He is, this dun, the acutest mental torturer that exists, and the greatest tempter to all manner of wickedness. Near, he almost annihilates you; remote, he torments you, racking your very soul. He is to the poor creditor what the guilty conscience is to the murderer; he can neither eat, drink, sleep, or walk in quiet for him. Indeed, the tenter-hooks upon which he puts a man, are enough to warp the best nature in the world. With truth he will not be satisfied, and you are forced to rid yourself of him by a lie. At length his importunity provokes you to swear at him, and then he hardens you into a determination never to pay him at all. He thus enacts the gentleman-usher to the black gentleman, leading you on from lying to swearing, from swearing to dishonesty, till at last you pave your way to a "certain place,"--more certainly than ever you will pave it with your good intentions. It would not be difficult to prove that your thorough-paced dun was the father of the seven deadly sins. Let us single out a specimen from a flock of dun-coloured duns: for the true dun affecteth not brilliancy of colours. He has marked his quarry. He pursues it cautiously, stealthily. He must be upon it, before he takes the alarm. Whilst he approaches, he puckers up his face into all the foldings of hypocrisy. He has gilded his countenance with a villanous smile. He is on tiptoe. He touches his unsuspecting victim on the shoulder--that victim was in the act of a triumphant pass with an admiring companion. He turns round!--where is the smile of exultation? He looks more affrighted than the flying hare, more ghastly than a tombstone by moonlight. And yet he suffers his clammy hand to be grasped in the horny palm of the dun--to be shaken: the contact is loathsome--he must bear it, for he owes the man money. "My little account----" Then comes the shuffling, the lying, the fawning--if the wretch be, as is generally the case, mean-spirited. One dun would go far to tame even Hercules--but two, with the assistance of a rascally sheriff's-officer, would subdue a whole army of heroes and demi-gods. It is a good thing for the wild beasts that they know not the use of money. How easy would have been Van Amburgh's task, could he but have lent his most violent lions some loose cash, and have discounted the note of paw of his most intractable tigers, they being amenable to mesne process! But that happy consummation for the duns is still far distant. It will be long before they induce carrion-crows to give an I O U, instead of a C A W; or that they will persuade eagles to indorse bills, excepting in the backs of their prey; so the dunning fraternity must be content with torturing their fellow-sharers in humanity, until men grow so wise as to discover that debt is nothing more than a moral obligation, and that it is both wickedness and folly to punish it as a crime. THE SECOND SLEEPER AWAKENED[12]. Translated by Ali. "'Tis a long 'Lane' that has no _turning_."