man oflfended : 
 Her lying tongue was in two parts divided. 
 And both the parts did speak and both contended ; 
 And as her tongue, so was her heart decided. 
 That never thought one thing, but doubly still was 
 guided/** 
 
 The gipsy^s wife was a stout, swarthy, 
 comely woman, hale and well formed, with 
 black eyes, in which there was generally an 
 expression of languor and indifference, save 
 when she was roused to anger, and they then 
 
 * Spenser's Faerie Queene. 
 
 L 2
 
 220 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 sparkled with an expression so fierce and con- 
 centrated, that it seemed as if every stormy 
 passion of her soul had been kindled within 
 them. The prevailing trait of her character 
 was indolence ; and though she feared her hus- 
 band extremely, yet whenever her rage got the 
 better of her discretion, which was sometimes 
 the case, she would recklessly brave his fero- 
 city ; and so soon as he had exercised it upon 
 her, much more to his own satisfaction than 
 to hers, she would wreak her frantic ven- 
 geance upon the children, towards whom she 
 felt in her sober moments all a mother's ten- 
 derest yearnings, and often for weeks have they 
 borne the marks which she has inflicted in her 
 ungovernable paroxysms of anger. 
 
 The eldest of the brood was no longer so 
 indeterminate a being as she had appeared the 
 preceding night. She was in her sixteenth 
 year, but so clad as to render it a matter of
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 221 
 
 some difficulty, upon a superficial view, to pro- 
 nounce whether she were boy or girl. She 
 wore a loose, tattered jacket and waistcoat, 
 beneath which depended a scanty petticoat that 
 did not extend below the calf of the leg, leaving 
 exposed to the sight a limb of rare symmetry 
 and exquisite delicacy of proportion. Her long 
 glossy hair, which was of the deepest flaxen 
 hung in wild profusion over her shoulders and 
 bosom ; her clear, laughing, springy voice, of 
 a firm sonorous treble, told at once that if 
 of the less honourable gender, according to 
 the philological dictum, she was certainly of the 
 most beautiful ; and, in truth, Dillon was sur- 
 prised to see anything of so prepossessing a 
 shape in such a wretched abode, and among 
 such a barbarous community. The girl was 
 really handsome, and, in spite of her attire, 
 excited our hero's astonishment, who had
 
 222 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 Mark'd 
 A thousand blushing apparitions 
 To start into her face, a thousand innocent shames 
 In angel whiteness bear away those blushes. 
 
 Although her skin was nut-brown, her eyes 
 were of a deep blue, sparkling with the 
 lustre of youth and health, and proclaiming in 
 characters too positive to be misunderstood 
 that there was an intellect behind them which 
 only required culture to draw from it a rich 
 harvest of fruit. 
 
 There was no furniture within the cavern 
 but the tinker's portable apparatus and tools 
 for the various operations of his trade, a few 
 shards of common earthenware, which were 
 used as platters, and a huge wooden 
 spoon. The sides of the tenement were the 
 naked chalk, as was the floor, upon which 
 straw was pretty prodigally scattered, except 
 in the centre, where the process of cooking
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 223 
 
 was carried on. Nothing could exceed the 
 visible bereavement and miser)^ which this 
 haunt of the destitute presented. Here was 
 nothing to endear^existence ; and yet it is noto- 
 rious that this class of vagrants cling to life with 
 an anxiety perfectly incredible, when it is con- 
 sidered that the harvest of enjoyment which they 
 reap from it is so scant and worthless. The 
 gipsy looks upon the end of human existence 
 as his ultimate goal; he has no prospect beyond 
 it. The soul has no being out of the body, so 
 that with life all his capabilities of enjoyment 
 terminate. He admits the existence of a God, 
 but never troubles himself to inquire about his 
 nature, attributes, or dispensations. He looks 
 upon man to be only a higher order of brute, 
 and to be levelled at death with the meanest 
 beast of the field. With the gipsy, therefore, 
 the present is everything. Sensual enjo^nnent 
 is, in his estimation, the one thing needful, and
 
 224 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 consequently his sole object of pursuit. So 
 great a luxury is idleness, that with all his love 
 of administering to the animal appetites, 
 nothing short of starvation will rouse him into 
 active exertion. If he has sufficient food, he 
 will lie for days upon his straw, smoking and 
 sleeping until his store is exhausted, when he 
 will plunder or take a dead carcass that has 
 been cast to rot upon the common, rather than 
 maintain himself by honest industry. He has 
 always an ostensible trade, which he occa- 
 sionally exercises, but more to lull the sus- 
 picions of his neighbours than to provide for 
 his own wants.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 225 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 One-eyed Bob— Phoebe Burrows not only a pretty but 
 an agreeable girl — A bargain — How to clutch a guinea — 
 Cheap lodging — A transformation — Dillon gains the 
 confidence of One-eyed Bob, who sees with half an 
 eye that he is a man after his own heart — An adven- 
 ture — The vicar — His apples — The medlar tree — A steel 
 trap — It goes off, and catches a post — Otway's old 
 woman no bad representation of the gipsy grandmo- 
 ther. 
 
 Such was the character of Dillon's host, 
 known in the neighbourhood by the familiar 
 
 L 5
 
 226 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 name of one-eyed Bob, and suspected to be a 
 bad fellow — more, it must be confessed, 
 from his sinister looks than from his actual 
 delinquencies, for he had hitherto contrived to 
 keep clear of the magistrates. Our hero, upon 
 considering the family with whom he had so 
 unexpectedly become an inmate, determined 
 to continue among them for some time, not 
 only because their haunt would be a place of 
 present security, but because he felt a na- 
 tural love of romance which led him to relish 
 an experience of life's changes and chances. 
 Besides, he had already observed enough of the 
 gipsy's daughter, Phoebe Burrows, to satisfy 
 him that his abode would not be entirely 
 among savages. He had indeed only seen 
 her in a disguise very unfavourable to the de- 
 velopment of those personal quahfications 
 which were evident under her rags and 
 unbecoming attire 3 but he had yet to learn
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 227 
 
 that nature had done as much for her mind as 
 for her person, although education had done 
 nothing. On the contrary, she was perpetually- 
 exposed to the influence of the most debas- 
 ing example, which, though it produced a 
 moral impression by no means favourable, had 
 nevertheless not corrupted her heart. He very 
 soon discovered that in her there were 
 
 " Charms that never can decay ; 
 For time, which gives new whiteness to the swan. 
 Improves their lustre." 
 
 After our hero had taken his breakfast, 
 which consisted of the remainder of his store 
 of bread and cheese, he thus addressed his 
 host — 
 
 " Burrows, what say you to having me for 
 an inmate through the vvinter ?" 
 
 '^ A word will suffice for that.'* 
 
 *' Well, out with it."
 
 228 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 " You shall have your money's worth in 
 bed and board if you'll pay for't." 
 
 " Agreed — now for the terms." 
 
 " See if you can make it worth a poor man's 
 while to be hospitable." 
 
 " There," said Dillon, flinging him a guinea 
 " if that will do till Christmas, you shall then 
 have its fellow, and we shall be better ac- 
 quainted.^' 
 
 The gipsy clutched the gold with a sardonic 
 grin; the blind eye protruded with a rayless 
 glare, and rolled in the socket as if something 
 behind was putting it into an unnatural mo- 
 tion, whilst the other seemed to shrink be- 
 neath the lids, as if ashamed at the too mani- 
 fest symptoms of delight exhibited by its of- 
 fuscated companion. It was now definitively 
 arranged, that James Dillon should remain an 
 inmate of the gipsy cavern, so long as he 
 might be able to pay for his bed and board
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 229 
 
 and find it agreeable. Upon this understand- 
 ing he determined to enlarge the dwelling, and 
 after a few hours' labour, dug a passage three 
 feet wide and ten deep into the bed of chalk. 
 On each side of this passage he formed two 
 small chambers, one for himself and another 
 for part of the family with whom he had be- 
 come domesticated. Thus were their social 
 comforts considerably increased. As a gipsy 
 never does more than his necessities immedi- 
 ately require, while this manifest improvement 
 was in progress. Burrows twisted his nose in 
 contempt, thereby expressing that he thought 
 it a work of mere idle supererogation. Having 
 completed this addition to the domestic esta- 
 blishment, our hero took an early opportunity of 
 proceeding to the next town, where he pur- 
 chased suitable habiliments for Phoebe Bur- 
 rows, in which she attired herself greatly to 
 her own satisfaction, and that of the whole
 
 230 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 family, save the grandmother, who muttered 
 curses upon the folly of spending money 
 upon a young slut unable to earn her own 
 bread. The transformation wrs alir.ost ma- 
 gical. The girl's figure now exhibited all its 
 fine but delicate proportions, and the natural 
 freedom and grace of her motions became 
 strikingly conspicuous. Dillon looked at the 
 father, a perfect abortion, and wondered how 
 a creature so lovely could proceed from such a 
 coarse and rugged piece of deformity. The 
 mother, it is true, was tolerably well-formed, 
 but her gross, heavy frame, and vulgar, un- 
 feminine gait, seemed to repel the thought 
 that anything so symmetrically beautiful as 
 Phoebe Burrows could have been begotten of 
 her. 
 
 Our hero very soon made a confidant, to a 
 certain extent, of the one-eyed gipsy, acquaint- 
 ing him with the avocation he had adopted in
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 231 
 
 London, but carefully concealing from him his 
 late success. There was something in this 
 very congenial to the feelings of Burrows, who, 
 though he had hitherto confined himself to 
 petty thefts, was not a man to refuse joining 
 in any unlawful enterprise, so long as he was 
 likely to be a gainer by the issue. 
 
 The first adventure of the Fellow Commoner 
 after he had been settled in his new abode, was 
 of a more moderate kind than any he had lately 
 been accustomed to engage in ; yet here his sin- 
 gularly good fortune in escaping those perils, 
 which, more or less, accompany all unlawful 
 acts, was remarkably apparent. 
 
