es, but cannot
for his life talk fairly; he is heartily sorry for it, but he cheats by
constitution, and overreaches by instinct." I heard of such a one the
other day--A, a city merchant, married his daughter to B. A proposed
that A and B should stock the cellar of the young couple with vine--B
agreed--A purchased the wine--got a discount--and charged B full price
for his share--yet A was rich as Croesus. I have seen this grasping
displayed by city boys. The writer was once accosted by some little
children with a request that he would contribute something towards a
"grotto," on his declining any assistance, he was politely informed that
he was no good, as he had "got no money."

London abounds with Montagu Tiggs, and a genuine article of any kind in
any trade, if by any possibility it can be adulterated, by painful
experience we know it, is utterly impossibly to buy. In trade, words
have long ceased to represent things. We need not dwell at length on the
wrong thus inflicted on the community at large, all feel the minor evils
resulting from such conduct, and occasionally we hear of sickness
induced, or of life lost,--and for what? merely that Brown may get an
extra farthing on the rascally rubbish he sells as the genuine article.
I fear these are not times in which we may argue for the abolition of
death punishments. Such things as these sadly teach us that in London
commercial morality is in danger of undergoing gradual
demoralisation--that we are in danger of becoming absorbed in the pursuit
of material wealth, careless of the price it may cost--that our standard
of morality is not now as it ought to be in a city that boasts its
Christian life and light, and that from London the evil circulates all
over the British realm.

In proof of this, we may appeal to the occurrences of every day. Our
great cities are shadowed over by the giant forms of vice and crime.
Like a thick cloud, ignorance, dense and dark, pervades the land.
Ascending higher to the well-to-do classes, we find bodily comfort to be
the great end of life; we find everything that can conduce to its
realization is understood--that the priests and ministers of the sensual
are well paid--that a good cook, like a diamond, has always value in the
market. M. Soyer, as cook, in the Reform Club, pocketed, we believe, 800
pounds a year. Hood, in the dark days of his life, when weakened by the
fierce struggle with the world and its wants, became the prey o