The design of this paper, in the New Monthly Magazine, is by no means novel; but the fine, cutting satire—the pleasant, lively banter on our vices and follies—which pervades every page of the article, is a set-off to the political frenzy and the literary lumber of other Magazines of the month. Each of them, it is true, has a readable paper, but one gem only contributes to a Magazine in the proportion of one swallow to a summer.
Here are three pages of the New Monthly Devil:
"A stranger, Sir, in the library," said my servant in opening the door.
"Indeed! what a short, lame gentleman?"
"No, Sir; middle-sized,—has very much the air of a lawyer or professional man."
I entered the room, and instead of the dwarf demon Le Sage described, I beheld a comely man seated at the table, with a high forehead, a sharp face, and a pair of spectacles on his nose. He was employed in reading the new novel of "The Usurer's Daughter."
"This cannot be the devil!" said I to myself; so I bowed, and asked the gentleman his business.
"Tush!" quoth my visiter; "and how did you leave the Doctor?"
"It is you, then!" said I; "you have grown greatly since you left Don Cleofas."
"Wars fatten our tribe," answered the Devil; "besides shapes are optional with me, and in England men go by appearances more than they do abroad; one is forced to look respectable and portly; the Devil himself could not cheat your countrymen with a shabby exterior. Doubtless you observe that all the swindlers, whose adventures enliven your journals, are dressed 'in the height of fashion,' and enjoy 'a mild prepossessing demeanour.' Even the Cholera does not menace 'a gentleman of the better ranks;' and no bodies are burked with a decent suit of clothes on their backs. Wealth in all countries is the highest possible morality; but you carry the doctrine to so great an excess, that you scarcely suffer the poor man to exist at all. If he take a walk in the country, there's the Vagrant Act; and if he has not a penny to hire a cellar in town, he's snapped up by a Burker, and sent off to the surgeons in a sack. It must be owned that no country affords such warnings to the spendthrift. You are one great moral against the getting rid of one's money."