 About three miles from the gipsy's retreat 
 stood the small, neat vicarage of a tolerably 
 large parish. The vicar being a man of limited 
 income, a burglary would be attended with too 
 great a hazard for so inconsiderable a booty 
 as was likely to be obtained from the house of
 
 232 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 a parish priest, vrith a numerous family, on 
 a benefice of only three hundred a-year. But 
 contiguous to the house was a large garden, 
 in which there was a great quantity of winter 
 apples and pears, that had been left upon the 
 trees in order to preserve their flavour, and 
 whence they were plucked as they happened 
 to be wanted. Those fruits being very choice 
 of their kind, our hero determined to send them 
 to a distant market for the benefit of himself 
 and his new ally, in spite of the v.arning of 
 man-traps and spring-guns, duly fixed in one 
 corner of the garden, and threatening death 
 or laceration to any tresspasser who should 
 dare to intrude upon the premises. Xot- 
 ^\^thstanding this notice of danger, one dark 
 night our hero clambered the wall with his 
 usual facihty, and dropped into the garden. 
 Having previously marked the position of the 
 trees bearing fruit, he soon disencumbered
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 23S 
 
 them of their load, and put the produce of his 
 exertions into three large sacks which he had 
 pro%dded for the occasion. Not satisfied with 
 a considerable booty of fine apples and pears, 
 the latter of which hung upon trees trained 
 against the southern waU, he mounted a med- 
 lar tree, and having shaken off a sufficient 
 quantity of the fruit, descended, dropping to 
 the ground from one of the lower branches. 
 It happened that under this branch, which 
 was supported by a thick stake, as the tree 
 was very old and in a state of decay, a steel 
 trap had been placed, in the centre of which 
 Dillon's foot struck when he dropped from 
 the propped limb. The spring being thus re- 
 laxed, off went the terrible instrument, and 
 his leg was within half a dozen inches of its 
 steel fangs, when the post that had been placed 
 as a supporter to the branch of the old med- 
 lar, released from its ordinary duty by the
 
 234 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 shock our hero had produced in descending, 
 fell betwixt the teeth of the trap, just as the 
 lucky rogue had put his foot within the for- 
 midable snare. The gin closed upon the un- 
 conscious stake, and James Dillon, to his 
 infinite surprise and delight, drew out his leg 
 unscathed. He now gathered up as many 
 medlars, in addition to the fruit already se- 
 cured, as his sacks would contain. Having 
 filled these, he dragged them to the wall, fast- 
 ened two cords to the mouth of each, and, 
 throwing one cord to the gipsy, who was 
 waiting without, the sacks were severally rais- 
 ed to the top of the wall by Burrows, and 
 gently lowered on the other side by Dillon, 
 who quickly followed them, when they were 
 placed in a donkey-cart, and soon secured 
 within the cavern in the chalk-pit. 
 
 The gipsy was delighted to find that he had 
 acquired in his guest so active a coadjutor, and
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 235 
 
 already began to look forward to better quar- 
 ters and better fare, which were to him the very 
 climax of enjoyment, never having heard the 
 notable saying of Socrates to a certain epicu- 
 rean — '^ One would think that thou believest 
 happiness to consist in eating and drinking. 
 I, for my part, am of opinion that to have 
 need of nothing at all is a divine perfection ; 
 and that to have need but of little, is to ap- 
 proach very near the Deity."=^ Burrows had 
 no ambition for anything Hke divine per- 
 fection, and knew of no good upon earth, 
 save brandy, tobacco, and a plentiful board. 
 All his notions of happiness were absorbed in 
 these few gross gratifications. 
 
 After this successful adventure the principal 
 
 depredator retired to his straw, where he slept 
 
 soundly until he was roused by the gipsy 
 
 mother, who came to remind him that the 
 
 * Xenophon, Memorabilia, B. 1-
 
 2S6 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 booty had better be disposed of before the 
 vicar should discover his loss. He rose, and 
 looked out upon the common. The air was 
 sharp, but the dawn had ushered in a bright 
 and almost unclouded sky. There were small 
 glittering icicles upon every spray. He cried 
 exultingly, for he had occasionally read Shak- 
 speare as well as his Bible — 
 
 *' See how the morning opes her golden gates. 
 And takes her farewell of the glorious sun ! 
 How well resembles it the prime of youth, 
 Trimm'd like a younker prancing to his love !"* 
 
 Before the sun had well risen, the whole of 
 the fruit had been disposed of for a fourth of 
 its value, and was on its road to London. 
 Specimens of it soon appeared in the windows 
 of some of the first fruiterers in the metropolis, 
 
 ♦ Henry VI., Part 3.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 237 
 
 who made 'at least cent per cent upon their 
 purchase, while the original venders were 
 well content with nine-tenths less than the 
 ultimate sale produced. 
 
 Our hero now led a very indolent life for 
 several weeks^ during which time he engaged 
 only in a few gentle delinquencies ; but these 
 he considered altogether unworthy of his cha- 
 racter among the accomphshed of his profession 
 in London. He was not, however, altogether 
 free from some of the most annoying of 
 " those natural ills this flesh is heir to.'' It 
 happened that he had incurred the hatred of 
 the beldam to whom the gipsy owed his 
 being, and whose acerbity of temper was 
 equalled only by the rancour of her foul and 
 hideous soul. Old as she was, she possessed 
 not a trait of character to render her age 
 venerable, or to kindle a spark of human 
 sympathy. A brindled cat, blind with age,
 
 238 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 and troublesome from disease, purred in her 
 tawny bosom, and seemed the only Hving 
 being that could sympathise with the fre- 
 quently furious outpourings of her atramental 
 and disorganised spirit. 
 
 She was a loathsome hag with age grown double. 
 Her eyes with scalding rheum were galled and red. 
 Cold palsey shook her head, her hands seemed wither'd 
 And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapp'd 
 The tatter'd remnants of an old strip'd hanging 
 Which served to keep her carcass from the cold. 
 So there was nothing of a piece about her. 
 Her lower weeds were all o'er coarsely patch'd 
 With different coloured rags, black, red, white, yellow. 
 And seem'd to speak variety of wretchedness. 
 
 Of no one might it more truly be said, " the 
 poison of asps was under her lips," and from 
 the moment that James Dillon became an 
 inmate of her son's abode, she acted towards 
 him with a hostility perfectly demoniacal.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 239 
 
 Not being readily alarmed, he treated her with 
 an indifference that only added fuel to the 
 fire of her hate; and this was aggravated in 
 a tenfold degree, when she thought she dis- 
 covered that his eyes wandered towards the 
 lovely Phoebe with an expression that told 
 the reflection of her image had reached his 
 heart.
 
 240 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 A terse couplet from an old poet appears in the second 
 page of this chapter — A few words about Phoebe, for 
 whom the author is very anxious to secure the 
 reader's favour — Phoebe affianced — Dillon's uneasi- 
 ness — The gipsies claim to be of great antiquity — 
 Wanderers from the beginning — Their vocation neither 
 becoming nor honorable — Fond of rags and robbery — 
 They justify the sarcasm of Old John Dryden — George 
 Cooper, the affianced husband of Phoebe Burrows — Their 
 meeting — First symtoms of connubial prospects — The 
 reader is requested to proceed to the next chapter for 
 further particulars. 
 
 It is certain that the attentions which our
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 241 
 
 hero paid to Phoebe Burrows justified in some 
 measure the aged crone's dislike, as she bore 
 a morbid and most splenetic antipathy to 
 every thing bearing the palpable form of 
 humanity that had not the character of the 
 tribe, to which she gloried in belonging, 
 marked both within and without so distinc- 
 tively, that '^ he who runs might read/' Such 
 being her prejudice, and she was now too 
 old and too stubborn to discard it, she felt 
 an insurmountable repugnance to the thought 
 that an interloper and a church worshipper 
 should carry his intentions towards her grand- 
 daughter to the issue in which all courtships 
 are expected to end. In proportion, however, 
 as Dillon paid little attention to the old 
 woman^s hatred, he bestowed a good deal 
 upon the young gipsy's apparent approbation 5 
 and from the silent language of her eyes — that 
 mute vocabulary whence the soul draws its 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 242 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 highest inspirations whether of thought, of 
 sentiment, or of feehng. embodying them 
 in those varying hues of expression which 
 render the countenance a volume of legible 
 eloquence — he drew conclusions so flattering 
 to his own hopes, that he already began to 
 feel, if he did not say — how happy we shall 
 be when the ring and the benediction have 
 united us ! 
 
 We'll drink the sprightly draught while it runs clear. 
 And break the cup when the first dregs appear. 
 
 He was already blessed in his own fond antici- 
 pations, and thought he could not do a wiser 
 or a better thing than make himself happy as 
 quickly as possible, since no argument can be 
 more logically true than that a man cannot 
 make himself happy too soon. 
 
 Although Phoebe was in the constant habit 
 of hearing doctrines subversive of all purity,
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 243 
 
 and of witnessing practices that were in 
 accordance with no code of morals, however 
 lax, still she possessed a native chasteness of 
 feehng which, though it did not preserve her 
 perfectly intact from such pernicious influence, 
 nevertheless, buoyed up her mind amid the 
 moral stagnation around her, kept it from 
 sinking into the feculent atmosphere and 
 perishing in its own corruption. Although 
 she looked with passive indiflference upon 
 the degrading practices of her family, they 
 seemed to her subjects neither for mirth 
 nor congratulation ; and in spite of the 
 buoyancy of spirit to which her youth and 
 health naturally inchned her, she never de- 
 scended to that vulgar le\dty, so common in 
 the abodes of destitution and crime, where 
 impunity for infractions of all moral laws 
 renders those who infringe them reckless of 
 opinion and daring in depravity. If there 
 
 M 2
 
 244 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 were no outward expression of dissent from 
 habits to which she even yet had not become 
 inured, there was an inward repugnance 
 which strongly suggested to her youthful but 
 penetrating judgment, that she must go farther 
 into the world in search of happiness than 
 she was likely to do whilst doomed to that 
 vagrant life which was the miserable heritage 
 of her birth. 
 
