Perish’d the Martyr Student.”
We have nothing to add to this. Had we not hoped to strike a chord of sympathy in our reader’s heart, we should never have even advanced so far, or have uplifted the veil so as to exhibit the “latter end” of such. Reader, in conclusion, you know not the toil, and trouble, and bodily labour, and mental inquietude, that furnish you each week with the price of YOUR PENNY!
S. H.
[1] The writer, as will be seen, has had in view solely the literature of London.
PADDY CORBETT’S FIRST SMUGGLING TRIP.
“Then on the ’tither hand present her,
A blackguard smuggler right behint her,
And cheek-for-chow a chuffle vintner,
Colleaguin’ join.”——Burns.
No order of men has experienced severer treatment from the various classes into which society is divided, than that of excisemen, or, as they are vulgarly denominated, guagers. If, unlike the son of the Hebrew patriarch, their hand is not raised against every man, yet they may be truly said to inherit a portion of Ishmael’s destiny, for every man’s hand is against them. The cordial and unmitigated hostility of the lower classes follows the guager at every point of his dangerous career, whether his pursuit be smuggled goods, potteen, or unpermitted parliament. Literary men have catered to the gratification of the public at his expense, by exhibiting him in their stories of Irish life under such circumstances that the good-natured reader scarcely knows whether to laugh or weep most at his ludicrous distress. The varied powers of rhyme have been pressed into the service by the man of genius and the lover of fun. The “Diel’s awa’ wi’ the Exciseman” of Burns, and the Irishman’s “Paddy was up to the Guager,” will ever remain to prove the truth of the foregoing assertion.