'Perhaps you may have seen a man of the world, under the shadow of a tavern sign-post, discoursing wisdom to the simple-hearted villagers. He has the infallible marks of a truly great man legible in his face; bloated veins, and an indented excrescence surmounting his nose, and flaming like a fiëry beacon with the condensed heat of unnumbered barrels of all 'proofs.' His libations to Bacchus have given a remarkable clarification to the emanations of his intellect, as is discoverable in the vividness with which his wisdom glares on the understandings of all who hear him. A flippant attorney is, perhaps, at his side; and the worthy twain discuss national policies, while the unsophisticated lookers-on stand mute, admiring the prodigious display of genius. The village magistrate imbibes ideas which astonish his natural stock of well-behaved ones, that never strayed beyond the hill-top in the distance, or flew off on a wild goose-chase after the phantoms of knowledge. The man of the world lays down his positions, and fortifies them with the maxims he learned from his predecessor, who sleeps in the church-yard. The pettifogger capitulates to his invincible adversary, and acknowledges in him one whose dogmas it were irreverent to doubt.
'Your man of the world never goes to church. His own experience furnishes principles for the government of men, vastly superior to all that Christianity ever dreamed of. He has an intuitive perception into the minds of children, and can predict, to a nicety, the amount of power their intellectual machinery will be able, in time to come, to generate. He believes that scarcely an honest man, beside himself, lives; and as to women, they are not a whit better than they ought to be. Lastly, your man of the world is the chief light of the world, and when he dies, the heavens will be hung in gloom, and the edifice of society will fall into dilapidation; as he, while living, was its chief prop and support.'
On the afternoon of the day on which the above article appeared, Mr. James Summers, who sat for the portrait of the 'Man of the World,' ordered his paper to be stopped, as he could not 'conscientiously patronize one devoted to Billingsgate interests, and edited by a person who had evidently received a diploma for his proficiencies, from the college of Saint Giles!'
This is a specimen of one class of miseries to which editors are subject. They rack their weary brains for subjects; and when they dissect them properly, it frequently happens that some subscriber, who fancies himself aggrieved, says, with poor Dennis the critic, 'That means me!'—and forthwith sends in a peremptory order to have 'his paper discontinued.' And thus the editor not only loses some one's friendship, but, what is of more importance, his subscription.
Subscribers! one word to you. Support your editor through his difficulties; and whatever else you neglect, be sure you do not forget to pay for your intellectual provant; that is, if you would pass decently through this world, and reach heaven at last!