 Dillon had not been long in discovering 
 that, under the superficial crust of ignorance, 
 there was a radiance of intellect which only 
 required to have the spark of knowledge thrown 
 upon it to kindle it into intense and dazzling 
 brightness. Anxious only at first that she 
 should add some acquired to her natural graces, 
 he commenced by teaching her to read. She 
 soon mastered every difficulty, and as her 
 preceptor possessed no other book than the 
 bible, a portion of which he had been accus-
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 245 
 
 tomed from his sixth year to peruse every day, 
 in a very few weeks she made sufficient pro- 
 gress to read the first chapter of Genesis with 
 tolerable precision and fluency. In an almost 
 incredibly short space of time, she was able 
 to write a legible hand. She had thus already 
 received the rudiments of education, in the 
 common acceptation of the term, though, 
 it must be confessed, the state of social de- 
 gradation in which she had been reared, and 
 which kept her perpetually under an evil 
 and dominating influence, by no means tended 
 to strengthen any favourable bias with which 
 nature had happily endowed her: — neverthe- 
 less, the contagion of example did not cor- 
 rupt her. She was like a solitary lamp in 
 a sepulchre; her light fell upon the most 
 repulsive objects, showing the more distinctly 
 their deformity, but still burning pure and 
 bright amid their loathsomeness. —
 
 246 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 " Heaven doth with us as we with torches do. 
 Not light them for themselves ; for if our virtues 
 Do not go forth with us, 'twere all alike 
 As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd 
 But to fine issues.*' 
 
 It may appear incredible that Phcebe Burrows 
 should have received so little moral infection 
 amid the baleful atmosphere in which she 
 had been born and reared : but with this the 
 writer of her history can have nothing to do ; 
 he has only to record the fact ; and he may 
 be permitted to remind the reader that it is 
 the will of Nature to deviate sometimes from 
 her usual order of progression, and to leave 
 the impress of her eccentricities upon those 
 who may chance to be subjects of her deviations 
 from her ordinary course. 
 
 It happened, about two years before the 
 period of our hero's introduction to the gipsy 
 family, that Phoebe Burrows had been be-
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 247 
 
 trothed to a young man of her own tribe, 
 who now came to claim his affianced bride. 
 He was received by the family with those 
 rude greetings which passed with them for 
 tender and appropriate courtesies. One of 
 the new apartments of the cavern which 
 had been added by the labours of Dillon, as 
 already recorded, was immediately assigned 
 to his use. He was a sturdy, muscular youth, 
 in the twentieth year of his age, of a comely but 
 harsh countenance ; with black, fierce- looking 
 eyes, round, hardy limbs, and a stature alto- 
 gether indicating superior strength and acti- 
 vity. The play of his large coarse features was 
 rather mercurial than saturnine, but the 
 broad vulgar smile perpetually quivering 
 round the corners of his mouth, except 
 when the fiercer passions pursed his brow with 
 those deep lines which are indicative of 
 ferocious hostility, savoured more of habitual
 
 248 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 recklessness than either of philosophical apathy 
 or of constitutional light-heartedness. He 
 had all the characteristics of his tribe, and 
 the worst of them very prominently deve- 
 loped. 
 
 It is astonishing how strongly the distinc- 
 tive traits exist in the gipsy character. 
 '• What appears most worthy of remark/' 
 says Grellman, " is, that neither time, cli- 
 mate, nor example have, in general, hitherto 
 made any alteration. For the space of be- 
 tween three and four hundred years, they 
 have gone wandering about like pilgrims and 
 strangers. They are found in eastern and 
 western countries, as well among the rude 
 as the civilised, yet they remain everywhere 
 what their fathers were — gipsies. Africa 
 makes them no blacker, nor Europe whiter; 
 they neither learn to be lazy in Spain, nor 
 diligent in Germany. In Turkey, Mahomet^
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 249 
 
 and among Christians, Christ remains equally 
 without adoration. Around, on every side, 
 they see fixed dwellings, they nevertheless 
 go on in their own way, and continue, for 
 the most part, unsettled wandering robbers."* 
 These people are naturally hardy, which 
 may be readily accounted for by their being 
 inured to hardship from their very birth. 
 Their bed being commonly the damp earth, 
 their clothing the poorest rags, their food 
 the commonest and the coarsest ; surrounded 
 with all these and worse miseries, nay, often 
 exposed to the lowest state of destitution, it 
 is still astonishing how seldom they are 
 afflicted with distempers so often the bane of 
 a more luxurious condition. This remarkable 
 fact may well give a sanction to the spirited 
 sarcasm of Old John Dryden. — 
 
 * Grellman's Dissertation on the Gipsies. 
 
 M 5
 
 250 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 The first physicians by debauch were made. 
 Excess began, and sloth sustains the trade ; 
 By chase our long-lived fathers earn'd their food. 
 Toil strung their nerves and purified their blood ; 
 But we, their sons, a pamper'd race of men, 
 Are dwindled down to three score years and ten. 
 Better to hunt jn fields for health unbought 
 Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. 
 The wise for cure on exercise depend, 
 God never made his works for man to mend. 
 
 Phoebe Burrows received the youth to 
 whom her early vows had been phghted, 
 though her heart responded not in ratifica- 
 tion of the solemn covenant, with a smile of 
 welcome. Yet it came over the happy spirit 
 that played like a sunbeam in the ever vary- 
 ing but always fervid expression of her 
 countenance, as a dull mist over a beautiful 
 lake, in which all the glories of heaven 
 are mirrored faithfully and entrancingly, show-
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 251 
 
 ing that her lips did an office repugnant 
 to her purer feelings. Whilst the smile of 
 welcome beamed languidly in her eye, the 
 recession of the blood from her cheek showed 
 that her happiness could never be in the 
 keeping of George Cooper. This was the 
 name of her selected husband, who, in sa- 
 luting her, exhibited that brutal indifference 
 so common to vicious minds, at the same time 
 treating her with the vulgar freedom of one 
 who looked upon the right of property to be 
 already decided. The grandmother evidently 
 favoured his claim with hearty good will, 
 as she turned her bleared and haggish eyes 
 with fiendish ferocity towards Dillon, the 
 moment her grandson elect appeared.
 
 252 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Dillon being in a recess, overhears no good of himself — 
 Senility in a paroxysm — Cooper's forbearance and the 
 reason — Shown that Sir Charles Sedley's poems have a 
 smart thing in them — Our hero discovers himself to 
 the she-dragon of the chalk-pit — The consequences — A 
 cat strangled — The old woman's rage — A picture not 
 after the manner of Paul Veronese — An attempt at 
 homicide — Frustrated — How — A prostration and de- 
 parture. 
 
 Being one morning in his recess when they
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 253 
 
 imagined him abroad, he heard the following 
 conversation between the old gipsy and young 
 Cooper : — 
 
 " Ugh ;" said the hag, gnashing her gums 
 together with so fierce a collision as to endan- 
 ger the two discoloured fangs with which her 
 jaws were still armed—" he's as odious to my 
 sight as carrion to a gold fish ; and Phoebe loves 
 him, too — I can see that plainly enough. Dim 
 as these old eyes are, they can distinguish a 
 thistle from a cauliflower/' 
 
 " You dream, mother; — besides, she knows 
 George Cooper too well to turn her eyes where 
 he doesn't choose they should stray. Though 
 a cat may look at a king, a maid may- 
 hap had better not be allowed the cat's 
 privilege, lest she should mistake some com- 
 mon lubber for the king and make herself 
 the queen of fools. There may be some- 
 thing in thy warning, grannam, and Fll look 
 to^t.^'
 
 254 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 " I tell thee, dolt, she loves him as the apple 
 of her eye. D'ye think he's been teaching her 
 to read his book of sanctity for nothing. 
 Hasn't he taught her to make those cursed 
 signs by which the devil wins the souls 
 of those who have 'em. Scrawling upon 
 paper is the way that young fools get bewitch'd. 
 Bah ! she's as full of love as thou art of stu- 
 pidity, and thou'rt an ass to look upon't so 
 coldly." 
 
 " Hark ye, dame ; there may be more truth 
 than wit in an old woman's croaking, but a fig 
 for it ! I don't heed a fellow that skulks to a 
 conventicle to preserve him from the fear of 
 his own shadow. Praying is the craven's 
 mummery to buy a chance with, should there 
 be another world to go to when he has worn 
 out his welcome in this. This young spark 
 won't kindle me while he keeps his distance. 
 He may teach, and look, and sigh, so long as he
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 255 
 
 stands clear out of my shoes ; but the 
 moment he puts his dirty heels into them, 
 by the heart within me, I'll let his foul 
 spirit out at his throat, and he shall show the 
 ravens what a dainty corpse he^ll make for a 
 banquet." 
 
 '^ All banter —all banter ; — you're a bully and 
 nothing else, or you'd put him out of the way 
 at once. He's fit only for the dung-hill, where 
 he would rot among other offal, unmissed. 
 What would there be in silencing a drone 
 that skulks into the hive to eat the bee's honey ? 
 There's no more in kilHng him than in choking 
 a dog at a door-post. It may be done cun- 
 ningly, and no one the wiser. A hole in the 
 chalk will keep your secret, and dead men can't 
 blab." 
 
 " You're mad, woman ! Old age has turned 
 thy bile rancid and blackened thy blood ; — thy 
 heart has shrunk up to a pippin, and thou art
 
 256 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 become a perfect devil's dam. What dost thou 
 see in my face that should bid thee call me 
 butcher ? 'Tis time enough to be a spiller of 
 bloodj when the younker gives me cause. I 
 don't question Phoebe's truth, — she ha'nt cun- 
 ning enough to be false ; — besides, she loves 
 me, and we are plighted, dame ; and when did 
 gipsy girl ever break her maiden vow ? I 
 shan't take thy advice this time.^' 
 
 "A blighting curse be on thee," shrieked 
 the crone, as Cooper left the cavern ; but he 
 was soon beyond the reach of her frantic 
 ravings. 
 
