The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. Volume 2

I being a Servant, and so unjustly accounted of Base Degree by these Sour-Cabbage gorging and Sourer-Beer swilling High Dutch Bed-Pressers, was put into the Common Ward with the Raff; while my Master was suffered, on Payment of Fees, to have better lodgings. Gaolers are Gaolers all over the world, and Golden Fetters are always the lightsomest. We were some Sixty Rascals (that is to say, Fifty-nine scoundrels, with one Honest Youth, your Humble Servant) in the Common Room, with but one Bed between us; this being, indeed, but a Raised Wooden Platform, like that you see in a Soldiers' Guard Room. They brought us some Straw every day, and littered us down Dog Fashion, and that was all we had for Lodging Gear. It mattered little. There was a Roof to the Gaol that was weather-tight, and what more could a Man want? – until things got better at least.

Which they speedily did; and neither Master nor Man came to any very great harm. 'Twas a near touch, though; and the safety of Jack Dangerous's bones hung for days, so I was afterwards told, by the merest thread. They deliberated long and earnestly about my case among themselves. It was even, I believe, brought before the Aulic Council; but, after about a week's confinement, and much going to and fro between the English Embassador and the Great ones of the Court, Mr. Pinchin had signified to him that he might procure his Enlargement by paying a Fine of Eight Hundred Florins, which was reckoned remarkably cheap, considering his outrageous behaviour at the Shooting match. Some days longer they thought fit to detain Me; but My Master, after he regained his liberty, came to see me once and sometimes twice a day; and through his and Mr. Hodge's kindness, I was supplied with as good Victuals and Drink as I had heretofore been accustomed to. Indeed, such abundant fare was there provided for me, that I had always a superfluity, and I was enabled to relieve the necessities and fill the bellies of many poor Miserable Hungry creatures who otherwise must have starved; for 'twas the custom of the Crown only to allow their Captives a few Kreutzers, amounting to some twopence-farthing a day English, for their subsistence. The Oldest Prisoner in the Ward, whom they called Father of the Room, would on this Bare Pittance take tithe and toll, often in a most Extortionate manner. Then these Gaol birds would fall to thieving from one another, even as they slept; and if a man was weak of Arm and Feeble of Heart, he might go for a week without touching a doit of his allowance, and so might Die of Famine, unless he could manage to beg a little filthy Cabbage Soup, or a lump of Black Bread, from some one not wholly without Bowels of Compassion.

But I had not been here more than a month when the instances of my master at length prevailed, and I too was Enlarged; only some Fifty Florins being laid upon me by way of fine. This mulct was paid perforce by Mr. Pinchin; for as 'twas through his mad folly, and no fault of my own, that I had come to Sorrow, he was in all Justice and Equity bound to bear me harmless in the Consequences. He was fain, however, to make some Demur, and to Complain, in his usual piteous manner, of being so amerced.

"Suppose you had been sentenced to Five Hundred Blows of a Stick, sirrah," – 'twas thus he put the case to me, logically enough, – "would you have expected me to pay for thee in carcase, as now I am paying for thee in Purse?"

"Circumstances alter cases," interposes Mr. Hodge in my behalf. "Here is luckily no question of Stripes at all. John may bless his Stars that he hath gotten off without a Rib-Roasting; and to your Worship, after the Tune they have made you dance to, and the Piper you have paid, what is this miserable little Fine of Fifty Florins?" So my Master paid; and Leaving another Ten Florins for the poor Losels in the Gaol to drink his health in, we departed from that place of Durance, thinking ourselves, and with reason, very well out of it.

