“It is the celebrated” (in England all criminals are celebrated. Thurtell was a hero, Thistlewood a patriot, and Fauntleroy was discovered to be exactly like Buonaparte!) “it is the celebrated robber, John Jefferies, who broke into Mrs. Wilson’s house, and cut the throats of herself and her husband, wounded the maid-servant, and split the child’s skull with the poker.” Clarence pressed forward: “I have seen that man before,” thought he. He looked again, and recognized the face of the robber who had escaped from Talbot’s house on the eventful night which had made Clarence’s fortune. It was a strongly-marked and rather handsome countenance, which would not be easily forgotten; and a single circumstance of excitement will stamp features on the memory as deeply as the commonplace intercourse of years.
“John Jefferies!” exclaimed the baronet; “let us come away.”
“Linden,” continued Sir Christopher, “that fellow was my servant once. He robbed me to some considerable extent. I caught him. He appealed to my heart; and you know, my dear fellow, that was irresistible, so I let him off. Who could have thought he would have turned out so?” And the baronet proceeded to eulogize his own good-nature, by which it is just necessary to remark that one miscreant had been saved for a few years from transportation, in order to rob and murder ad libitum, and, having fulfilled the office of a common pest, to suffer on the gallows at last. What a fine thing it is to have a good heart! Both our gentlemen now sank into a revery, from which they were awakened, at the entrance of the park, by a young man in rags who, with a piteous tone, supplicated charity. Clarence, who, to his honour be it spoken, spent an allotted and considerable part of his income in judicious and laborious benevolence, had read a little of political morals, then beginning to be understood, and walked on. The good-hearted baronet put his hand in his pocket, and gave the beggar half a guinea, by which a young, strong man, who had only just commenced the trade, was confirmed in his imposition for the rest of his life; and, instead of the useful support, became the pernicious incumbrance of society.
Sir Christopher had now recovered his spirits. “What’s like a good action?” said he to Clarence, with a swelling breast.
The park was crowded to excess; our loungers were joined by Lord St. George. His lordship was a stanch Tory. He could not endure Wilkes, liberty, or general education. He launched out against the enlightenment of domestics. [The ancestors of our present footmen, if we may believe Sir William Temple, seem to have been to the full as intellectual as their descendants. “I have had,” observes the philosophic statesman, “several servants far gone in divinity, others in poetry; have known, in the families of some friends; a keeper deep in the Rosicrucian mysteries and a laundress firm in those of Epicurus.”]
“What has made you so bitter?” said Sir Christopher.
“My valet,” cried Lord St. George,—“he has invented a new toasting-fork, is going to take out a patent, make his fortune, and leave me; that’s what I call ingratitude, Sir Christopher; for I ordered his wages to be raised five pounds but last year.”
“It was very ungrateful,” said the ironical Clarence.
“Very!” reiterated the good-hearted Sir Christopher.
“You cannot recommend me a valet, Findlater,” renewed his lordship, “a good, honest, sensible fellow, who can neither read nor write?”