 Dillon was scarcely surprised at her vindic- 
 tiveness, as he had frequently witnessed the 
 brutal malignity of her nature ; and though what 
 he had just heard was sufficient to excite 
 within him some qualms of apprehension, yet 
 such was his natural energy of character, and 
 so completely fenced was his faith against cap-
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 257 
 
 ture by the buttress of predestination, that he 
 felt Httle alarm for his safety. The cause of 
 Cooper's forbearance is easily explained. The 
 fact is, he was too vain to imagine for a moment 
 that he could be supplanted in the aiFection 
 of any woman whom he had distinguished by 
 marks of preference; that Phoebe Burrows 
 should prefer another to himself, was therefore, 
 the last thing in his thoughts. He had the 
 reputation among his class of being a hand- 
 some fellow; and it is, moreover, a circum- 
 stance almost unprecedented for a gipsy girl 
 to marry out of her own tribe. These circum- 
 stances concurred to blind him to the influence 
 of our hero over the heart of his affianced 
 bride, to whom Cooper was becoming daily 
 more and more odious. Though of a suffi- 
 ciently jealous nature, yet his jealousy had been 
 hitherto prevented from kindhng by the more 
 potent influence of his vanity. Dillon perceived
 
 258 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 from the first that his rival was not the 
 man calculated to make happy the lovely girl 
 whom he grieved to see had not been directed 
 to a more congenial choice. Cooper's natural 
 indiiference to everything but his own comfort, 
 was evident to the most superficial scru- 
 tiny. His was a predilection that could 
 not last. — 
 
 His peeping passion, like a feeble sun 
 Mingled with show'rs of rain, will soon be gone ; 
 And if, perhaps, there's left some poor remains. 
 Like northern gold, 'tis in penurious veins.* 
 
 After the dialogue which our hero had just 
 heard between Cooper and the mother of his 
 host, he allowed some minutes to elapse in 
 order that the overflowings of her spleen might 
 subside, when, to her amazement, he appeared 
 before her. 
 
 * Sir Charles Sedley.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 259 
 
 " Ha !" she cried, with a sudden pumping of 
 the voice, as if a piston had drawn it up from 
 the bottom of her lungs, ^' hast thou been 
 playing the eaves-dropper ? Thou art a miser- 
 able skulker, who has^nt the face to hear openly- 
 all the foul truths that may be said of thee, but, 
 like a bloated toad, hidest thy dog's head in 
 a comer. Well, thou hast heard no good of 
 thyself hast thou ?" 
 
 ^' But 1 have heard enough to gain thee a 
 gibbet. Old as thou art, thou may'st hang in 
 the sun yet — and, should this happen to thee, 
 thou'lt dangle long enough before thy polluted 
 carcase would be invaded by a single crow. 
 There's too much poison in it even for a fly to 
 blow upon." 
 
 The old woman remained silent, sitting up- 
 right in her chair, every muscle in her body 
 stiffened with passion. She looked as that 
 celebrated Hindoo sage may be supposed to
 
 2t50 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 have looked, who, in the practice of his religious 
 austerities, is said to have assumed a posture 
 so immoveable that the birds built their nests 
 in his hair. DiUon seated himself beside her, 
 and her eyes immediately sparkled with con- 
 centrated fury. She seized by the neck the cat 
 which was asleep in her lap, and, dashing it 
 into Dillon^s face, pinched the creature's tail 
 with all her might. The poor animal, in its 
 agony, made such active use of its claws that our 
 hero grasped it by the throat, removed it from 
 his countenance, and, holding it at arm's length 
 for a few moments, flung it dead into the hag's 
 lap. The blood was streaming from his fore- 
 head and cheeks, but the old gipsy, perfectly 
 regardless of his suffering, when she saw the 
 state of her favourite, uttered a yell of such in- 
 fernal sympathy as must have scared the cat to 
 death had it been alive. The foam oozed from 
 her thin lips, stained by the tobacco with
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 261 
 
 which her mouth was continually filled. She 
 tore off the greasy fillet that bound her grey wiry 
 locks, and, shaking her palsied head, they fell 
 over her shoulders in matted wisps, seeming, 
 as the constant oscillations of her head gave 
 them motion, to be instinct with life, and almost 
 realising the fable of Medusa and her snakes. 
 Meanwhile the object of her viperous malice 
 ha\^ng resumed his seat, cast at her a look of 
 ineffable scorn. This was beyond endurance : 
 animated by uncontrollable rage, she staggered 
 towards him, every lineament quivering with 
 fury, and her deep seated eyes, gleaming with 
 the dull red glare of a burning coal, separated 
 from the fire, and gradually ceasing to glow. 
 She drew a long knife from a sheath in her 
 girdle ; her withered arm was raised to strike, 
 when Dillon seized her wrist, hurled her 
 backward, and quitted the cavern.
 
 262 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 When the family returned, for they hap- 
 pened to be all out that morning upon 
 various pleas, they found the old woman 
 smoking her short wooden pipe, and mumbling 
 curses upon herself and all the world. 
 When she had told her story of the barbarous 
 usage she had just undergone, which she did 
 with a hoarse, guttural screech, so much ad- 
 dicted was she to lying, that her son treated 
 the whole affair as a spiteful exaggeration, and 
 abused her in no very measured terms for 
 her fiendish malignity. The fact was, our 
 hero had won his way to the heart of Burrows, 
 by being the cause of his success in many 
 little robberies, and by paying him a regular 
 fee for lodging and maintenance, besides pro- 
 viding most of the victuals consumed in the 
 gipsy establishment. As he did not appear 
 during the day, the gipsy was apprehensive that
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 263 
 
 his mother had done something to drive away 
 a very profitable lodger^ and he abused her ac- 
 cordingly. 
 
 The feathered songster chanticleer. 
 Had wounde his bugle home. 
 And told the earlie villager 
 The comynge of the morne,* 
 
 before Dillon returned to the cavern, when 
 peace was apparently restored ; but he took 
 care to secure himself for the future against the 
 malice of his foe, by sleeping at a neighbouring 
 cottage, kept by a poor labourer and his wife, 
 who were glad to get an additional eighteen 
 pence a week for allowing a stranger, at night, 
 a corner in their kitchen, where he spread his 
 rug, and slept more at ease than in the chalk 
 cavern. 
 
 * Chatterton, Bristowe Tragedie.
 
 264 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Dillon weary of Egyptian society, having neither respect 
 for its antiquity or social qualities — He strolls on the 
 highway to some purpose — Stops a pair of runaway 
 horses — Plays the gentleman — Rescues a pretty girl 
 from jeopardy, and gets seventy-five guineas for his 
 pains — A paragraph in a newspaper shows him that to 
 pay himself for an act of gallantry is not recognised by 
 the laws — A lucky mistake — A visit to Salisbury — The 
 Assizes — Swithun in jail — Tried but not condemned — 
 James Dillon's wise resolutions forgotten — Looks for- 
 ward to new enterprises. 
 
 The Fellow Commoner now began to be
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 265 
 
 weary of the dulness of his present mode of Hfe, 
 when a circumstance occurred which broke the 
 uniformity, and gave a httle incidental variety to 
 his career. — He was one day stroUing on the 
 highway, in his progress to a neighbouring fair, 
 and attired in the very prime of his wardrobe, 
 when he saw a pair of horses, harnessed to a 
 curricle, pass round an angle of the road, and 
 dash onward, with frightful impetuosity, to- 
 wards a steep hill at a short distance. Urged 
 by the impulse of his humanity — for though 
 feeling was generally dormant within him, yet 
 was it apt to be kindled upon sudden emergen- 
 cies — he rushed before the affrighted horses, 
 seized the reins with that coolness and in- 
 trepid activity for which he was at all times 
 remarkable, and turning the animals' heads 
 with a sudden jerk, brought them against the 
 hedge, and thus stopped their further progress. 
 A groom now rode up and helped his master to 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 26(> THE FELLOAV COMMONER. 
 
 alight, wlio handed out his daughter, a delicate, 
 pretty girl with dark hair, long eye-lashes, 
 and transparent skin, but pale as a marble 
 cherub. * 
 
 The curricle being examined and found to 
 have sustained some injury in one of the 
 wheels, the groom was despatched to the next 
 village for a smith to repair the damage. 
 Meanwhile, the horses were led to a public 
 house near the spot, where the master and 
 daughter took shelter, until they were enabled 
 to proceed on their journey. Whilst Dillon, 
 with that officiousness which his late gallan- 
 try entitled him to display, had been tendering 
 his assistance, he had contrived to open a 
 portmanteau and lighten it of seventy-five 
 guineas. As usual, he forwarded the booty 
 to his friend upon 'change, who soon added to 
 his gradually increasing stock. The slippery 
 rogue was growing rich by his knavery, but
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 267 
 
 such was the absorbing force of habit_, that 
 he saw no moral evil in his civil turpitude ; and 
 when the mind is once reconciled to vicious 
 courses, 
 
 " The wise may preach, and satirists rail. 
 Custom and nature will prevail." 
 
 Our hero having heard nothing of the 
 adventure in which he had played so conspi- 
 cuous a part, came to the conclusion that the 
 good-natured gentleman had resolved, like a 
 wise and liberal man, to put up with his loss, 
 when one morning Burrows entered the chalk 
 cavern where his guest then was — for the lat- 
 ter continued his intercourse with the gipsy 
 family — and put a newspaper into his hand. 
 In casting his eye over its columns, it fell 
 upon a paragraph, which stated that a robbery 
 had been committed upon the Bath road a few 
 
 n2
 
 268 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 days before, when a gentleman's portmanteau 
 had been opened, and seventy-five guineas in 
 gold abstracted. A minute account was given 
 of the horses running away, and of their 
 being stopped by a person who was suspected 
 to be the thief. It went on to state that he 
 had been discovered at Salisbury, taken up, 
 and was to be tried at the ensuing assizes for 
 the felony. The name of the suspected party 
 was declared to be Swithun Dillon. Our hero 
 was a good deal disturbed at this unexpected 
 discovery, and on the following day, having 
 assumed his former disguise, which almost 
 precluded the jDOssibility of discovery, he 
 proceeded to the episcopal city a perfect 
 personification of squalid misery. But for 
 a few trifling points of difference, he would 
 have precisely realised the follo^ving graphic 
 portraiture —
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 269 
 
 '' He was with foul and dunghill rags yclad 
 Tainting the gale in which they fluttered light : 
 Of morbid hue his features, sunk and sad ; — 
 His hollow eyen shook with a sickly light. 
 And o'er his lank jaw-bone, in piteous plight. 
 His black rough beard was matted, rank and vile ; 
 Direful to see, and heart-appalling sight ! 
 Meantime foul scurf and blotches him defile. 
 And dogs, where'er they went, still barked all the 
 while,"* 
 
 Upon reaching Salisbury, Dillon sought 
 the meanest public-house in the city, where 
 he engaged part of an out-house at a very 
 small outlay, and lived like a wretched men 
 dicant. Here he soon ascertained that the 
 party suspected of the robbery in which our 
 hero had himself been the successful delinquent, 
 was the confidential servant of a gentleman, and, 
 as the paper had truly stated, named Swithun 
 
 * Castle of Indolence.
 