Servants are not always so lucky when they too implicitly obey the behests of their Masters, or, in a hot fever of Fidelity, stand up for them in Times of Danger or Desperate Affrays. Has there not ever been brought under your notice that famous French Law Case, of the Court Lady, – the Dame de Liancourt, I think she was called, – against whom another Dame had a Spite, either for her Beauty, or her Wit, or her Riches' sake? She, riding one day in her Coach-and-Six by a cross-road, comes upon the Dame de Liancourt, likewise in her Coach-and-Six, both ladies having the ordinary complement of Running Footmen. My Lady who had a Spite against her of Liancourt whispers to her Lacqueys; and these poor Faithful Rogues, too eager to obey their Mistress's commands, ran to the other coach-door, pulled out that unlucky Dame de Liancourt, and then and there inflicted on her that shameful chastisement which jealous Venus, as the Poetry books say, did, once upon a time, order to poor Psyche; and which, even in our own times, so I have heard, Madame du Barry, the last French King's Favourite, did cause Four Chambermaids to inflict on some Lady about Versailles with whom she had cause of Anger. At any rate, the cruel and Disgraceful thing was done, the Dame sitting in her coach meanwhile clapping her hands. O! 'twas a scandalous thing. The poor Dame de Liancourt goes, Burning with Rage and Shame, to the Chief Town of the Province, to lodge her complaint. The matter is brought before the Parliament, and in due time it goes to Paris, and is heard and re-heard, the Judges all making a Mighty to-do about it; and at last, after some two years and a half's litigation, is settled in this wise. My Lady pays a Fine and the Costs, and begs the Dame de Liancourt's pardon. But what, think you, becomes of the two poor Lacqueys that had been rash enough to execute her Revengeful Orders? Why, at first they are haled about from one gaol to another for Thirty Months in succession, and then they are subjected to the question, Ordinary and Extraordinary – that is to say, to the Torture; and at last, when my Lady is paying her fine of 10,000 livres, I think, or about Four Hundred Pounds of our Money, the Judges at Paris pronounce against these two poor Devils of Footmen, – that were as innocent of any Malice in the Matter as the Babe that is unborn, and only Did what they were Told, – that one is to be Hanged in the Place de Grève, and the other banished to the Galleys, there to be chained to the Oar for life. A fine Encouragement truly for those who think that, for good Victuals and a Fine Livery, they are bound to obey all the Humours and Caprices, even to the most Unreasonable and most Arbitrary, of their Masters and Mistresses.

We were in no great Mood, after this Affair was over, to remain in Vienna. Mr. Pinchin did at first purpose journeying through the Province of Styria by Gratz, to a little town on the sea-coast, called Trieste, – that has much grown in importance during these latter days, – and so crossing the Gulf to Venice; but he abandoned this Scheme. His health was visibly breaking; his Funds, he said, were running low; he was more anxious about his Mamma than ever; and 'twas easy to see that he was half-weary and half-afraid of the Chaplain and Myself, and that he desired nothing Half so Much as to get Rid of us Both. So we packed up, and resumed our Wanderings, but in Retreat instead of Advance. We passed, coming back, through Dresden, where there are some fine History Pictures, and close to which the Saxon Elector had set up a great Factory for the making of painted Pottery Ware: not after the monstrous Chinese Fashion, but rather after the Mode practised with great Success at our own Chelsea. The manner of making this Pottery was, however, kept a high State Secret by the government of the then Saxon Elector; and no strangers were, on any pretence, admitted to the place where the Works were carried on; so of this we saw nothing: and not Sorry was I of the privation, being utterly Wearied and palled with much gadding about and Sight-seeing. So post to Frankfort, where there were a many Jews; and thence to Mayence; and from thence down the grand old River Rhine to the City of Cologne; whence, by the most lagging stages I did ever know, to Bruxelles. But we stayed not here to see the sights – not even the droll little statue of the Mannikin (at the corner of a street, in a most improper attitude; and there is a Group quite as unseemly in one of the Markets, so I was told, although at that time we were fain to pass them by), which Mannikin the burgesses of Bruxelles regard as a kind of tutelary Divinity, and set much greater store by than do we by our London Stone, or Little Naked Boy in Panyer Alley. But it is curious to mark what strange fanteagues these Foreigners run mad after.

At Bruxelles my Master buys an old Post Carriage – cost him Two Hundred and Fifty Livres, which was not dear; and the wretched horses of the country being harnessed thereto, we made Paris in about a week afterwards. We alighted at a decent enough kind of Inn, in the Place named after Lewis the Great (an eight-sided space, and the houses handsome, though not so large as Golden Square). There was a great sight the day after our coming, which we could not well avoid seeing. This was the Burial of a certain great nobleman, a Duke and Marshal of France, and at the time of his Decease Governor of the City of Paris. I have forgotten his name; but it does not so much matter at this time of day, his Grace and Governorship being as dead as Queen Anne. It began (the Burial), on foot, from his house, which was next door but one to our Inn, and went first to his Parish Church, and thence, in coaches, right to the other end of Paris, to a Monastery where his Lordship's Family Vault was. There was a prodigious long procession of Flambeaux; Friars, white, black, and gray, very trumpery, and marvellous foul-looking; no plumes, banners, scutcheons, led horses, or open chariots, – altogether most mean obsequies. The march began at eight in the evening, and did not end till four o'clock the next morning, for at each church they passed they stopped for a Hymn and Holy Water. And, by the way, we were told that one of these same choice Friars, who had been set to watching the body while it lay in state, fell asleep one night, and let the Tapers catch fire of the rich Velvet Mantle, lined with Ermine and powdered over with gold Flower-de-Luces, which melted all the candles, and burnt off one of the feet of the Departed, before it wakened the watcher.

