THE FIRST STEP INTO THE WORLD.

In the early Spring of 1812, I stepped for a month or two out of the little world in which I had been living, to come face to face with great public things. I had a friend who was the editor of two daily newspapers, a morning and an evening. What a wonderful man I thought him! I see him now, as I often saw him, sitting in his back office, in a dingy dressing-gown and unshorn beard, dashing off his leader for the evening paper. At two o'clock he dressed, and he kindly took the youth from the country with him for a walk through the Strand, and along the Mall in the Park. The Park was a queer unfashioned place then, with a long dirty pond where Charles II. fed his ducks-no

plantations-no gravelled walks-no gas-lights. But we walked happily enough; and my kind friend told funny Irish stories, and notable anecdotes of Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Ponsonby, with whom he boasted an intimacy. Yet, of the real life about him he knew very little, although he was the editor of two daily papers. To edit a paper then was not very difficult. Many of the thousand complicated social and commercial questions, that have grown up during our long Peace, were then scarcely known, Parlia mentary Reform was considered a dream. If the war was blamed, no one could uphold Napoleon. The tone of the paper was settled by the tone of the party. There were very rarely expresses from great provincial towns-and their local intelligence was mostly left to their own journals Intercourse with foreign States was almost impossible. except through the Government messengers; and they went and came at the cost of several hundred pounds a journey. My good friend's intellect was not greatly

tasked. When we had taken our walk, he had a comfortable dinner; drank a bottle of port, sometimes two; had a nap in his chair undisturbed by the hackney-coaches in the Strand; at nine o'clock, strolled down to the House to know what was going on; wrote his morning leader; and went to bed in very decent time.

I was to have a short training for the still easier life of a country editor, by a month or two in The Gallery,' The first day I went down was a terrible trial of endurance. There was a call of the House; and it was absolutely necessary for the reporters to go in before the general public. There was no accommodation whatever for their admission, and no facilities for their work. It was all crush. At these calls the Strangers' Gallery was looked when the Speaker went to prayers, and all further ingress was prohibited. At twelve, then, I was in the gallery or its lobby; and I stayed there till four o'clock next morning. It was to me a wonderful scene, and I had no desire to leave it. At that call of the House, there wore wil the great ones of the day-how few have not obeyed w higher call!-Abbott, Speaker; Gibbs, Attorney General, Brougham; Burdett; Canning; Castlereagh Grove; Grattan; Horner; Palmerston; Peel; Perceval: You sonby; Romilly; Sir W. Scott; bheridan, Tanay, Whitbread; Wilberforce. There were illustra padd called in that February, 1812. I take down -Haamus ? and I look to see the sort of things I heard de velke "Tenth Session of the fourth Parliament A ua 1 Kingdom.' How obsolete some of the opinione minds What antiquated states of society they represent a Parliament of the Regency, or a Parliament of dated period of Once upon a Time?

or two.

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The nightly watch of the Metropolis. murders in London, by which two whole tosi kor been completely exterminated; and Mr. Mustury do moved for a committee to inquire into a midis nightly watch. Romilly asked where was that Gany wai

and whether all the precautions of the nightly watch
would provide a remedy against the daring highway
robberies committed in the open day?

Death Penalties.- Romilly withdrew his bill for the
amendment of the criminal laws, with one exception. He
brought in a bill to repeal the Act of Elizabeth, under
which soldiers and sailors found begging were punishable
with death. But the legislature restored the balance in
this session, by hastily passing a bill which made frame-
breaking a capital crime, instead of being a transportable

offence.

Flogging in the Army. With respect to the man who had been spoken of, he might have died after receiving two hundred and twenty-four lashes, but they could not be the

cause of his death.'