 270 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 Dillon. He had no difficulty in discovering 
 that this Svvithun was no other than the 
 identical orphan, educated at the expense of 
 the parish of Bloomsbury, and born of the 
 same mother, and on the same day, with him- 
 self. This discovery, to do him justice, gave 
 the elected twin a good deal of anxiety, and he 
 determined at once to await the issue of the 
 trial ; for he made up his mind, that should 
 it be likely to terminate against his brother, 
 he would proclaim himself the criminal, and 
 not allow punishment to fall upon the innocent. 
 With all his delinquences, he had occasionally 
 lofty impulses of true feeling, and there were 
 the seeds of a principal within him, which, had 
 they been submitted in earlier life to a more 
 favourable culture, might have ripened into a 
 produce that would have been a benefit to 
 mankind. 
 
 It will suffice to say here of Swithun Dillon,
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 271 
 
 that he had been taken from the workhouse 
 by a gentleman, for his good character, the 
 robbery of the bhnd pauper being eventually 
 discovered to have been the knavish essay of 
 his brother; his honour, therefore, did not 
 long remain under the imputation which the 
 sudden flight of his own mother's son had left 
 upon it. He was as remarkable for sobriety 
 and integrity as the other was for cunning 
 and knavery, and quitted the parish estabhsh- 
 ment with so fair a name as to obtain an 
 excellent place and as excellent a master. In 
 a few years he became his confidential servant, 
 and was a favourite of the whole family. He 
 happened to be with his master at Salisbury, 
 when he was taken up on suspicion of having 
 robbed a gentleman of seventy-five guineas, and 
 committed to the county gaol. The family, 
 through greatly distressed at this, were never- 
 theless satisfied of his innocence, which they
 
 272 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 knew would be satisfactorily proved upon his 
 trial. James Dillon, meanwhile, continued in 
 his miserable abode, patiently awaiting the 
 assizes which were at hand. He assumed the 
 occupation of a beggar, in order the more 
 completely to lull suspicion, and continued, 
 by his singular felicity of appeal, to scrape 
 together a considerable daily addition to his 
 funds. The only drawback upon his satis- 
 faction was his anxiety for the unpleasant 
 condition of his brother, who, not being ac- 
 customed to the bitter changes and chances 
 of life, no doubt felt acutely the want of 
 accommodation experienced in a common gaol, 
 which privation must have been greatly 
 aggravated to a person hitherto unsuspected, 
 being under the imputation of having com- 
 mitted a gross and scandalous violation of the 
 laws. 
 
 In a few days the judge entered the city.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 273 
 
 and after the busy bustle of a day, the assizes 
 were opened. Our hero dressed himself de- 
 cently, as his ordinary attire would have ex- 
 cluded him even from a public court of justice, 
 and entered the court on the morning that 
 the trial of his relative was to come on. 
 When he saw the prisoner in the dock, his 
 heart smote him, and he experienced such a 
 sudden revulsion of feeling, that, as he stood 
 really much affected at the difficulty in which 
 he had involved an innocent brother, he half 
 determined to eschew his present system of 
 getting a fortune, and take to an honest 
 calling. Still he thought he would see the 
 issue of the dilemma in which he had in- 
 volved his nearest relative, before he made 
 up his mind, quieting his awakened con- 
 science with the deluding sophistry, that a short 
 delay could do no mischief, but, on the con- 
 trary, would only be an exercise of wary and 
 
 N 5
 
 274 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 prudential discretion. Thus it too frequently 
 happens, even with the best of men : post- 
 ponements until the morrow absorb nearly 
 the whole of hfe. 
 
 " Our yesterday's to-morrow now is gone. 
 And still a new to-raorrow does come on ; 
 We by to-morrows draw up all our store 
 'Till the exhausted well can yield no more."* 
 
 The first witness called against the prisoner 
 was the gentleman who had been robbed. 
 Dillon observed his daughter in court, her eyes 
 filled with tears, as she directed her gaze 
 towards the accused party, who stood erect 
 in the dock, with an expression of dignity 
 upon his brow that seemed to repel, with 
 silent indignation the charge upon which he 
 
 * Jam eras hesternum consumsimus ; ecce aliud eras 
 Egerit hos annos. — Pers. Sat. v. 68, from Cowley's 
 Translation,
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 275 
 
 now stood arraigned. He was strikingly 
 handsome, of a manly and well proportioned 
 figure, while his manners had a natural dignity 
 inseparable from the consciousness of inte- 
 grity. He still retained the same exact per- 
 sonal resemblance to his brother which had 
 been so remarkable in the earlier life of those 
 twins. 
 
 The witness swore positively to his identity, 
 and his evidence was very reluctantly con- 
 firmed by that of the daughter, who could 
 scarcely be kept from fainting as she delivered 
 her testimony. The evidence of father and 
 daughter was fully confirmed by that of the 
 groom, who swore that the portmanteau was 
 secure when the prisoner first seized the 
 horses' heads, and that it was found broken 
 open just after he quitted the public-house, 
 whither his master's curricle had been taken 
 to undergo the necessary repair. This plain
 
 2/6 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 statement, which no cross-examination could 
 invalidate or weaken, seemed so conclusive, 
 that there appeared but one opinion as to the 
 guilt of the prisoner, who was not in the 
 least abashed, but evidently acquired additional 
 firmness in proportion as the evidence pre- 
 ponderated against him. 
 
 For the defence, the master was called with 
 whom Swithun Dillon had lived for several 
 years, with the highest character for integrity 
 and fidelity. He swore distinctly that the 
 prisoner was at his house in London the 
 whole of the evening named in the indict- 
 ment ; he consequently could neither have 
 been principal nor accessory in a robbery com- 
 mitted nearly a hundred miles from the metro- 
 polis. This evidence, confirmed by several mem- 
 bers of his master's family, and by all the other 
 servants, was so decisive as to leave no doubt 
 in the minds of the jury that the prosecutor
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 2)7 
 
 had mistaken the person of the party by 
 whom he had been robbed : he was, there- 
 fore, called again into court ; still he persisted 
 in his former declaration. His daughter was 
 likewise recalled, but after having heard the 
 testimony on the other side, she declined 
 maintaining her previous statement, being 
 willing to believe that she had mistaken the 
 person of the robber. In summing up, the 
 judge observed there was a remarkable fact in 
 the case, which was, that two gentlemen of 
 property and high character had sworn directly 
 against each other, though the weight of 
 evidence greatly preponderated in the pri- 
 soner's favour. " It is, moreover, clear," 
 observed the judge, " that the master with 
 whom the prisoner has been residing for years, 
 cannot be mistaken in his identity, but the 
 other witnesses, to whom he was a perfect 
 stranger, may be deceived. There can be
 
 278 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 little doubt as to the result of your delibera- 
 tion upon this evidence/' The jury did not 
 leave the box, but instantly returned a verdict 
 of not guilty. The judge, then addressing 
 Swithun, told him that he left the court with- 
 out the slightest stain upon his character, and 
 he was satisfied there was not a person present 
 in that court whose sympathy he had not 
 obtained. His master shook him heartily 
 by the hand, and he received the welcome 
 congratulations of his friends. 
 
 Our hero was much gratified by this result, 
 and quitting the court without making himself 
 known to his brother, returned next day to 
 his friends on the common. His wise resolu- 
 tions were now soon forgotten, which is but 
 too frequently the case even with those who 
 stand high in the world's estimation. How 
 just the Venusian poet's advice — ■
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 279 
 
 " Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise ; 
 Ke who defers this work from day to day 
 Does on a river's bank excepting stay 
 'Till the whole stream, which stopped him, should 
 
 be gone. 
 That runs, and, as it runs, for ever will run on."* 
 
 James Dillon, happy in his brother's es- 
 cape, began now to look forward to new 
 enterprises, and to further accessions of wealth. 
 
 * Horace, Epis. Lib. i. ii. 40.
 
 280 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Spiritual logic — What Butler says about a thistle, a 
 knave, and a rattlesnake — Cooper gets a leetle jealous 
 — How to make an old horse young — A veterinary pro- 
 cess successful — The sale and death — Dillon an advocate 
 for purloining, but not for cruelty — Justifies robbery as a 
 most commendable pursuit, and on the plea that he 
 can't do wrong proves that he is perfectly right — Anti- 
 nomian notions of equity — Good reasons for a viola- 
 tion of all social order — Moral emblems, in verse, 
 conclude this important chapter. 
 
 Our hero, after the hberation of his bro- 
 ther, soon forgot his good resolutions, and
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 281 
 
 quietly looked forward to the chance of one 
 of those profitable adventures which he seemed 
 to pursue with a religious devotion. Indeed it 
 appeared to him, that in depriving others of 
 their property, he was an instrument in the 
 hands of Providence to chasten those rich re- 
 probates who were among the non-elect, by 
 withdrawing from them a portion of that which 
 rendered them idolaters. He consequently 
 considered that he was, in a measure, acting in 
 a spiritual vocation, when he took from them 
 that which they misused and applied it to the 
 holier purposes of increasing the earthly trea- 
 sures of a sealed predestination. Nothing 
 could exceed the quiet, philosophic urbanity, 
 with which he reasoned upon the evidently 
 accredited position he stood in, with relation 
 to the community of which he was so active a 
 member. He justified his hallucinations with 
 a mild and persuasive logic, that carried per-
 
 282 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 feet eonviction to the mind of Burrows, and 
 the family to whom he had become socially 
 united by a reciprocation of sentiments per- 
 fectly in accordance with the code of morals 
 prescribed among that tribe of vagrants, with 
 whom thieving is a cardinal accomplishment. 
 Dillon was a gentle, courteous rogue, who 
 gave a sort of sanction to knavery, by the in- 
 tellectual and dexterous manner in which he 
 pursued it. 
 
 As thistles wear the softest down. 
 To hide their prickles 'till they're grown. 
 And then declare themselves, and tear 
 Whatever ventures to come near; 
 So a smooth knave does greater feats 
 Than one that idly rails and threats. 
 And all the mischief that he meant. 
 Does, like a rattle-snake, prevent. 
 
