you have actually consumed. When your
free and solvent friends from outside come
to pay you a visit, they are allowed access to
you from eight in the morning till nine at
night, you are at perfect liberty to talk to
them as long as you please, and need have no
fear that any prison authority will be mean
enough to listen outside your door. When I
was in the sponging-house, and when my
friends came to see me, a crocodile with his
ear at the key-hole was part of the necessary
furniture of the establishment. Oh, the
happiness of being in Newgate! you remember
how my letters were treated by the swine of
the sponging-house? Your letters are carried
for you with the swiftest despatch by the
safest of special messengers for any small
gratuity you please to offer. Oh, the privilege
of inhabiting one's county gaol! Can
words describe your life of comfort and
economy as contrasted with my wretched
existence of squalor and expense? No, words
cannot describe it; but the superior
eloquence of figures may compass the achievement.
Let us, to complete the parallel,
examine and compare (under the authority
of B. L.) the respective daily bills that you
and I have to pay— I for staying four and
twenty hours in a sponging-house: you, for
staying four and twenty hours in the Debtors'
side of Newgate prison.
This is the Bill paid by the insolvent author
to the Cannibal of a Sponging-House in the
year seventeen hundred and twenty-four, for
one night's lodging and one day's expense:
| £ | s. | d. |
| For my night's lodging | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| For my breakfast | 0 | 1 | 0 |
For one quart of drink at my
breakfast, of which I did not
swallow one drop |
0 |
0 |
4 |
For half-a-pint of brandy, which
likewise never approached my
lips |
0 |
1 |
4 |
| For my dinner | 0 | 2 | 0 |
For my drink at dinner: one
glass to me, and all the rest
to the bailiff |
0 |
2 |
0 |
Brandy after dinner, half-a-pint:
entirely used in assuaging the
bailiff's colic |
0 |
1 |
4 |
Tobacco and pipes: to quiet the
bailiff's nerves after he had
recovered from the colic |
0 |
1 |
0 |
My keeper's dinner (and a much
better one than mine) | 0 | 1 | 0 |
My keeper's day's attendance on
me | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| My supper | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| My drink at supper | 0 | 0 | 8 |
Brandy at supper: for the
keeper's colic | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| My total | 0 | 17 | 6 |
This is the Bill paid by the insolvent reader
to the paternal authorities of Newgate, in the
year seventeen hundred and twenty-four, for
one night's lodging and one day's expense:
| £ | s. | d. |
| For your night's lodging | 0 | 0 | 4½ |
| For your breakfast | 0 | 0 | 3½ |
| For your dinner | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| For your supper | 0 | 0 | 4 |
For your drink, all day, allowing
you three quarts of beer, and
remembering that none of your
keepers are officially attacked
with colic |
0 |
0 |
9 |
| Your total | 0 | 2 | 3 |
From this comparison of bills it appears
that you save (in the year seventeen
hundred and twenty-four) fifteen shillings and
three-pence a day by going straight to
Newgate instead of going into a sponging-house.
Having carried his parallel safely forward
to this striking and unanswerable result,
B. L. wisely leaves his facts and figures to
speak for themselves, and closes that part
of his Treatise which has established his
claim to the honorable title of The Debtor's
Best Friend. It would be a curious
subject for investigation to ascertain how far
the parallel instituted by B. L. might hold
good in the present day. The author can
only excuse himself for not making the
inquiry, by confessing, to his shame, that he
has not public spirit enough to qualify
himself for properly collecting the necessary
facts, by becoming a debtor and entering a
sponging-house. He is as anxious, in his
way, as the anonymous " B. L., of Twickenham"
to promote " the public good," but
his patriotism has its limits, and he finds
that bailiffs and turnkeys stand at some
distance on the outer side of his mental
boundary-line. Having confessed his weakness
in these plain terms, he will ask
permission to abandon the topic of imprisonment
for debt, content with having given
the reader some idea of the abuses of
sponging-houses and the merits of county
gaols in the last century, and perfectly
willing to resign the honour of discussing
the subject in its modern bearings, to any
other gentleman who can speak from that
superior position of practical experience to
which he most devoutly hopes that he himself
may never attain.
THOR AND THE GIANTS.
A PORTION of the Edda, or chief religious
book of the Pagan Scandinavians, is
engrossed by the adventures on earth of the
God Thor, the Thunderer, who seems to
combine some of the attributes of the Greek
Jupiter and Hercules. Like the former, he
was the mightiest of the Gods, at least in the
estimation of some of the northern nations,
though others regarded Odin as the chief,—
like the latter, he went about from land to land
performing extraordinary feats of valour and
clearing the world of evil things. There was
something of a celestial prize-fighter character
about him, as there was about the
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