The very means of defence sometimes become the aggravators of their evils. The dogs and guns have added to the catalogue of their tales of horror. The dogs, as conscious of their solitary station as their masters, and with true canine instinct, feeling a great charge and responsibility upon them, set up the most clamourous barkings at the least noise in the night, and often seem to take a melancholy pleasure, a whole night through, in uttering such awful and long-spun howls as are seldom heard in more secure and cheerful situations. These are often looked upon as prognostics of family troubles, and occasion great fears. Who has not heard these dismal howlings at old halls, and been witness to the anxiety they occasioned? And, if a branch blown by the wind do but scrape against a pane, or an unlucky pig get into the garden, the dogs are all barking outrageously, and the family is up, in the certain belief that they are beset with thieves; and it has been no unfrequent circumstance, on retiring to rest again, that loaded pistols have been left about on tables, and the servants on coming down next morning, with that fatal propensity to sport with fire-arms, have playfully menaced, and actually shot one another in their rashness. Such a catastrophe occurred in the family of a relative of mine, on just such an occasion. But truly, the horrors and depredations which formerly were perpetrated in such places, were enough to make a solitary house a terrible sojourn in the night. A single cottage on a great heath; a toll-bar on a wild road, far from a town; a wealthy farm-house in a retired region; an old hall or grange, amongst gloomy woods. These were places in which such outrages were committed in former years as filled the newspapers of the time with continual details of terror; and would furnish volumes of the most dreadful stories. It is said that the diminution of highway robberies and stopping of mails, once so frequent, has been in a great measure occasioned by the system of banking and paper-money. Instead of travellers, carrying with them large bags of gold, a letter by post transmits a bill to any amount, which, if intercepted is of no use to the thief, because the fact is immediately notified to the bank, and payment prevented; and notes being numbered, makes it a matter of the highest risk to offer them, lest the public be apprized of the numbers, and the offender be secured. But the wonderful improvement of all our roads since the days of M‘Adam, the consequently increased speed of travelling--the increased population and cultivation of the country, all have combined to spoil the trade of the public plunderer. And the press, as in other respects so in this, has added a marvellous influence. Scarcely has a crime of any sort against society been committed, but it raises a hue and cry; handbills and paragraphs in newspapers are flying far and wide, and dexterous must be the offender who escapes. The house