acquaintance might marvel at acquaintance! and how folkssuch respectable people, too—would stand convicted of the heinous crime of having sometimes wanted a guinea.

"I'll tell you what we'll do, love," said Mrs. Argent to her husband; in the world's opinion they were folks of the very first respectability: they were accustomed to give such charming dinners, such pleasant tasteful suppers-"I'll tell you what we 'll do, when you get this little lump of money." "What shall we do, my love?" asked the quiet Mr. Argent. "Why, my dear," replied his politic wife, "it's sometime since we had anybody, and so I propose, directly you get this money, that we take the plate out of pawn, and give a party!" Could Harlequin, with a flourish of his wand, change the wooden partitions of the Pawnbroker's boxes into glass, how their tenants might stare at one another! How the thief, but newly escaped with the stolen watch, might leer at the lady about to deposit her repeater, -how the fine gentleman start at the costermonger.

If the Pawnbroker would dignify his calling; if he would give a triumphant proof of the utility of his services to the Christian world; he has but to call up the shade of the great Isabella, who, when Columbus vainly begged to be permitted to find a new world for Spain, and, when wearied and repulsed, had turned his back upon the Court, nobly avowed her determination to pawn her jewels in the cause. "I undertake the enterprise for my own crown of Castile," said the queen, "and will pledge my jewels to raise the necessary funds." What lady after this, in a temporary dilemma, should hesitate to trust her diamonds with the Pawnbroker?, "The queen," says the historian, " despatched a messenger on horseback with all speed to call back Columbus. He was overtaken ten leagues from Granada, at the bridge of Pinos, a pass of the mountains, famous for bloody encounters between the Christians and Infidels during the Moorish wars. When the courier delivered his message, Columbus hesitated to subject himself again to the delays and equivocations of the court. When he was informed, however, of the ardour expressed by the queen, and the positive promise she had given, he returned immediately to Santa Fé, confiding in the noble probity of that princess." If the Americans had duly reflected on this incident, they certainly, with the stars and stripes, had quartered the three balls in their national flag.

The Queen of Navarre was another illustrious patroness of the Pawnbrokers in a glorious cause. She pawned her jewels for the Huguenots. "Two gentlemen," says the author of the "Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham," "agents of the Prince of Orange, came to this country to negotiate this business in London, and

confided it to the experienced hand of Sir Thomas Gresham. La Mothe writes, in the month of August, that while Queen Elizabeth was at Richmond, the Cardinal gave the Lord of the Council a grand entertainment at his house at Sheen; and, shortly after, carried the jewels to court, where they were shown to her majesty, who was curious to see them. The goldsmiths who were called in to value them, says La Mothe, considered them worth 60,000l. I am told that the queen declines advancing any money upon them, but the sum required will be sought among the merchants; and it seems that Sir Thomas Gresham, the greatest merchant in London, and, at the same time, queen's factor, has undertaken to raise 30,000l."

With these remarkable anecdotes of Pawnbroking, close we

our essay.

THE PRINTER'S DEVIL.

THE PRINTER'S DEVIL! There is much romance in the name-nay much that takes us back to the stern realities of by-gone centuries; when ignorance, and its attendant ministers, craft and violence and cruelty, sat in the high places of the world, and the awakening intelligence of man was anathematised and scourged as the evil promptings of the fiend, and the day-spring of moral light was accounted as the "pale reflex" of the eternal fires. Hence, the printer became a wizard and a magician ; hence, he had a familiar; hence the Printer's Devil! In the day of darkness, in the hour of superstition, was our subject christened: it is now nearly four hundred years ago since he was baptised; and though his name was given him as a brand, great and mighty indeed were they who stood his sponsors. He had among them cardinals and mitred abbots; nobles and richest citizens. They took counsel together, and called the goodly creature-Devil. Hence he was to be seized, and bound, and burned to ashes; amidst the chaunting of priests, and the swinging of censers, and the aspersion of much holy water!

And is it possible-some reader may ask-that little Peter Trampington, Printer's Devil at the office of Willoughby and Co., at the full salary of five or six shillings per week-is it possible that Peter can have had an origin so wonderful, so perilous? Yes, believe it; the Printer's Devil, though now a household servant-though now he run like a Robin Goodfellow from office to author, and from author to office; though now he wait meekly for copy, or contentedly sleep away the time or composition, tarrying some three or four hours for the chapter or essay that is “just done”—even Peter, in the fifteenth century, might have had the singeing honours of an auto da fé; might have enjoyed a faggot from the same bundle as his master.