It was afterwards my fortune to know Paris very well; but I cannot say that I thought much of the place on first coming to it. Dirt there was everywhere, and the most villanous smells that could be imagined. A great deal of Show, but a vein of Rascal manners running through it all. Nothing neat or handsomely ordered. Where my Master stood to see the Burial Procession, the balcony was hung with Crimson Damask and Gold; but the windows behind him were patched in half-a-dozen places with oiled paper. At Dinner they gave you at least Three Courses; but a third of the Repast was patched up with Sallets, Butter, Puff-paste, or some such miscarriages of Dishes. Nothing like good, wholesome, substantial Belly-Timber. None but Germans, and other Strangers, wore fine clothes; the French people mainly in rags, but powdered up to their eyebrows. Their coaches miserably horsed, and rope-harnessed; yet, in the way of Allegories on the panels, all tawdry enough for the Wedding of Cupid and Psyche. Their shop-signs extremely laughable. Here some living at the Y Gue; some at Venus's Toilette; and others at the Sucking Cat. Their notions of Honour most preposterous. It was thought mighty dishonourable for any that was a Born Gentleman not to be in the Army, or in the King's Service, but no dishonour at all to keep Public Gaming Houses; there being at least five hundred persons of the first Quality in Paris living by it. You might go to their Houses at all Hours of the Night, and find Hazard, Pharaoh, &c. The men who kept the gaming-tables at the Duke of Gesvres' paid him twelve guineas a night for the privilege. Even the Princesses of the Blood were mean enough to go snacks in the profits of the banks kept in their palaces. I will say nothing more of Paris in this place, save that it was the fashion of the Ladies to wear Red Hair of a very deep hue; these said Princesses of the Blood being consumedly carroty. And I do think that if a Princess of the Blood was born with a Tail, and chose to show it, tied up with Pea-Green Ribbon, through the Placket-hole of her Gown, the Ladies, not only in France, but all over the World, would be proud to sport Tails with Pea-Green Ribbons, – or any other colour that was the mode, – whether they were Born with 'em or not.

Nothing more that is worthy of Mention took place until our leaving Paris. We came away in a calash, that is, my Master and the Chaplain, riding at their Ease in that vehicle, while I trotted behind on a little Bidet, and posted it through St. Denis to Beauvais. So on to Abbeville, where they had the Impudence to charge us Ten Livres for three Dishes of Coffee, and some of the nastiest Eau de Vie that ever I tasted; excusing themselves, the Rogues, on the score that Englishmen were scarce nowadays. And to our great Relief, we at last arrived at Calais, where we had comfortable Lodgings, and good fare, at a not too exorbitant rate. Here we had to wait four days for a favourable Wind; and even then we found the Packet Boat all taken up for Passengers, and not a place on board to be had either for Love or Money. As Mr. Pinchin was desperately pressed to reach his Native Land, to wait for the next boat seemed utterly intolerable to him; so, all in a Hurry, and being cheated, as folks when they are in a Hurry must needs be, we bargained for a Private Yatch to take us to Dover. The Master would hear of nothing less than five-and-twenty guineas for the voyage, which, with many Sighs and almost Weeping, my poor Little Master agrees to give. He might have recouped himself ten guineas of the money; for there was a Great Italian Singing Woman, with her Chambermaid, her Valet de Chambre, a Black Boy, and a Monkey, bound for the King's Opera House in the Haymarket, very anxious to reach England, and willing to pay Handsomely – out of English pockets in the long-run – for the accommodation we had to give; but my capricious Master flies into a Tiff, and vows that he will have no Foreign Squallers on board his Yatch with him. So the poor Signora – who was not at all a Bad-looking woman, although mighty Brown of visage – was fain to wait for the next Packet; and we went off in very great state, but still having to Pay with needless heaviness for our Whistle. And, of course, all the way there was nothing but whining and grumbling on his Worship's part, that so short a trip should have cost him Twenty-five Guineas. The little Brute was never satisfied; and when I remembered the Life I had led with him, despite abundant Victuals, good Clothes, and decent Wages, I confess that I felt half-inclined to pitch him over the Taffrail, and make an End of him, for good and all.

