black bread of a convict.

The injury these men do in life is not confined to the misery their
heartless frauds inflict, for the very humblest and poorest are often
their victims: they do worse, in the way they sow distrust and suspicion
of really deserving objects, in the pretext they afford the miserly man
to draw closer his purse-strings, and "not be imposed on;" and, worst of
all, in the ill repute they spread of a nation which, not attractive by
the graces of manner or the charms of a winning address, yet cherished
the thought that in truthfulness and fair dealing there was not one
could gainsay it.

As I write, I have just heard tidings of R. N. F. One of our most
distinguished travellers and discoverers, lately returning from Venice
to the South, passed the night at Padua, and met there what he described
as an Indian officer--Major Newton--who was travelling, he said, with a
nephew of Lord Palmer-ston's.

The Major was a man fall of anecdote, and abounded in knowledge of
people and places; he had apparently been everywhere with everybody,
and, with a communicativeness not always met with in old soldiers, gave
to the stranger a rapid sketch of his own most adventurous life. As the
evening wore on, he told too how he was waiting there for a friend,
a certain N. F., who was no other than himself, the nephew of Lord
Palmerston being represented by his son, an apt youth, who has already
given bright promise of what his later years may develop.

N. F. retired to bed at last, so much overcome by brandy-and-water that
my informant escaped being asked for a loan, which I plainly see he
would not have had the fortitude to have refused; and the following
morning he started so early that N. F., wide awake as he usually is, was
not vigilant enough to have anticipated.

I hope these brief details, _pour servir a l'histoire de Monsieur R. N.
F._, may save some kind-hearted traveller from the designs of a thorough
blackguard, and render his future machinations through the press more
difficult to effect and more certain of exposure.

I had scarcely finished this brief, imperfect sketch, when I read in
'Galignani' the following:--

"Swindling on the Continent.--A letter from Venice of March 29 gives us
the following piece of information which may still be of service to some
of our readers, though, from the fact with which it concludes, it
would seem that the proceedings, of the party have been brought to a
standstill, at l