It is pleasant, passing pleasant, in these times, to look back upon the perils of the printer, seeing him as he now is, crowned with a thousand triumphs. We can, almost with complacency,

enjoy the predicament of John Faust, goldsmith of Mentz, offering in the pious city of Paris, his printed bibles at five and six hundred crowns a-piece; and then, suddenly abating his demand, tendering them at the remarkably low price of sixty. The scribes take the alarm. The devil must be bondman to the printer. The books are curiously scanned, and it is manifest as truth, the uniformity of the copies declares the workmanship, or at least the co-assistance of Beelzebub himself. (A great reflection this on the legendary astuteness of the devil, that he should be so forgetful of his own interests as to manufacture cheap bibles: but so it is; ignorance and persecution are prone to such false compliments.) Well! great is the uproar in Paris ; the scribes, be sure of it-the ingenious, industrious men who copy bibles-very disinterestedly joining in the outcry. Faust is discovered-many bibles found at his lodgings; some of the books printed in his blood; a horrible fact, shown beyond all doubt in the red ink by which they are embellished; and loud and unanimous is the cry for fire and faggot to consume the magician. The wizard is flung into prison; and, to escape roasting alive as one in fealty to the fiend, he makes known his secret to the admiration of the world, and especially to the wonder and thanksgiving of the simple church. Alas! little did her fat and rubicund children, feeding quietly in her cells like worms in nuts, little did they suspect the mischief hidden in the discovery. Little thought they that the first creaking of Guttenberg's rude printing-press was, in the fulness of time, to be the knell of craft and ignorance. At that sound, had the monks had eyes, they might have beheld their saints turn pale and wince; they might have heard old, profitable, penny-turning relics shake and rattle: and→→→→

"In urns and altars dying round
A drear and dying sound."

At the moment Guttenberg pulled his first proof (the historian of the popes has very disingenuously avoided the fact) the Pope was fast in his first sleep: but suddenly his holiness awoke with a bounce, and for at least five seconds wondered if he were the Infallible or not. Strange! it may be thought that a little creaking at Mentz should make itself so very audible at Rome!

Our present purpose, however, is not to follow the Printer's Devil through all the windings of four centuries; but to speak of him as he is at the present day, after many and great mutations. That he gained his name as a reproach, in an age of darkness, is incontrovertible; many very respectable, tax

paying people in France dying in the faith that, though Faustus had cleared himself with the too easy civic authorities, the devil must have had a finger in the printing, for all that. Hence, the Devil and Doctor Faustus became household words: and the Printer's Devil, though now philosophically received as a creature of light, survives to these times.

The Printer's Devil of our day is the humblest flamen at the shrine of the press. We would, did our too circumstantial conscience permit us, suppress all public knowledge of the fact; but the Printer's Devil of the nineteenth century is, in the social scale, estimated at very little above the errand-boy. Thus do length of days and familiar intercourse vulgarise the mysterious-make common-place the most dear. A youth running with a proof from the press of Guttenberg, or Caxton, or Wynkyn de Worde, was, so to speak, a messenger of state; the bearer of a miracle of art; the part and parcel of a mysterious body, sworn to maintain the secrets of their craft. Then, indeed, the Devil was somebody to be respected; and now is he-Peter Trampington, aged nine.

The Printer's Devil, however, of these days has one great advantage over the Devil of forty years ago. In his visits for copy-and believe it, reader, the calls of the Devil are anything but

(6 Angels' visits, few and far between,"

but daily; sometimes, if the publisher be a sanguine man, hourly, -in these, his unremitting visits upon authors, the Printer's Devil has not, like the devils of a bygone generation, to mount so many pair of stairs. Authors have, it must be confessed, come down a little once, the Devil had to climb for them to the top of the homestead; and now, such is the progress of things, authors may be said to meet the Devil half-way. This is as it should be.

In the printing-office, the Devil is a drudge; yea, a young and sweating devil." There is no employment too dirty for him—no weight too heavy for his strength-no distance too far for him to walk: no, not walk, but run, or fly; for it is an axiom, that the Printer's Devil is never to walk-he is always to make haste : no matter how; he is to "make haste."

-"so eagerly the fiend

O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings or feet, pursues his way:

And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies."

And the conscientious, pains-taking Printer's Devil, on an errand