The villanous Tub which the Rascals who manned it called a Yatch was not Seaworthy, wouldn't answer her Helm, and floundered about in the Trough of the Sea for a day and a half; and even then we did not make Dover, but were obliged to beat up for Ramsgate. We had been fools enough to pay the Fare beforehand; and these Channel Pirates were unconscionable enough to demand Ten Guineas more, swearing that they would have us up before the Mayor – who, I believe, was in league with 'em – if we did not disburse. Then the Master of the Port came upon us for Dues and Light Tolls; and a Revenue Pink boarded us, the Crew getting Half-drunk at our Expense, under pretence of searching for contraband, and sticking to us till we had given the Midshipman a guinea, and another guinea to the Crew, to drink our Healths.

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.

OF CERTAIN TICKLISH UPS AND DOWNS IN MY LIFE: AMONGST OTHERS OF MY BEING PRESSED FOR SERVICE IN THE FLEET

The best of Friends, says the Proverb, must part, and so must the worst, or the most indifferent of companions. By this time, I apprehend, – that is to say, the year 1728, Messieurs Pinchin, Hodge, and Dangerous had had quite enough of each other's company, and 'twas ripe Time for 'em to Part. Not but what there were some difficulties in the way. 'Twas not to be denied that my little Master was a parcel curmudgeon, very vain and conceited, very difficult of management in his Everlasting Tempers, and a trifle Mad, besides; but his service – apart from the inconvenience of bearing with a tetchy, half Lunatic Ape of Quality, was light and easy; the victuals were abundant and the Wages were comfortable. There must be two parties to make a quarrel, and when Master and servant propose to part, there should be a perfect agreement between them as to the manner of their going asunder. A Hundred times, vexed by the follies and exactions of the little man, I had sworn that I would doff his livery, and have nothing more to do with him; but then came the Reflection of the certain Bite and Sup, and I withheld my abandonment of Service. It may be that the Chaplain, Mr. Hodge, was very much of the same mind as your Humble. He said often, that he had been bearleader quite long enough to this young Cub, and was sick alike of his savage hugs, and uncouth gestures, when he had a mind to dance. Yet was he wise enough in his generation to acknowledge the commodity of a fat Pasty and a full Flask every day in the year, and of a neverfailing crown piece in the pouch in the morning for a draught to cool one's throat, when the bottle had been pushed about pretty briskly overnight. Parson Hodge was a philosopher. "I don't like the kicks," quoth he; "but when halfpence come along with 'em, they cease to be intolerable."

However, all our nice weighings of Pros and Cons were brought to a very abrupt standstill upon our arrival at Dover (having taken a post chariot from Ramsgate) by the Inconceivable Behaviour of Mr. Pinchin. This young Gentleman, utterly forgetting the claims of Duty, of Honour, of Honesty, and of Gratitude, fairly Ran away from us, his faithful and Attached Domestics. Without with your leave or by your leave he showed us a clean pair of Heels. He left a very cool Letter for the Chaplain in the hands of the master of the Inn where we put up, in which he repeated his old uncivil Accusation, that we had eaten him out of House and Home, that we were Leeches, Pirates, bloodsucking vampires, and the like – myself he even did the honour to call a Designing Cockatrice – and that he had fled from us to save the small remains of his Fortune from being Devoured, and intended to rejoin his long-neglected Mamma. Mr. Hodge read me this letter with a very long face, and asked me what I intended to do. I answered that I should be better able to tell him when he had read me the Postscript to the letter, for that I hardly fancied that Squire Pinchin would behave in so Base and Mean a manner as to run away without paying his Body Servant's wages. Upon this the Reverend Gentleman hems and ha's somewhat, and gave me to understand that Mr. Pinchin had enclosed a draft upon a Goldsmith in Change Alley in part disbursement of his debt to him, Mr. Hodge, and that out of that – although no special provision had been made for me by Mr. Pinchin – he thought he could spare me a matter of Ten Pound. Now as he kept the letter very tight in his hand, and was, withal, a Strong Man, who would have resisted any attempt of mine to wrest it from him, I was fain to take his statement for granted, and in a very Sulky manner agreed to accept the Ten Pound in full of all demands, stipulating only that my Travelling charges to London should be defrayed. This Mr. Hodge boggled at for awhile; but, seeing me Resolute he gave way, and at last said that there was no need for me to trouble with going to the Goldsmith in London to get the Draft changed – "If, indeed," says he, "the unhappy young spendthrift be not proclaimed a Bankrupt before I get this slip of paper cashed;" and that having a small store of Gold by him, he would give me the Ten Pound down, together with a couple of Pieces to bear my Expenses to the Town. To this I agreed; and his Reverence handing me over the ready, we cried Quits.

