gold watch on each side an extravagant fashion then prevalent; and with his cane, bag-wig, and gold-buckled shoes, was really a fine figure of the pre-revolutionary era. His house was in the Canongate

a good flat

in Chessels's Court-garrisoned only by a female servant called Nanny. Nisbet at length squandered away the whole of his estate, and became a victim. All the world fell away from him; but Nanny still remained. From the entailed family flat in Chessels's Court, he had to remove to a den somewhere about the Netherbow: Nanny went with him. Then came the period of wretchedness. Nanny, however, still stuck fast. The unfortunate gentleman could not himself appear in his wo-begone attire upon those streets where he had formerly shone a resplendent sun; neither could he bring his well-born face to solicit his former friends for subsidies. Nanny did all that was necessary. Foul day and fair day, she was to be seen gliding about the streets, either petitioning tradesmen for goods to her master on credit, or collecting food and money from the houses of his acquaintance. If a liquid alms was offered, she had a white tankard, streaked with smoky-looking cracks, for its reception; if the proffered article was a mass of flesh, she had a plate or a towel. There never was such a forager. Nisbet himself used to call her True and Trusty, by way of a compliment to her collective powers; and he finally found so much reason to appreciate her disinterested attachment, that, on reaching the usual fatal period of fifty, he made her his wife! What was the catastrophe of their story I have not heard.

A second instance of the fag-victim is of a still more touching character. Some years ago, there flourished, in one of the principal thoroughfares of Edinburgh, a fashionable perfumer, the inheritor of an old business, and a man of respectable connections, who, falling into dissolute habits, became of course very much embarrassed, and finally unfortunate.' In his shop

་

From youth to age a reverend 'prentice grew ;'

a man, at the time of his master's failure, advanced to

nearly middle life, but who, having never been anywhere else since he was ten or twelve years of age, than behind Finlay's counter-Sundays and meal-hours only excepted -was still looked upon by his master as 'the boy of the shop,' and so styled accordingly. This worthy creature had, in the course of time, become as a mere piece of furniture in the shop; his soul had amalgamated with his situation. The drawers and shottles, the combs, brushes, and bottles, had entered into and become part of his own existence. He was on the best terms with everything about the shop; the handles of all things were fitted to his hand; everything came to him, like the instinctive use of his own members. Such a being was, as may be supposed, a useful servant. He knew all the customers; he knew his master's whole form of practice, all his habits, and every peculiarity of his temper. And then his fidelity; but that was chiefly shewn in the latter evil days of the shop, and during the victimhood of his master. As misfortune came on, the friendship of master and man became more intensely familiar and intimate than it had ever been before. As the proudest man, met by a lion in the desert, makes no scruple to coalesce with his servant in resisting it, so was Finlay induced, by the devouring monster Poverty, to descend to the level, and make a companion of his faithful Boy. They would at last go to the same tavern together, take the same Sunday walks-were, in reality, companions. In all Finlay's distresses, the Boy partook; 'something one day occurred about a bill,' as Crabbe says; it was the Boy who had the chief dolour of its accommodation; he would scour the North and South Bridges, with his hat off, borrowing small silver à l'improviste, as if to make up change to a customer, till he had the necessary sum amassed. The Boy at length became very much demoralised: he grew vicious towards the world, to be the more splendidly virtuous to his master: one grand redeeming quality, after the manner of Moses' serpent, had eaten up all the rest. It were needless to pursue the history of the shop through all its stages of declension.

