Instruction being a much more important object than amusement, we feel ourselves bound to direct the attention of our readers to the instruction which may be derived from the fact here alluded to. Here is political instruction and personal instruction. We do not believe a word of the idle prating that some political greenhorns make about secret service money; but we do believe that many of those politicians, and they are not a few, who mistake cunning for wisdom, frequently become entangled in nets of their own weaving, and fall into pits of their own digging. To play the rogue with perfect success, is a perfection almost beyond the reach of ordinary humanity: for they, who have talent and power to do so, are generally too wise to possess the inclination, and they who are weak enough to possess the inclination, are in nine cases out of ten too clumsy to carry it on with perfect success. And the worst of it is, that they must make use of tools which are either too strong to be managed, or too weak to be depended on. This is also a lesson of instruction to persons in private life, especially to those who have nothing to do but to live on the fruits of their grandfather's industry, or their great grandfather's roguery; for it teaches them that, if they will pursue those ends which are dishonorable, they must also make use of dishonorable means; and they will very frequently be placed in very uncomfortable and mortifying situations. Now, however willing Lord Spoonbill might have been to suffer the letter in his possession to reach its proper destination, he found that he could not send it without exposing his former meanness to the risk of detection, and in all probability defeating the end which he had in view in intercepting the letters which were passing between Miss Primrose and Robert Darnley. In such perplexity, his lordship walked from one street to another till he found himself at a very considerable distance from Mr Primrose's hotel. CHAPTER XII. Lord Spoonbill was not like Cato. For history records of the latter that he preferred being good to seeming so: Lord Spoonbill had no great objection to being a rogue, but did not like to be thought one. It was therefore not very pleasant for him to be placed in that dilemma, of which we made mention in the last chapter. He saw, or at least had good reason to think that he saw, that Mr Darnley was bent on renewing the acquaintance with Miss Primrose; and he also feared that Penelope had not sufficiently forgotten her first lover.