"And now, Sir," says I, "as you are no longer a Led-Parson, and I am no longer a Lacquey, we are both, till we get Fresh Places, Gentlemen at large, and Jack is as good as his Master, I shall be happy to crack a bottle of Lisbon with you, and whether you pay or I pay shall be decided by the flinging up of a Jacobus."

He declared that I was an Impudent young Fellow, with more Wickednesses in my Heart than I had hairs in my Head; but he accepted my Invitation to crack the bottle of Lisbon very readily, and won the Toss of me with much Affability. So, after a joyous Rouse (which my young Head could then stand, but I am a sad Skinker at the bottle now), the Landlord standing in, we drank Mr. Pinchin's health and better manners to him; and his Reverence dismissed me with a Buss and his Benediction.

"When you reach London, which is a wicked place," says he; "I prithee get you to Highgate, and without more ado cause yourself to be sworn upon the Horns there, never to drink Small Ale when you can get Strong, and never to Kiss the Maid when you can Kiss the Mistress. After that, with your Face, and your Figure, and your Foreign Travel, to say nothing of your Amazing Impudence, and your Incorrigible habit of Lying, I think you will do pretty well. Go thy ways, my son, and if ever you come to be hanged, send for Parson Hodge, and he will (with the Ordinary's permission) do everything for you in the cart that a True Blue Church and State Man can wish. Vale: that is to say, get off, you vagabond," with which in his merry way he half pushes me out of the room at the Inn, and I dare say that he had given a sufficiently liberal construction to Mr. Pinchin's postscript as to cheat me out of Twenty Pound.

