er,
and seemed to have something else under his smock; and thirdly, Ben
Burke, a personage of no small consequence to us, and who therefore
deserves some specific introduction.

Big Ben, otherwise Black Burke, according to the friendship or the
enmity of those who named him, was a huge, rough, loud, good-humoured,
dare-devil sort of an individual, who lived upon what he considered
common rights. His dress was of the mongrel character, a well-imagined
cross between a ploughman's and a sailor's; the bottle-green frock of
the former, pattern-stitched about the neck as ingeniously as if a tribe
of Wisconsin squaws had tailored it--and mighty fishing boots, vast as
any French postillion's, acting as a triton's tail to symbolize the
latter: a red cotton handkerchief (dirty-red of course, as all things
else were dirty, for cleanliness had little part in Ben), occupied just
now the more native region of a halter; and a rusty fur cap crowned the
poacher; I repeat it--crowned the poacher; for in his own estimation,
and that of many others too, Ben was, if not quite an emperor, at least
an Agamemnon, a king of men, a natural human monarch; in truth, he felt
as much pride in the title Burke the Poacher (and with as great justice
too, for aught I know), as Ali-Hamet-Ghee-the-Thug eastwards, or
William-of-Normandy-the-Conqueror westwards, may be thought respectively
to have cherished, on the score of their murderous and thievish
surnames.

There was no small good, after all, in poor Ben; and a mountain of
allowance must be flung into the scales to counterbalance his
deficiencies. However coarse, and even profane, in his talk (I hope the
gentle reader will excuse me alike for eliding a few elegant extracts
from his common conversation, and also for reminding him
characteristically, now and then, that Ben's language is not entirely
Addisonian), however rough of tongue and dissonant in voice, Ben's heart
will be found much about in the right place; nay, I verily believe it
has more of natural justice, human kindness, and right sympathies in
it, than are to be found in many of those hard and hollow cones that
beat beneath the twenty-guinea waistcoats of a Burghardt or a
Buckmaster. Ay, give me the fluttering inhabitant of Ben Burke's cowskin
vest; it is worth a thousand of those stuffed and artificial denizens,
whose usual nest is figured satin and cut velvet.

Ben stole--true--he did not deny it; but he stole naught but what he
fanc