racter. Great, transcendently great as were the abilities of this then rising actor in parts suited to him, the Jew was not in his line, and the performance went off flatly, at least in my estimation, and in that of many, who like myself, felt disappointed at the substitution of a minor light for the great luminary itself. The following year the Merchant of Venice was revived with new dresses and decorations; John Kemble and the majestic Siddons taking the parts of the Jew and Portia. My return to the country was fixed for the 9th of January, and to my great delight Mr. Cook was announced for Richard the Third on the 8th. The house was crowded, and an apology was fully expected for his past weaknesses and disrespect to the public; accordingly the "crooked back tyrant" came forward in a supplicating tone to entreat the indulgence of the audience- If you will restore me once more to the favour I enjoyed, I promise"-shouts and plaudits interrupted this speech, and the play proceeded. Of this performance, so perfect in every respect, I will merely say, that in Richard the Third, Cooke stood alone and unrivalled-the confident dissimulation, the smooth-tongued hypocrisy, the bitter sarcasm, the fawning manner, the gallant bearing in the battle field, and the death of the tyrant, were finished specimens of dramatic genius, and stamped the great George Frederick as the most natural actor that ever trod the boards, or in the words of his panegyrist, Philips

"

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Magician of the heart!

Pure child of nature! foster child of art!

For a length of time I could not drive the actor from my thoughts, and it was with grief and dismay that, a few years afterwards, I read the following announcement : "On the 26th of September, 1812, at New York, George Frederick Cooke breathed his last, aged 57 years and 5 months. Thus ended the life of one gifted with the highest endowments, a warm heart, a generous nature, and a mind far above that usually allotted to mortals: had he combined with these advantages prudence and good conduct, he would have been handed down to posterity as the brightest ornament the stage ever possessed. Peace to his manes.

FINANCE FOR THE FAST.

BY A BURNT CHILD.

-

Bills!-unbidden and most unwelcome guests of a verity! Why, the very word has a harsh grating sound, dissonant to the ears of all us-at least, of all us who are not either heirs to, or the favoured subjects of King Croesus, and as rich as Jews. True! but be not alarmed, gentle reader! we are not going to bring before you any of the more vulgar memorials with which shopkeepers are permitted eternally to worry mortal men. To this teasing tribe "Your small account, sir!" is glorious sport; but we happen to know that it is death and destruction to the comfort of all the rest of the community. We will have none of it. We gather no nuts for the dot-and-go-one devils to crack; and would as soon think of enacting the Camberwell Ghost that frightened so many people into fits, as by force of pen and reminiscences to

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contemplate any treason against the peace or pleasure of our sovereign readers. No crusade against comfort" being our motto, we need: hardly more particularly say that we have nothing to do here with tradesmen's bills, either monthly, quarterly, or annual ones, any more than with biennial, triennial, quartennial, quinquennial, sexennial, or septennial ones-still less with lawyers' bills. Of course, bills in chancery will not bother, nor doctors' bills disturb us. Parliamentary bills, private no more than public ones, are not to be advanced a single stage even; and bills of pains and penalties may be said to have died away with poor Queen Caroline; and lastly, as to the Bills of Mortality, we leave those to the functionaries who live on dead men's records.

"Well, my good sir," says a shrewd Stock Exchange subscriber encouragingly, I see the time o' day. You are historical, and that issue of bills-of-exchequer by Spring Rice, just before he was pitchforked into a peer, was as rum a go as Sir Charles Wood's upset budgets last session!"

Possibly, sir; but we have other fish to fry: alter patet campus

ingenuis."

We have not a word to say about or against Exchequer bills, or indeed any other bills than those which fools make and knaves steal. Neither do we affect marvellous originality of thought or design; and claiming no other merit than that of unobtrusive useful counsellors, who put plain facts as plainly and as prominently as possible before the unwary portion of the public, will reach the winning post of their highest ambition if they are the means, merely as remembrancers, of rescuing one credulous and gullible Mr. Green from the unscrupulous grip of the scoundrels that the town teems with--the bill-discounters, who go about seeking whom they may plunder.

It is no mere arbitrary connexion of thought that leads us to associate with sporting subjects the victimization by bill-swindlers of the class to whose hearths these pages periodically pay a welcomed visit. For there is generally a confiding unworldly tendency in sporting men -in men who seek their recreation, not amongst the busy throng of men in cities crowding, but in woods and fields, intent on sport, and perhaps passionately pursuing war's wisest parallel-the "noble science" -that renders them too frequently the too easy prey of the specious rascals we allude to.

If the good counsel we are going to give all gentlemen in want of ready cash, as well as that large family, the Greens, is not new, it is true and truth is a trump, good against the world. It is always the best card a man can hold in his hand; nor can we have it dealt to us too often. So here goes. We advise you, then

Never to answer or take any notice of a money-lender's advertisement. Never to go near him or his office.

Never to have anything whatever to do, either with an advertising loan-monger, or an advertising loan-monger's cad, or agent.

Never for a moment foster the fatal illusion that such unredeemed rascals can assist you, or do you any good-or, in short, do anything for you, unless it be to consign you to the pain and confusion felt, perhaps, in purgatory by the duped and the damned, and by them alone.

Never fail to remember that plunder is the pabulum of the whole crew of advertising bill-discounters, and that they batten on the ruin of those whom they rob, and render wretched for life.

But should you be gudgeon enough to approach these vilest of sharks, recollect that your only chance of positive safety is quickly to retrace your steps, wishing the bland bill-gentlemen good-morning!

