in force, and which not,—these kindnesses
place them in the first rank of our (the
rogues'), benefactors.

I am afraid the list of my friends would
prove rather a voluminous one, were I to
furnish a correct account of them, but I will
only mention a few more. There is, for example,
my fat friend with the heavy bunch of seals
attached to his watch, implying wealth, and
a red spot upon his nose, implying choler, and
who tells me (the red spot upon his nose
glowing brightly the while), "I will have
my rights, sir, I will have my rights, if I
spend every farthing I have in the world,
sir!" There is my friend who experiences
the greatest delight in being a plaintiff,
only to be surpassed by the inexpressible
happiness of being a defendant, and who
looks upon two referees and an umpire as
a resuscitation of the domestic economy of
Paradise. There are in effect endless varieties
of my friends who go to law, or who
are driven to law, or who are born to law, as
plaintiffs and defendants are born to a good
sound Chancery suit, and bequeath it as
a somewhat unwelcome legacy to their
children.

I think, perhaps, it might enhance the
virtues of my friends, were I to mention a
few of my enemies. They are, unfortunately,
very numerous. It may appear a trivial
circumstance to the general public, but I
nevertheless look upon the man who made a
Release as effectual as a Lease and Release
by the same parties, my enemy. It may be
that he robbed me of the dearest privilege I
possess, verbosity—words, words, words
extended to folios, folios, folios, dear to
my heart. The man who has been instrumental
in clothing the country with paltry
County Courts, is distinctly my enemy; so
also must I esteem him who has been the
means of admitting a plaintiff (as if he could
possibly have anything to say in the matter!),
as witness in his own cause. The ruthless
monster who deprived me at one fell swoop
of my respected friends John Doe and Richard
Roe, I hold to be the very chiefest of the
class.

There is a mischievous spirit of innovation
—miscalled reform—abroad at the present
day, which, I fear, will greatly swell the ranks
of my deadliest enemies. Scarcely have I
recovered the shock occasioned by the abrupt
demise of my friends above-named, when I
hear it rumoured that I am to be denied the
privilege of conducting a husband's action
towards pecuniary compensation for his
wife's dishonour. This is the act of an enemy,
and an enemy not only to me, but to the
British public; for, is he not depriving that
respectable body, of the perusal of those
piquant and highly-coloured reports which
(every newspaper editor knows),are eminently
calculated to improve the morals of the youth
—male and female—of this country? Is he
not, moreover, depriving the British husband
of that sweetest panacea for all ills—
and if for all ills, then for so simple a matter
as his wife's dishonour—money?

CIRCASSIA.

BEEF and mutton being scarce with the
French army in the Crimea, in the summer
of eighteen hundred and fifty-five an expedition
was organised by Commissary General
Blanchot to procure, from the coast of
Circassia, a supply of those necessary articles,
without which even Frenchmen cannot fight.
The members of the expedition, were not
numerous, consisting only of Commissary de
la Valette, Dr. Jeannel, the principal apothecary
to the army, a Greek Smyrniote
interpreter, a Tatar prince from the Crimea, a
subordinate commissariat officer, and five
men. Of this party, the prince, who had
either squandered his revenues, or never had
any to squander, was the only person whose
appearance presented anything remarkable.
He was, says Dr. Jeannel, the historian of
the expedition, whose account we follow—a
little man, from thirty-five to forty years of
age, very thin, very dirty, very brown, and
very miserable looking, with eyes of leaden
hue, and a fierce, bristly moustache; he wore
a fez cap, a cloth frock, a satin waistcoat,
and a pair of trowsers of the stuff which the
French call lasting, and which, perhaps,
deserved the name, considering the wear and
tear it had had in the prince's service. In
his habits the prince was solitary, silent, and
impassive—princely qualifications all; and he
possessed, moreover—what many princes
have been famous for—an appetite of
tremendous voracity. Taken altogether, without
the satin waistcoat and the other vile
lendings, he suggested the idea of some wild
animal that had been bullied into and made
wretched by domestic life: let us say, a sort
of washed-out hyæna. He was supposed,
however, to possess some kind of influence
with the natives whom it was desirable to
hire at Kertch and Yeni-kalé, as cattle- drivers,
and for this reason he was attached to the
expedition at the ruinous salary of five francs
a-day, a stipulation being entered into, on
account of his dignity—greatly sustained by
his satin waistcoat—that he should be
admitted to the extreme left, which we will call
the bottom, of the dining-table.

Our own correspondents have given so
many and such striking descriptions of the
southern coast of the Crimea, that the
raptures of Dr. Jeannel, as fresh beauties
disclosed themselves between Balaklava and
Yalta, need not be detailed. We will land
him at Yeni-kalé, whence the officers of the
expedition were freighted to the Turkish
Pasha in command of the Ottoman forces,
whom they found sitting, smoking, on a
tattered, broken-down sofa, in a small,
unfurnished, windowless room, and accepting his
fate with true oriental submission.