And now on this worthy I must bestow a brace of Paragraphs ere I dismiss him for good and all, premising that the knowledge of what I am about to set down did not come upon me at this period of my History, but was gathered up, in Odds and Ends in subsequent epochs of my career: – some of it, indeed, many years afterwards. Parson Hodge had managed – all losses allowed for – to feather his nest pretty well out of his attendance on Squire Bartholomew Pinchin, and the ten or twelve pound he doled out to me (whether the story about the draft on the Goldsmith was a Cock and Bull one or not) must have been but a mere fleabite to him. I heard that he went down to the Bath, and dropping his Clerical Dignity for awhile, set up for a fashionable Physician of High Dutch extraction that was to cure all ailments. Doctor Von Hoogius I think he called himself; and his travelling about with my little Master had given him just such a smattering of Tongues as to enable him to speak Broken English with just so much of a foreign accent as to make it unlike a Brogue or a Burr. The guineas came in pretty quickly, and I believe that he cured several people of the Quinsy with pills made of dough, hogslard, cinnamon, and turmeric, and that he was highly successful in ridding ladies of fashion of the vapours by means of his Royal Arabian Electuary, which was nothing more than white Jamaica Rum coloured pink and with a flavouring of Almonds. The regular Practitioners, however, grew jealous of him, and beginning to ask him impertinent questions about his Diploma, he was fain to give up Legitimate practice, and to pick up a dirty Living as a mere Quack, and Vendor of Pills, Potions, Salves, Balsams, and Elixirs of Life. Then he came down in the world, owing to a Waiting Gentlewoman whose fortune he must needs tell, and whom, 'tis said, he cozened out of three quarters' wages; so, for fear of being committed by the justices as a Rogue and Vagabond, he then kept a Herb Shop for some time, with great success, until he got into trouble about a Horse, and being clearly Tart of that crime, very wisely shifted his quarters to the Kingdom of Ireland. I have heard that by turns he was, in his New Sphere, a Player at the Dublin Theatre, a Drawer at a Usquebaugh Shop in Cork, a hedge-schoolmaster among the Bogtrotters – a wild, savage kind of People, that infest the Southern parts of that fertile but distracted kingdom – a teacher of the Mathematics in Belfast, and a fiddler going about to wakes and weddings in the county of Galway. 'Twas whilst pursuing this last and jovial vocation that he was fortunate enough to run away with an Heiress of considerable Fortune. He managed it by a sort of Rough and Ready process they call over there an Abduction, two or three of the Wild Irishes being killed while he was getting the young lady on the car to take her away to be married; and she, happening to be a Ward in Chancery, he fell into Contempt, and was committed to Newgate in the City of Dublin, where he might have lain till his heels rotted off, but for the Favourable Renown into which he grew by his Bold and Gallant Feat of Abduction, and which brought him into such sympathetic notice, that interest was made with the Chancellor to purge him of his contempt, and he was honourably Discharged therefrom by means of escaping from Newgate at night by means of a Silver Key agreed upon betwixt him and the Warden. By the way, he had the sagacity at this time to conceal his being an Englishman, and passed very easily by the name of O'Hagan. A subscription was made for him among the Quality after his Enlargement, and he was charitably advised to push his fortune among the Saxons in England, his good friends little suspecting that he had already pushed his Fortune there, at different times, to a very pretty tune. But for his unfortunate – or rather fortunate, for him – collision with justice, he might have obtained employment as a Tithe Proctor with some of the dignified and non-resident Established Clergy in Ireland, who were very anxious to have able and Unscrupulous Men to collect their Dues for 'em; but the Sister Isle being, on several accounts, too hot for Mr. Hodge, Von Hoogius, O'Hagan, he took shipping with a purse full of guineas, collected for him by his kind friends, for Liverpool in Lancashire. Here he prospered indifferently for a time, now as a Schoolmaster, now as a Quack Doctor, under his old High Dutch alias, and now as an Agent for the crimping of children for the West India plantations, which last traffic I have ever held, for reasons personal, to be utterly Indefensible and Abominable. A Bill of Indictment before the Grand Jury speedily, however, put an end to the chaplain's dealings in flesh and blood; so he made what haste he could to town, where squandering what means he had with him in Riot and Unthrift, and being unluckily recognised by an old acquaintance in the Tailoring line, he was arrested on civil process, and clapped into the Fleet Prison. But here his ever-soaring genius took a new Flight. Those half surreptitious and wholly scandalous Nuptials known as Fleet Marriages, were then very rife, and the adventurer had wit enough to discover that it was to his interest to resume his cassock and bands, and to become the Reverend Mr. Hodge once more. Not much was wanted to set him up in business. Canonicals were to be had cheap enough in Rag Fair for the sending for 'em; a greasy Common Prayer Book and a chandler's-shop ledger to serve as a Register, did not cost much; so with these, and an inimitably Brazen face, behold our worthy equipped as a perfect Fleet Parson. He had to maintain at first a ragged regiment of cads and Runners to tout for him and bring him customers, but he soon became notorious, and formed a very fine connexion. Judgements by the score had been obtained, and Detainers lodged against him at the gate, since his incarceration at the suit of his acquaintance, the Tailor; but 'twas not long ere he contrived, by the easy process of joining people's hands, to gain enough to pay all the claims against him, and by permission of the Warden of the Fleet, to set up a Chapel and Liquor Shop within the rules of the prison. Punch, Geneva, poisonous wine, brandy, bitters, Rum, and Tobacco, were sold below stairs, and the Order for the Solemnization of Matrimony was performed on the first floor. It became quite a fashionable thing to go and be married by Parson Hodge, and at last it would be said of him, that if he extorted money from you beforehand, he did not pick your pocket afterwards, as too many of the Fleet Parsons in those shameful days were in the habit of doing. He continued at this merry game for many years, being in his way quite as popular as Orator Henley, and coining a great deal more money than that crack-brained Fanatic – for I have always been at pains to discover whether Henley was more Rogue or Fool – till at last his lucrative but unholy trade was put an end to by an Act of Parliament, called for by the righteous indignation of all peaceable and loyal subjects of the King, who did not desire to be married in haste and to repent at leisure. I believe that Parson Hodge retired with a comfortable fortune, and, going down into Somersetshire, purchased a small estate there, and died, much respected, in the odour of many pigs, and in the Commission of the Peace.