By way of illustration of the condition of society in this year 1812, I open The Annual Register,' and in 'The Chronicle' under the date January 1, I find it recorded that the body of John Williams, who had committed one of the family murders referred to in Parliament, and whe had died by his own hand in prison, was placed on a platform six feet high, having on 'a clean white shirt, very neatly frilled.' The mall and chisel with which he committed the murders were placed on the side of the head. And thus, in solemn procession, with headboroughs and constables to the number of three hundred, the car was drawn to the house in Ratcliff Highway, where one murder was committed; and the body was turned so that the face of the dead man might be directly opposite the scene of atrocity.' Again the procession moved, and again it stopped for another quarter of an hour before the house where another murder had been committed. It finally proceeded to the New Road, where the body was cast inte a hole, amidst the acclamations of thousands of spectators." Here is a pleasant exhibition to begin the year with, for the edification of a London that in every other mode of instruction was utterly neglected. Page after page of the Chronicle' furnishes details of robbery and murder, riot

and slaughter. The terrors of fanaticism were added to those of natural fear. On the 20th of February a dissenting minister appeared in a boat on the Thames, dressed in a white linen robe, with his long hair flowing over his shoulders, and proclaimed that the Seven Vials of the Book of Revelations were to be poured out upon the city of London. Crime seemed to have lost all dread of the law. On the 22nd of March the Judge at the Assize at Reading, coming out of the church in grand procession, was hustled and robbed of his gold watch and seals. The punishments of the law were horribly unequal. A farmer near Ashford, finding some boys trespassing in his orchard, strikes one of them over the head with a stake. The boy kneels and begs for mercy; but the farmer repeats the blow, and fractures the skull. It was sworn on the defence that the skull was so remarkably thin that a very slight blow would fracture it;' and so, upon this scientific evidence, the farmer was fined a shilling and discharged. Hanging was so common that it became a joke amongst the people. A police-officer saw two men upon a wall in the Hampstead Road, and shortly after one of the two was hanging to a lamp-post. The short man had turned off the tall man; they having, after an agreeable day of drinking and gambling, tossed up which should hang the other. Amidst all this lawlessness, the Prince Regent gave the most magnificent entertainment on record at Carlton House. To crown the horrors of the spring of 1812, Mr. Perceval was assassinated on the 11th of May, in the lobby of the House of Commons. I was for two months in London in a time that is now fearful to read about. But the world went on as usual then; and looking back upon my own limited experience, I do not recollect a merrier season than that first year of the Regency.

That session was one of high political importance:-The - settlement of the Royal Household; Orders in Council; Catholic Emancipation; the War in Spain. There was great eloquence in the Commons-the grace of Canningthe vehemence of Brougham-Romilly, grave and earnest

-Perceval, mild and persuasive-the silver voice of Wilberforce-the manly ardour of Whitbread. But what a corps of Reporters! There was ability enough amongst them; but nobody seemed to feel that he was engaged in a grave duty. They were a merry set in the Exchequer coffee-house. A head peeps in, Now, Flaherty.' Who's up? Creevey.' Oh, I know all he can say-no hurry. You were observing '—'Waiter, another bottle of that old port.'

And then the Saturday evening oratory of the same set that I had met in the gallery, at the Eccentrics,' in May's Buildings. There is a great gathering. A charge against Mr. Howley has been announced at a previous meeting. The charge comes on. Mr. Grant brings the charge-that Mr. Howley is a poet. Mr. Davis is called as witness. He proves that Mr. Howley was an elegiac poet; that he was a lyric poet,-that he wrote an Ode to Winter, beginning All hail;' that he had answered an advertisement to the effect that any person competent to write ballads of a superior description, and in serious style, might hear of

occupation;'-that he was a descriptive poet, and had

written a tender piece, commencing with

'How beautiful the country doth appear,

At this time of the year!'

con

Then various wits spoke for and against the charge; and Mr. Sheil gave an oration upon poetry in general; cluding with a peroration touching the magnificent calm of the poet while there is war, and want, and tumult, and

and

earthquake sorrow all around him. 'Oh! there is an under his feet, and the soil heaves with a tremulous impatience, and the seas rush from their beds, and the air is darkened, and the vulture screams, and the palaces a the temples rock with a wide-spreading and all-involving fury; but he stands erect amidst the convulsion, creeps out of the ruins, sings his song of gladness in the desert, and comes once more into the breeze and the sunshine.' And then Mr. Quin, the editor of The Day,' rushes from his