It was right that the race of Feebles should not expire. It was said of old, that to be the sire of sons was no great achievement, but that he was a man indeed who was the father of daughters. Such no doubt was Feeble, one of whose spirited girls married a Sketon; and their eldest son it is, as I would fondly think, who figures so bravely among the followers of Perkin Warbeck, in John Ford’s tragedy of that name. Sketon is the most daring of the company, and the blood of the Feebles suffers no disgrace in his person. Sketon, like the great Duke of Guise, is full of dashing hope, when all his fellows are sunk in dull despair. While so august a personage as John à Water, Mayor of Cork, is thinking twice ere he acts once, Sketon thus boldly and tailor-like cuts out the habit of invasion, and prepares the garb of victory:—“’Tis but going to sea, and leaping ashore,” saith he; “cut ten or twelve thousand unnecessary throats, fire seven or eight towns, take half-a-dozen cities, get him into the market-place, crown him Richard the Fourth, and the business is finished!” Is not this a man whom Nature intended for a commander-in-chief? He is not only quick of resolution, but of action; and yet, I dare be sworn, Sketon had read nothing of what Caius Crispus Sallust says thereupon. And I beseech you to mark one thing more. You know that when the foolish Roman Emperor would not permit the statue of Brutus to be borne in the funeral procession of Britannicus, lest the people should think too much upon that imperatoricide, the obstinate and vulgar rogues thought all the more upon him and his deeds, for the very reason that his statue did not figure among those of other heroes. So in the above heart-stirring speech of valiant Sketon, we miss something which reveals to us how chaste and chivalrous a soldier was the grandson of Feeble. His views go to bold invasion, to the burning of towns, and the sacking of cities, and to splendid victory, built upon the cutting of throats, which he nicely, and as it were apologetically for the act, describes as “_unnecessary_ throats.” A taste of the quality of the roystering soldier is perhaps to be found in this speech; but you are entreated to remark, that all the vengeance of the tailor is directed solely against his enemy, _man_. The women, it is evident, have nothing to fear at the hands of Sketon. He does not mention rudeness to them, just as the ancient legislator did not provide against parricide, simply because, judging from his own heart, he deemed the crime impossible. Sketon and Scipio deserve to go down to posterity hand in hand, as respecters of timid beauty. There was a Persian victor, too, who would not look upon the faces of his fair captives, lest he should be tempted to violate the principles of propriety. Sketon was bolder, and not less virtuous. To my thinking, he is the Bayard of tailors. It would wrong him to compare him even with Joseph Andrews; and I will only add that if old