Through them all the Boy survived, unshaken in his attachment. The shop might fade, grow dim, and die, but the Boy never. The goods might be diminished, the Duke of Wellington might be sold for whisky, and his lady-companions pawn their wigs for mutton-pies; but the Boy was a fixture. There was no pledging away his devoted, inextinguishable friendship. The master at last went to the Canongate Jail-I say went, because, however otherwise sentimental authors may write, imprisonment is with us generally a voluntary act, being designed for an end. The shop was still kept open, and the Boy attended it. But every evening did he repair to the dreary mansion, to solace his master with the news of the day, see after his comforts, and yield up the prey which, jackal-like, he had collected during the preceding four-and-twenty hours. This prey, be it remarked, was not raised from the sale of anything in the shop. Every saleable article had by this time been sold. The only furniture was now a pair of scissors and a comb, together with the announcement, Hair-cutting Rooms,' in the window. By means of these three things, however, the Boy contrived generally to fleece the public of a few sixpences in the day; and all these sixpences, with the exception of a small commission for his own meagre subsistence, went to his master at the Canongate Jail. Often, in the hour between eight and nine in the evening, have they sat in that small dingy back-room behind the hall, enjoying a bottle of strong ale, drunk out of stoneware tumblers -talking over all their embarrassments, and speculating how to get clear of them. Other prisoners had their wives or their brothers to see after them; but I question if any one had, even in these relations of kindred, a friend so attached as the Boy. At length, after a certain period, this unfortunate tradesman was one evening permitted to walk away, arm in arm, with his faithful young man, and the world was all before them where to choose.

For a considerable period, all trace of the attached pair is lost. No doubt their course was through many scenes

of poignant misery; for at the only part of their career upon which I have happened to obtain any light, the Boy was wandering through the streets of Carlisle in the dress and appearance of a very old beggar, and singing the songs wherewith he had formerly delighted the citizens of Edinburgh in Johnnie Dowie's, for the subsistence of his master, who, as ascertained by my informant, was deposited in a state of extreme wretchedness in a low lodging-house in the suburbs. Such is the fagvictim, following his master

'To the last gasp, with truth and loyalty;' and such, I may add, are the virtues which sometimes adorn the most vicious and degraded walks of life, where, to the eyes of ordinary observers, there appears no redeeming feature whatever. R. C.

THE DOWNDRAUGHT.

The

SIDE by side with Victims, might be placed the kindred species Downdraughts, who are only different from the accident of their having friends who will rather be weighed down by them to the very earth, to the grave itself, than permit them to sink by themselves. Downdraught is, in reality, a Victim, and one of the darkest shade, being generally a person totally worthless in character, and abandoned in habits; but then he has not altogether cut the cables which bound him to his native grade in society-he has not all forgot himself to stone; he is still domesticated with his friends; he has a mother, or a wife, or a brother, or a sister, or perhaps an old aunt, who will try to keep him in food and clean linen, and, having lost all hope of his ever being actively good, will do anything for him, if he will only preserve a neutrality, and not be positively evil. He is a victim in appearance-always excepting the clean shirt-but he enjoys the happy superiority over that class, of having an

open door to fly to when he pleases, and either a kind relation, who considers him only a little wild in the meantime, or else one who, for the sake of decent appearances, will endeavour to patch up all his peccadilloes, and even be tyrannised over by him, rather than shock society by an open rupture. The personal tendencies of a Downdraught to victimisation are strong as the currents of the great deep, but he is withheld from it by others. He has always some anchorage or other upon decent life, to keep him back from the gulf to which he would otherwise hurry on. In many cases, the very kindness and indulgence of friends was the original cause of his becoming a Downdraught. He had everything held to his head. He was encouraged in his pretences of headaches as an excuse for staying away from school. When afterwards an apprentice, he was permitted to break off, on the score of being compelled to put on fires and sweep out the shop. Or, perhaps, it was from none of those causes. Possibly, he was just one of those persons who seem to be totally destitute of all perception of the terms upon which men are permitted to exist in this world—that is, that they are either to be so fortunate as to have their fathers born before them,' so that they may accede to wealth without exertion, or must else do something to induce their fellow-creatures to accord them the means of livelihood without beggary. That many persons are really born without this great leading faculty, is unfortunately but too indisputable; and, assuredly, they are as proper inmates for a lunatic asylum as more frantic madmen; for what is the use of reason, or even of talent, without the desire of exerting it, either in one's own behalf, or in behalf of mankind? The terms of existence we allude to are expressed in the text of Scripture, 'By the sweat of thy brow thou shalt earn thy bread;' so that the man must be considered a kind of heretic, as well as a fool, who will not, or cannot, understand them. Yet the fact is so, that many men arrive at maturity with either a sense of these conditions of life more or less imperfect, or no sense of them at