 Though our hero had taken a lodging sepa-
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 283 
 
 rate from the family at the Chalk-pit, he was 
 nevertheless a daily visiter there, attracted 
 solely, however, by the society of Phoebe to 
 whom he still rendered the aid of a preceptor. 
 Cooper seemed to view his intimacy at length 
 with something like displeasure, frequently evinc- 
 ing a degree of churhshness towards his rival, 
 which made the latter perceive that it would be 
 necessary to bring matters between himself and 
 the beautiful gipsy to a speedy issue. Dillon 
 detested Phoebe's affianced husband, more for 
 the natural barbarity of his temperament, than 
 for the rivalry that existed between them ; and 
 his disgust was confirmed by a specimen of 
 practical brutality, to which he happened to 
 be an eye-witness. 
 
 One morning, "^George Cooper brought an 
 old horse to the chalk-pit, so thin, blind and 
 lame, that even James Dillon, who was no 
 novice in calculating advantages, and seldom
 
 284 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 failed to see where the balance was likely to 
 turn, was altogether at a loss to conceive the 
 purpose of saving such a poor fleshless carcass 
 from the crows. The gipsy told, with a chuc- 
 kle of savage delight, that as he was that 
 morning passing through a field, he saw a 
 farmer about to knock the old horse on the 
 head, for the benefit of a neighbouring squire's 
 hounds, when he prevented this brute murder, 
 as he called it, from being perpetrated, by ten- 
 dering the farmer fifteen shilhngs, which the 
 latter gladly accepted ; thus saving the life of 
 the wretched animal only to subject it to a 
 ten-fold worse doom. The horse, old as it was, 
 showed figure, bone and blood, but was evi- 
 dently worn out with age and ill-usage. Dillon 
 was still puzzled to conceive what there was 
 to be gained by the purchase of a broken-down 
 hack, blind, lame, and so miserably meagre, 
 that every bone under its hide might have
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 285 
 
 been counted; and as it stood panting with 
 the exertion of a tardy trot of two miles, its 
 eyes fixed in their sockets, as if the motion 
 of life had been withdrawn from them, its an- 
 gular frame denoting disease and starvation, — 
 one might have fancied that the poor brute^s 
 skeleton had been regularly prepared by some 
 veterinary Brooks for the museum of a society 
 of comparative anatomists. 
 
 His strutting ribs on both sides show'd 
 Like furrows he himself has plough'd : 
 At spur or switch no more he skipt 
 Or mended pace than Spaniard whipt ; 
 And Caesar's horse, who, as fame goes. 
 Had corns upon his feet and toes. 
 Was not by half so tender hooft. 
 Nor trod upon the ground so soft.* 
 
 The purchaser — to the surprise of our hero, 
 * Hudibras.
 
 286 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 himself so cunning in the practices of manual 
 deception, soon showed how quickly a lean 
 horse may be rendered plump, and a blind 
 one be made to see. With a dexterity that 
 proved he was no novice in such novel handi- 
 craft, he curry-combed the poor beast until 
 all the rough hair was taken from its coat, and 
 it looked as sleek as if it had been clipped 
 for a gentleman's stable. He then rubbed the 
 hide with train-oil, until it bore a dark polish, 
 like that of a well-fed racer about to be started 
 for the St. Leger. 
 
 " Now,' said he, " don't he look like a 
 reg'lar bit o' blood ?" 
 
 This was frankly admitted on all hands. 
 
 " But you shall see what a sound charger 
 I'll make of him in a twinkling," continued 
 the busy knave, as he prepared for the con- 
 summation of his dexterity, which was to ren- 
 der an aged horse rejuvenescent, and dispose 
 of it for just fifteen times its value.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 2S7 
 
 Cooper now made a slight incision through 
 the skin of the foundered steed close by the 
 inosoculation of the tail, and introducing the 
 end of a small brass tube, began to blow, in 
 order that he might have something to offer 
 in the market besides skin and bone. This 
 painful operation he continued, until every 
 part of the animal's hide was distended with 
 air, and the starved hack soon became appa- 
 rently as sleek and plump as a favourite char- 
 ger. The process, moreover, imparted to it a 
 vivacity which made the unmerciful operator 
 give a shout of triumph, as he anticipated the 
 probable effect it would produce upon some 
 rustic purchaser, who had not been much ac- 
 customed to trace effects to their causes. 
 Wherever the skin of the poor hide-bound 
 beast would not rise. Cooper made a small 
 puncture near the spot, into which he in- 
 serted the tip of the tube, and by the aid of
 
 288 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 his lungs, rounded every portion of the horse's 
 body to his satisfaction. This part of the pro- 
 cess being accomphshed, he carefully placed a 
 small circular piece of adhesive plaister over 
 each orifice, and painted it the colour of the 
 animal's hide. He next squirted something 
 into its eyes, which made the orbs roll fright- 
 fully, and discharge a quantity of water. This 
 application dilated the pupils considerably, and 
 they became clearer; but the pain inflicted by 
 the sudden injection, forced them into a quick 
 motion, after the first acute pang had subsided, 
 by which the blindness was in a great measure 
 concealed, imparting to them an expression of 
 high courage and mettle, which they had in- 
 deed exhibited in former days, but which had 
 long become extinct. The miserable creature, 
 from the terrible infliction to which it had been 
 so inhumanly subjected, appeared to be all fife 
 and activity, and in this state the gipsy took it
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 289 
 
 to a village at a short distance on the London 
 road ; there he disposed of it for eleven gui- 
 neas to a waggoner, on his way to the Metro- 
 polis, the rustic fancying he should gain full 
 half by his bargain in Smithfield Market ; but 
 the horse's body was left on the road side just 
 six miles from the scene of purchase. 
 
 This specimen of the deliberate, cold-hearted 
 barbarity of young Cooper, combined with the 
 disagreeable fact, that he was the plighted hus- 
 band of Phoebe Burrows, excited in the mind 
 of our hero feelings of inexpressible hostility 
 towards him. Although Dillon saw no posi- 
 tive sin in taking by fraud from another, that 
 which he maintained to be the property of the 
 community — wealth, according to his philoso- 
 phy, being a divine gift, and therefore not in- 
 tended for the individual, but for the species ; 
 — he had, nevertheless, an utter abhorrence of 
 wanton and unprovoked cruelty. And though 
 
 VOL. /. o
 
 2S0 THE FELLOW COMMOXER. 
 
 these principles bore the hue and aspect of 
 coarse animal selfishnesss, yet it is certain that 
 he maintained them with a stubborn^ but still 
 earnest conviction of their equity. He had 
 imbibed them from his infancy, and the Anti- 
 nomian dogmas which he had received under 
 the guardianship of Miss Biddy Mackinnon as 
 the oracles of infallible truth, had tended to 
 confirm his predisposition to violate the laws, 
 which he considered arbitrary restrictions, 
 since those dogmas secured spiritual impunity 
 to transgression ; and he set it down as an in- 
 controvertible axiom, that man could never be 
 just in punishing for those acts which God did 
 not visit with his chastisements. Suchv^ns the 
 shallow sophistry behind which he hedged his 
 delinquencies ; and under this thin crust of theo- 
 logical logic, he skreened himself from that ob- 
 vious light of conviction to which he dared not 
 boldlv to submit his reason. Thus, beneath
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 291 
 
 the cloak of religion, he was guilty of the most 
 flagrant offences, at the same time really fan- 
 cying that this cloak was a positive spiritual 
 protection against the displeasure of that Being, 
 who is *^ of purer eyes than to behold iniqui- 
 ty," and therefore requires that they who would 
 ascend to him for the rewards of the eternal 
 inheritance which he has reserved for them 
 that love him, — 
 
 Where the thirsty soul 
 May drink her fill, and taste the mighty all 
 Of knowledge unconfin'd, and love supreme 
 Divinely flowing in that sacred stream ; — 
 Where all is pure, and nature, perfect grown. 
 Can win new glorious worlds, and make their joys her 
 own* — 
 
 should be " righteous in all his ways, and holy 
 in all his works." 
 
 * Tolson. Moral Emblems. 
 
 o 2
 
 292 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Plato shewn to have said at least one wise thing — 
 Approved of by intuition, Dillon never having had 
 the honour of an acquaintance with either Plato or his 
 works — James Dillon, George Cooper, and PhcEbe 
 Burrows — Something worth reading about all three 
 — An offer of marriage — No ! — A disappointment and 
 its results — The heliotrope — Dillon can't sleep — No 
 wonder — His heart burnt to tinder, enough, of all con- 
 science, to keep a man from dreaming — Poor James ! 
 
 Plato has represented a disciple of Socrates 
 as saying, " it is impossible, or at least very
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 293 
 
 difficult, to know the truth in this life ; one of 
 these two things must be done, — we must 
 either learn the truth from others, or find it 
 out ourselves. If both ways fail us, amidst 
 all human reasons, we must fix upon the 
 strongest and most forcible, and trust to that 
 as to a ship whilst we pass through this stormy 
 sea, and endeavour to avoid its shoals and tem- 
 pests, till we discover one more sure, upon 
 which we may happily accomplish the voyage 
 of this life as in a vessel that is secure from 
 danger."* 
 
 Dillon seems to have acted intuitively upon 
 this principle, for he knew nothing of the 
 Greek philosopher; his grand rational ship 
 being absolute predestination, full freighted 
 with Antinomian impunity, and unconditional 
 election. 
 
 * Plato in Phoedon
 
 204 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 The more our hero saw of George Cooper, 
 the less he felt disposed to close with the con- 
 clusion that the young gipsy was a desirable 
 husband for Phoebe Burrows. The very thought 
 of a sacrifice that would place a lovely and inno- 
 cent girl under the tyranny of such an unfeeling 
 ruffian, set the whole mass of his blood in a 
 tumult of agitation. He had felt for her a 
 growing partiality from the first moment of 
 his acquaintance with her, and this partiality 
 had gradually matured into a feeling of in- 
 tense and absorbing interest. He had more- 
 over imagined that she did not look upon him 
 with indifference, and under this impression he 
 was determined to set the matter at rest by 
 marrying the beautiful gipsy girl without fur- 
 ther delay. He did not calculate impediments, 
 — summing up in his own mind the different 
 qualifications of himself and his rival, and 
 striking a balance immensely in his own
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 295 
 
 favour. A doubt never for a moment sug- 
 gested itself to his mind of Phoebe^s ready 
 acquiescence in his proposal, and of her leav- 
 ing her affianced bridegroom to seek another 
 sweetheart. He had however sadly miscalcu- 
 lated the principles, if not the feelings, of her 
 who he imagined could so readily cancel the 
 bond of a solemn pledge and throw herself into 
 the arms of another, in direct violation of 
 truth and of a most sacred obligation. 
 
