m ironmonger's daughter; she has been lately thinking of
adding 'a slight knowledge of the magneeficent language of the Peninsula'
to the rest of her accomplishments, he! he! he! but then there was
Cervantes, starving, but straight; he deals us some hard knocks in that
second part of his Quixote; then there was some of the writers of the
picaresque novels. No; all literary men are not lick-spittles, whether
in Italy or Spain, or, indeed, upon the Continent; it is only in England
that all--"

"Come," said I, "mind what you are about to say of English literary men."

"Why should I mind?" said the man in black, "there are no literary men
here. I have heard of literary men living in garrets, but not in
dingles, whatever philologists may do; I may, therefore, speak out
freely. It is only in England that literary men are invariably
lick-spittles; on which account, perhaps, they are so despised, even by
those who benefit by their dirty services. Look at your fashionable
novel writers, he! he! and above all at your newspaper editors, ho! ho!"

"You will, of course, except the editors of the --- from your censure of
the last class?" said I.

"Them!" said the man in black; "why, they might serve as models in the
dirty trade to all the rest who practise it. See how they bepraise their
patrons, the grand Whig nobility, who hope, by raising the cry of
liberalism, and by putting themselves at the head of the populace, to
come into power shortly. I don't wish to be hard, at present, upon those
Whigs," he continued, "for they are playing our game; but a time will
come when, not wanting them, we will kick them to a considerable
distance: and then, when toleration is no longer the cry, and the Whigs
are no longer backed by the populace, see whether the editors of the ---
will stand by them; they will prove themselves as expert lick-spittles of
despotism as of liberalism. Don't think they will always bespatter the
Tories and Austria."

"Well," said I, "I am sorry to find that you entertain so low an opinion
of the spirit of English literary men; we will now return, if you please,
to the subject of the middle classes; I think your strictures upon them
in general are rather too sweeping--they are not altogether the foolish
people which you have described. Look, for example, at that very
powerful and numerous body the Dissenters, the descendants of those
sturdy Patriots who hurled Charles the Simple from his throne."

"There ar