not from amorous sentiment, but perhaps from some vague idea that they might be of use if those who gave the locks or wrote the notes should be raised in fortune, and could buy back the memorials of shame. Diving amidst these miscellaneous docu- ments and treasures, the prowler's hand rested on some old let- ters in clerk-like fair caligraphy, tied round with a dirty string, and on them, in another and fresher writing, a scrap that contained an address—" Samuel Adolphus Poole, Esq., Alhambra Villa, Regent's Park." " To-morrow, Nix my Dolly; to-morrow," mutterred the tatterdemalion; "but to-night—plague on it, where is the other blackguard's direction? Ah, here—" And he extracted from the thievish scrawls 2i peculiarly thievish-look- ing hieroglyph. Now, as he lifts it up to read by the gaslight, survey him well. Do you not know him? Is it possible? What! the brilliant sharper! The ruffian exquisite! Jasper Losely! Can it be? Once before, in the fields of Fawley, we beheld him out of elbows, seedy, shabby, ragged. But then it was the decay of a foppish spendthrift—clothes dis- tained, ill-assorted, yet still of fine cloth; shoes in holes, yet still pearl-colored brodequins. But now it is the decay of no foppish spendthrift; the rags are not of fine cloth; the tat- tered shoes are not brodequins. The man has fallen far below the politer grades of knavery, in which the sharper affects the beau. And the countenance, as we last saw it, if it hacj lost much of its earlier beauty, was still incontestably handsome. What with vigor, and health, and animal spirits, then on the aspect still lingered light; now from corruption, the light it- self was gone. In that Herculean constitution excess of all kinds had at length forced its ravage, and the ravage was visible in the ruined face. The once sparkling eye was dull and blood- shot. The colors of the cheek, once clear and vivid, to which fiery drink had only sent the blood in a warmer glow, were now of a leaden dulness, relieved but by broken streaks of angry red—like gleams of flame struggling through gathered smoke. The profile, once sharp and delicate like Apollo's, was now confused in its swollen outline; a few years more, and it would be gross as that of Silenus—the nostrils, distended with in- cipient carbuncles, which betray the knawingfang that alcohol fastens into the liver. Evil passions had destroyed the outline of the once beautiful lips, arched as a Cupid's bow. The side- ling, lowering, villanous expression which had formerly been but occasional, was now habitual and heightened. It was the look of the bison before it gores. It is true, however, that even yet on the countenance there lingered the trace of that