 Phoebe Burrows, notwithstanding the state 
 of social degradation in which she had been 
 brought up, was endowed by nature with 
 such a keen perception of moral good and 
 evil, that the deformity of the latter could 
 not escape her view, and she surveyed it with 
 so microscopic a scrutiny, from having it con- 
 stantly presented to her in its most revolting 
 array, that the elements of good shone before 
 her with a brilliancy immensely enhanced by
 
 296 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 the contrast. Thus it happened that the 
 very circumstances which have an almost un- 
 faiUng tendency to render the generahty of 
 young unprotected creatures Hke herself the 
 more hardened in depravity, supplied her with 
 a panoply against its influence which pro- 
 tected her from its most fatal shafts, and thus 
 secured her from becoming its victim. It is 
 true she had not that moral sensitiveness 
 which would have governed her feelings under 
 the dominance of a higher domestic condi- 
 tion ; but the seeds were within her, and only 
 required a suitable aspect for their culture and 
 growth to ripen into fragrance and bloom into 
 beauty. 
 
 Dillon, after he had made up his mind defini- 
 tively to become allied with the beautiful gipsy, 
 took the earliest opportunity of declaring 
 himself, and unreservedly asked her if she
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 297 
 
 did not think she could be happy with him for 
 life. 
 
 " I think I might, James," she replied, with 
 quiet earnestness of manner, " but^" — and 
 she paused, as if the remaining part of the 
 sentence, like Macbeth's amen, stuck in her 
 throat. 
 
 *' What do you mean by ' but,' " asked Dil- 
 lon, eagerly, as if he had not anticipated the 
 introduction of that equivocal conjunction ; 
 " surely there can be no impediment, unless 
 you really have a preference elsewhere, and 
 then, to be sure, 'tis quite another thing ; but 
 I've a clear thousand pounds in the funds, and 
 am likelier to be wortii more than less. What 
 do you say, Phoebe, to taking a voyage with me 
 for life on a calm sea and in a vessel fresh rigged 
 and full freighted ?" 
 
 ^' I am plighted, Dillon, to George Cooper, 
 
 o 5
 
 298 THE FELLOW COMMONER* 
 
 and therefore it is impossible. 1 am sure you 
 would be the first to despise me if 1 were to 
 break my word." 
 
 '^ Can I believe my ears ? You cannot be 
 determined to marry such a gross ruffian." 
 
 " If he really be a ruffian^ the greater my 
 misfortune, for he is the ascendant star in my 
 horoscope, and I must henceforth borrow my 
 light from him ; as the cold, melancholy moon, 
 that never shines but when the world slum- 
 bers, borrows hers from the sun, which not 
 only gives light but life to all nature." 
 
 " But those words do not seem to indicate 
 much spontaneous love on your part, and you 
 surely can't think you are destined to marry 
 against your own wishes ?" 
 
 " My grandmother and father have settled 
 that it is to be so, and 1 have nothing to do but 
 submit." 
 
 " What ! can't you make your own choice ?"
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 299 
 
 " I am not permitted to have a choice 
 on the subject; their will must be my law." 
 
 '^ Nay, that's a folly ; it is not to be enter- 
 tained for a moment by a free spirit and a true 
 woman's heart. Hear me, Phoebe ; I love 
 you with all the fervency of an affection in- 
 tense and pure as the love of angels. I have 
 fancied that I am not altogether indifferent to 
 you, and entertain some assurance, if I can 
 read the language of human eyes and under- 
 stand the impression of human hearts, that you 
 have no affection for this George Cooper; — why 
 then should you throw yourself away upon a 
 fellow who knows not how to value you, and 
 thus render miserable one who really appreciates 
 and adores you r" 
 
 Phoebe heaved a sigh ; it was deep, and her 
 eyes were suffused with a tear. " Come come," 
 continued Dillon, " say that you will discard 
 this brute."
 
 300 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 " Alas '/' said Phoebe, mournfully, " you 
 seem to be ignorant that gipsies do not marry 
 out of their tribe. So sacred is the custom, that 
 I believe it has never been violated.'^ 
 
 '^ Then be you the first to show a good ex- 
 ample, and snap asunder fetters as inglorious 
 as they are enslaving." 
 
 " Impossible !" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because I should be an outcast from my 
 race." 
 
 " Which would be emancijDation from the 
 most odious thraldom.^' 
 
 " I cannot — I dare not consent." 
 
 " You refuse me then ?" 
 
 " I do, I nmst ; — I have no choice." 
 
 " Then henceforth, Phoebe, we must be as 
 strangers.'^ 
 
 Saying this, with a heart full to bursting, but 
 subdued by the strong reaction of mortified
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 301 
 
 pride, Dillon rushed from the presence of her 
 whose image dwelt within him like a kindred 
 and associated spirit, whilst a tear fell from her 
 eye as she witnessed his emotion — an eloquent 
 token of the influence he really had over those 
 sympathies of her woman's nature, which con- 
 stitute the whole sum and essence of love. 
 
 Dillon was determined henceforward to 
 think no more of the beautiful gipsy 
 and thus verify the declaration of the 
 poet,* 
 
 Our hearts are paper, beauty is the pen 
 
 Which writes our loves and blots them oat again. 
 
 But it is one thing to determine and another 
 to accomplish. He waited impatiently for 
 the time when he should lay his head upon his 
 
 * Sir Charles Sedley.
 
 222 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 pillow, and there " steep his senses in forget- 
 fulness." 
 
 Congenial night ! beneath thy placid reign 
 
 What trembling thoughts he breathed, what sorrows 
 
 told! 
 Sealed lips, that dared not to the sun complain. 
 In thy lone ear the secret heart unfold ! 
 To him who wears the crown or bears the chain — 
 Sovereign or slave — thy glittering pall unrolled 
 Brings equal boon, so it doth bring — the best 
 Of all heaven's gifts to mortal longings — rest !*" 
 
 Our hero did not find the repose he sought ; 
 his thoughts were thorns in his pillow, his 
 disappointment a potion of bitterness. He 
 was exceedingly annoyed at his rejection, as 
 he had not at all calculated that his declara- 
 tion of love would terminate in such a mortify- 
 
 * See the Heliotrope, page 32, a poem of rare beauty.
 
 THE FEl^LOW COMMONER. 303 
 
 ing result. He felt a degree of humiliation 
 that seemed to weigh him to the dust, and his 
 affections were so deeply wounded^ that in the 
 momentary agony of disappointed love, he 
 vowed never again to cross the path of her who 
 had so deeply abased him. The memory of 
 the gipsy girl was like a bright lens in his soul 
 that magnified her beauties with a power so 
 potent as almost to absorb his spirit in their 
 blaze, whenever he dared trust himself to trace 
 them through the prism of a w rapt imagination, 
 that invested them with hues of transcendant 
 brightness and of the most attractive purity. 
 His affection had been gradually ripening from 
 the daily opportunity he had, in teaching her, 
 uf tracing the rich texture of her mind as it un- 
 folded itself in the progress of her knowledge. 
 Notwithstanding his repulse, he felt satisfied 
 that Cooper was not the object of her heart's 
 selection ; but he knew how rigidly the tribe to
 
 301 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 which Phcebe belonged adhere to the custom of 
 never marrying out of their own community, 
 and this knowledge became at once a conviction 
 and an agony.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 305 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 A little longer than chapter twenty-one, but there is 
 more in it — Our hero's determination — He sulks — 
 What he might have done but he did'nt — He rumi- 
 nates by the side of a stream — How romantic ! Over- 
 hears a very earnest conversation about himself — 
 Transported not only with transport, but with rage — 
 A blow — What follows — Three immersions — Our 
 hero's gallantry — Drinks plenty of dirty water — Depo- 
 sits his lovely burden upon the trunk of a tree, but 
 unable to deposit himself — Floats like a cork, neverthe- 
 less can't keep the water out of his stomach — Phoebe
 
 S06 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 screams to no purpose — -Lycidas — Dillon dragged upon 
 dry ground — Not drowned, as the sequel shows. 
 
 For several days the Fellow Commoner did 
 not visit the domestic circle at the chalk-pit ; 
 nevertheless, with painful interest he watched, at 
 a distance and unobserved, the progress of his 
 rival's courtship, if such it might be called. He 
 learned from the gipsy children, whom he daily 
 saw, that Cooper frequently treated the girl of 
 his capricious choice with a harshness offensive 
 even to her parents, who were not over fastidi- 
 ous on this point, and his jealousy had been 
 evidently roused by the close connexion which 
 had apparently so long subsisted between her 
 and her father's guest. 
 
 This was the first unhappy portion of Dil- 
 lon's life. He loved intensely, and his dis- 
 appointment was equal to the intensity of his 
 affection. He might truly have addressed
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 307 
 
 the object of it in the beautiful words of 
 Cowley — 
 
 Thou robb'st my days of business and delights, 
 
 Of sleep thou robb'st my nights ; 
 
 Ah, lovely thief ! what wilt thou do ? 
 
 Rob me of my heaven too ? 
 
 Thou even my prayers dost steal from me. 
 
 And I, with wild idolatry. 
 
 Begin to God, and end them all to thee. 
 
 Not long after the Hobgoblin's rejection by 
 the lovely gipsy, as he was walking one after- 
 noon about dusk near the bank of a stream 
 that took its course through a valley termi- 
 nating the common, he heard voices at a short 
 distance, and being intercepted from the view 
 of the speakers by a clump of alder trees that 
 grew upon the margin of the brook, he ap- 
 proached stealthily upon them without bemg
 
 SOS THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 observed, feeling confident that the inter- 
 locutors were perfect antipodes to each 
 other in his estimation. When sufficiently 
 near to distinguish the tenor of their con- 
 versation, after a short pause he heard Phoebe's 
 voice distinctly expostulating with her affianced 
 tyrant, who it was evident had been charging 
 her with having indulged in too great familiarity 
 with Dillon, which suspicion she repelled in 
 the language of eloquent indignation. 
 