On a principle analogous to that which proclaims that prevention is better than cure, we wish our young ("green") friends to remember that to be out of debt is to be out of danger-out of that danger against falling into which we have deemed it our duty to raise a warning voice. Nor can we do better in furtherance of the beneficial object aimed at, than cite some eloquently forcible observations on the subject made by one of the most popular writers of the day

"Of what a hideous progeny of ill is debt the father!" he honestly and truly exclaims. "What lies, what meannesses, what invasions on self-respect, what cares, what double-dealings! How, in due season, it will carve the frank open face into wrinkles! how, like a knife, it will stab the honest heart! And then its transformations-how it has been known to change a goodly face into a mask of brass! how, with the 'custom' of debt, has the true man become a callous trickster! A freedom from debt, and what nourishing sweetness may be found in cold water; what toothsomeness in a dry crust; what ambrosial nourishment in a hard egg! Be sure of it he who dines out of debt, though his meal be biscuit and an onion, dines in The Apollo!' And then for raiment-what warmth in a threadbare coat, if the tailor's receipt be in the pocket! what Tyrian purple in the faded waistcoatthe vest not owed for! how glossy the well-worn hat, if it cover not the aching head of a debtor! Next the home-sweets, the out-door recreation of the free man. The street-door knocker falls not a knell on his heart; the foot on the staircase, though he live on the third-pair, sends no spasm through his anatomy; at the rap at his door he can crow forth, Come in!' and his pulse still beats healthfully, his heart sinks not in his bowels. See him abroad: how confidently, yet how pleasantly he takes the street; how he returns look for look with any passenger; how he saunters; how, meeting an acquaintance, he stands and gossips! But then this man knows not debt-debt! that casts a drug into the richest wine; that makes the food of the gods unwholesome, indigestible; that sprinkles the banquets of a Lucullus with ashes, and drops soot in the soup of an emperor-debt! that, like the moth, makes valueless furs and velvets, enclosing the wearer in a festering prison (the shirt of Nessus was a shirt not paid for)-debt! that writes upon frescoed walls the hand-writing of the attorney; that puts a voice of terror in the knocker; that makes the heart quake at the haunted fireside-debt! the invisible demon that walks abroad with a man, now quickening his steps, now making him look on all sides like a hunted beast, and now bringing to his face the ashy hue of death, as the unconscious passenger looks glaringly upon him! Poverty is a bitter draught, and may, and sometimes with advantage, be gulped down. Though the drinker make wry faces, there may, after all, be a wholesome goodness in the cup. But debt, however courteously it be offered, is the cup of a syren; and the wine, spiced and delicious though it be, an eating poison. The man out of debt, though with a flaw in his jerkin, a crack in his shoeleather, a hole in his hat, is still the son of liberty-free as the singing lark above him! but the debtor, though clothed in the utmost bravery, what is he but a serf, out upon a holiday? or a slave, to be reclaimed at any instant by his owner, the creditor? My son, if poor, see wine in

the running spring; let thy mouth water at a last-week's roll; think a threadbare coat the only wear;' and acknowledge a whitewashed garret fittest housing-place for a gentleman. Do this, and flee debt : so shall thy heart be at peace, and the sheriff be confounded!"

We have already intimated our conviction that the class of readers to whom our monthly publication specially addresses itself, embraces in its bright and broad circle individuals peculiarly exposed, by social position and sporting pursuits, to be swindled by the specious scoundrels whose ostensible business is to get bills discounted, but whose real vocation is sneaking robbery. We need not vindicate by any formal process of proof the claim of this assertion to be true, as a moment's reflection will suffice to establish its accuracy. The fact, indeed, is all but self-evident. We shall, then, merely observe that sportsmen-the genuine sportsmen-live in a world of their own. Theirs, indeed, is often as truly an ideal world as that of the bard whose book is the babbling brook, and whose society is the sun and stars. This proposition may startle some readers, but the more closely it is investigated the clearer it will appear.

As Lord Grey stood by his order, so are we prepared to stand up for our order-the sporting class-a less exalted order when not identical, as it generally is, but by no means an inferior order. We shall, then, be pardoned, nor will it be thought irrelevant, or any retrocession from our staple-the sporting element-if we conclude this grave letter of counsel with just one or two remarks on the characteristics of sporting men-the result of our experience.

First and foremost, then, it occurs to us that sporting-men-of course we mean gentlemen in feeling-lose nothing; but, on the contrary, gain immeasurably by comparison with any other class, set, or order of men. Such, indeed, of them as have acquired some marks of rustic coarseness, will be generally found right in the right place. They will be found thoroughly sound at heart. In mind, and a healthy perception of what is right if not always, in habitual conversation, saints and model men -they are honourable men, as well as "good fellows." In what class, for example, let us ask, shall we find more sterling worth than in sporting circles-properly so called; in circles that do not merely assume, but actually merit the distinction? In what section of society is there a higher appreciation of goodness and courage? Where shall we find more manliness of character? Why, the exercise they take, the air in which they are out so much, the natural scenery that invigorates as much as it charms and refreshes the spirits, imparts to their mind and manners a healthy freedom, a kindly cordiality, and a hearty frankness which, as a general rule, we can find nowhere else. We shall always look for it in vain amongst the superfine and the more effeminate, the frigid and formal. Nature, the sportsman's companion, is his great teacher. He sends all that is artificial and insincere, all that is sordid and spiteful, to the winds. His spirit is free as the air he breathes ; and as he lingers on the green banks of a pellucid trout-stream, or strays through golden groves, and traverses heather moors for grouse or other sporting trophies; or, as he gaily gallops on his winged steed, friendliness and good-will go with him, ennobling an impulsive nature, and warming a genial temperament into the type of a true man-and a gentleman every inch of him.