Yonder lame individual furnishes a story well illustrating the fickleness of the human heart. Though we may appear to be enraptured with a single feeling, the intervention of a trifling circumstance not unfrequently entirely relieves us of it. That gentleman courted a fair young maiden, and eventually his attentions resulted in a betrothal. An unfortunate accident soon after deprived him of a leg, and being thus deformed, his love required little time to extinguish her affection, and accordingly broke her faith. She had bargained more for a solid man than a sound head or heart, and being disabled from complying with the conditions, he was politely rejected. Thus good luck often springs from misfortune, and he gained greatly by the loss of a limb. What a world of cripples, thought Peter, this would suddenly become, could all who desired it be relieved by the loss of a leg of the ills from which his fortunate misfortune preserved him. Turn your eyes to the left, and you may behold a fanciful pair approaching towards us. That pursy and apparently very jovial fellow--mine host of yonder inn--keeps a resort for gentility, and under the cover of respectability, sends forth unnumbered evils to infest and afflict the community. The practices of his house flourish admirably under the beauty of a fashionable exterior; yet the pestiferous rottenness within could not withstand the eye of modern justice for a moment if disguised only in rags. Public morality in the case where gold is concerned, is quite a different thing from that wherein simple copper is brought into the scale. Respectable crime easily escapes the keen vigilance of those who guard the public virtue, whilst we are loud in their praises when some poor, abandoned, God-forsaken wretch is hurried to his doom amid the imposing show of a high morality and an even-handed justice. That man may lavishly spread his fearful evils--the only things with which men appear to be truly bountiful--with unchecked freedom; and whenever they press too heavily upon us, a few plaintive groans will soon arouse the slumbering sentinels of the law. Powerful justice will sound its signal, triumphantly make a brutal “descent” upon some paltry hut, and drag its starving inmates to the slaughter. Well, has not Carneades pronounced his definitive sentence that “justice is folly;” and what matters it whether I offend, and some more unfortunate creature pays the penalty, so that justice is appeased? It must have victims, and fate, ill-fortune, and poverty, have not been miserly in providing them. Thus it is never at a loss for the means wherewith to preserve that reputation which Tully thought so essential “that even those who lived by outrage and villany could not subsist without at least its shadow or semblance.” That fortunate knave may prosper in his practices, and though their fatal consequences may sometimes arouse our vengeance, there never will be wanting those whose immolation will allay it. His