 " Nay,'^ said she, " Cooper, had I wished 
 to be united by a closer tie than mere friend- 
 ship to him whom you choose to look upon 
 as your rival, I might have done it with- 
 out much seeking, for he offered to marry me, 
 and I am afraid I have rejected him for one 
 much less deserving of my affections." 
 
 " Curse thee ! — take him if thou thinkest 
 him more worthy -, thou art not the only wench 
 that's worth having. George Cooper never
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 309 
 
 yet found a girl coy when he was wilhng. I 
 know thou hast a partiahty for this pale-faced 
 patterer of prayers and retailer of grave sayings. 
 He's made thee wise, hasn't he ? But a bushel 
 of a woman's wit is about as valuable a com- 
 modity as a purse made out of a sow's ear. Go 
 to thy minion, harlot," continued the savage, 
 fiercely elevating his voice, and at the same 
 time imprecating a harsh curse upon the inno- 
 cent girl, which made our hero's blood boil 
 within him. The tender tone in which Phoebe 
 had mentioned his name, and her apparent ex- 
 pression of regret at having rejected him, re- 
 newed for a moment all the impetuosity of his 
 passion, and he could scarcely retain his con- 
 cealment. 
 
 The motions of the earth or sun 
 (The Lord knows which) that turn and run. 
 Are both perforra'd by fits and starts. 
 And so are those of lovers' hearts.
 
 310 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 Which, though they keep no even pace. 
 Move true and constant to one place. 
 
 Dillon listened with breathless impatience 
 to the conversation between Cooper and 
 Phoebe Burrows, when he heard the latter 
 say, in a tone of quiet but resolved indigna- 
 tion — 
 
 ^' After so cowardly an insult I shall con- 
 sider myself released from my engagement. 
 I will never marry you. Cooper, if there's not 
 another man to be found in the world. Hea- 
 ven help the unhappy wretch that should be 
 linked to such a ruffian \" 
 
 " Ruffian P' roared the enraged gipsy, and 
 instantly after Dillon heard a blow given 
 which caused every nerve to quiver within 
 him. He rushed from his hiding-place, 
 saw the beautiful girl reel backwards, and 
 to his utter consternation fall from the bank
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 311 
 
 of the stream into the water. Springing for- 
 ward, he planted a blow with all his strength 
 on Cooper's temple that sent him head- 
 long after his victim. Our hero lost not a 
 moment, but pursued his course along the 
 margin of the brook, the current of which being 
 swollen by the winter rains, was extremely 
 rapid and deep. It happened fortunately for 
 Cooper that the root of an alder tree which 
 projected from the bank was within his grasp 
 just as he rose to the surface. This he seized, 
 and it was the means of securing his escape 
 from that fate to the hazard of which he had 
 so brutally subjected another. Meanwhile the 
 Fellow Commoner, following for a few moments 
 the course of the stream, plunged into it, just as 
 he perceived the object of his anxiety rise for 
 the second time, and was hurried rapidly onward 
 by the current. He, however, contrived to 
 seize Phoebe by her dress, held her firmly,
 
 312 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 making ever}^ practicable effort to gain the 
 opposite bank. He swam well, but the force 
 of the water was so great that he was car- 
 ried down the stream with an irresistible 
 impetus. He did his utmost, but in vain, 
 to get clear of the whirling eddies, which 
 every now and then drew him and his lovely 
 burthen beneath the agitated flood. He was 
 borne onward in spite of his most desperate 
 struggles ; still he managed to keep himself 
 and his charge above the hissing waters. 
 Phoebe clung to him with an earnestness that 
 greatly aggravated their mutual danger ; he 
 nevertheless contrived to maintain his presence 
 of mind, keeping his legs and one arm free, so 
 as to enable him to breast the torrent with 
 tolerable success. He frequently heard the 
 gurgling of the water in Phoebe's throat, as 
 she was occasionally immersed during his strug- 
 gles to gain the bank ; and the efibrt with
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 313 
 
 which every inspiration was made after swal- 
 lowing so unwelcome and copious a potation, 
 alarmed him for the safety of her whose life 
 he valued at this moment far more dearly 
 than his own. He spoke to her as well as he 
 could, bidding her be of good courage; but 
 the immersions were now so constantly re- 
 peated, that she was either- afraid or unable 
 to reply. She did not for a moment lose her 
 self-possession, but threw her wet tresses from 
 her forehead as she arose with the occasional 
 swell of the water, relaxing the tenacity of 
 her hold whenever she found that Dillon was 
 encumbered, and catching with resolute energy 
 at every twig which drooped from the bank 
 and offered the feeblest chance of staying their 
 impetuous career. Her courage seemed to 
 rise with her peril, and she occasionally 
 gave a faint smile of acquiescence, though 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 314 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 she did not speak, when Dillon endeavoured to 
 encourage her. Her admirable resolution im- 
 parted additional strength to his, and he re- 
 doubled his efforts to get out of the rush of 
 the current. He was, however, by this time 
 becoming exhausted. His chest heaved, he 
 gasped, the water rushed into his throat, and 
 he felt himself rapidly sinking, when a tree 
 which had been uprooted on the rivulet's 
 brink, and hung over the stream, happily 
 arrested his progress. He seized one of its 
 branches, with an enfeebled though firm grasp, 
 and soon got rid of his lovely burthen. 
 Phoebe, though much bruised by the blow 
 she had received from Cooper, and weak- 
 ened by her exertions soon secured her- 
 self upon the trunk of the tree, and gained 
 the bank. A cry of joy burst from her hps 
 as she once more placed her feet upon the firm
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 315 
 
 earth, but this sudden emotion of dehght was 
 soon quelled as she turned her head towards 
 her deliverer. 
 
 Unluckily for Dillon, the branch of the 
 tree proved a false stay : the shock of the fall 
 had split it from the trunk, and it only ad- 
 hered to a few feeble fibres. No sooner, 
 therefore, was he released from the charge of 
 her for whom he had so generously perilled 
 his life, than, while he was in the act of 
 pulhng himself towards the bank, the treach- 
 erous bough suddenly gave way, and he was 
 again drawn back into the eddy, which 
 whirled him onward with greater impe- 
 tuosity, in consequence of the partial interrup- 
 tion to its course. He was spun round and 
 round with more frightful velocity than before, 
 and his danger in consequence, greatly increased. 
 He saw no chance of escape. All his energies, 
 now much reduced by his former exer- 
 
 p 2
 
 816 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 tions, were employed to no purpose. He 
 was continually forced under the water, and 
 could scarcely keep himself upon the surface 
 a sufficient time to breathe. He at length 
 resigned himself to the will of heaven. His 
 senses were gradually deserting him, and 
 his chest was painfully distended with the 
 turbid flood. Every now and then the shrieks 
 of the affrighted Phoebe met his ear, and 
 gave a momentary impulse to his struggles 
 for life ; but the inexorable waters at length 
 shut out the sound, and he heard nothing 
 save their rush and roar as they bore him 
 unresistingly onward. It was a critical mo- 
 ment; still, as he afterwards confessed, he 
 never once gave himself up for lost. He ima- 
 gined that the purpose of his destiny was not 
 yet accomplished, and it therefore struck like 
 a faint ray of hope upon his waning senses, 
 that he should still live to see the sun rise in
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 317 
 
 its strength and set in its glory, — that he 
 should still enjoy the pleasures of a protracted 
 existence ; — so firm a hold had the anchor of his 
 creed taken upon his tenacious mind. 
 
 He had now ceased to struggle, and yielded 
 himself entirely to the impulse of the stream ; 
 yet he did not sink, though he was at inter- 
 vals of every half-a-dozen moments sucked 
 down by the impetuosity of the current. 
 He inyariably rose to the surface, after 
 having swallowed a muddy potation, much 
 against his will. At length his head suddenly 
 struck against something, and he became in- 
 sensible. Upon recovering, he perceived that 
 he was lying on the bank of the rivulet, and 
 Phoebe hanging over him with an expression 
 of tender and earnest anxiety. Supposing 
 him dead, she had mourned him loud and 
 bitterly. Her heart swelled with bursting 
 agony as she looked on the pallid form before
 
 318 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 her, and her grief had all the intense eloquence 
 of true and fervid passion. 
 
 " Ye shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks. 
 
 On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks, 
 
 Throw hither all your quaint enamel'd eyes. 
 
 That on the green turf suck the honey'd showers. 
 
 And purple all the ground with vernal flowers. 
 
 Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies. 
 
 The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine. 
 
 The white pink, and the pansy freakt with jet. 
 
 The glowing violet. 
 
 The musk rose, and the well-attired woodbine. 
 
 With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head. 
 
 And every flower that sad embroidery wears : 
 
 Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed. 
 
 And daffodillies fill their cups with tears. 
 
 To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies."* 
 
 The moment Dillon unclosed his heavy eye- 
 
 * Lycidas.
 
 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 319 
 
 lids, and the bright orbs beneath them 
 gave signs of consciousness, Phoebe ut- 
 tered a shght hurried scream, and threw 
 herself passionately into his arms. This 
 sudden burst of emotion roused him from his 
 lethargy. It was no less sudden than unex- 
 pected; but our hero, when he had regained 
 the fiill possession of his senses, imputed it 
 rather to that earnest sympathy which woman 
 displays in all situations where her emotions 
 are challenged by great and perilous energies, 
 than to any awakened affection. He was soon 
 in a condition to follow the interesting gipsy 
 to the chalk-pit. On their way he learned 
 from her that his head had struck against the 
 frame-work of a wooden bridge, which stopped 
 his further progress down the stream by his 
 clothes catching in a fractured beam that 
 helped to support the supermcumbent struc-
 
 320 THE FELLOW COMMONER. 
 
 ture. She had dragged him to the bank. 
 Not a word was said about Cooper, whom, 
 upon their arrival, they fovmd at the cavern. 
 
 END OF VOL I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 SCHULZE AND CO. 13, POLAND STREET.
 
 ^ 
 
 x(\ 
 
 V
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOI9-URBANA 
 
 3 0112 041672319