her form is as constant as the polypus. No two human faces, though composed of the same features, ever were known to be correctly alike, and the luminous mind of LAVATER, did he attempt the arduous and absurd task of searching for any such would exactly resemble the lanthorn of AESOP.

To these general remarks—which I conceived it expedient to place here—I shall add particular ones whenever they appear to be necessary, and now I invite the reader to the examination of a faithful, though a bold, representation of human life, for I declare upon my word as a man, there is not a character or circumstance in this whole work which I do not experimentally know from a close observation and mankind, to have virtual existence.


A BRIDGE thrown over the high road, at the entrance of a village in Warwickshire, called Castlewick, is the separation of two estates, one of which had been, at the period this history commences, for half a century in the possession of the family of Hazard, and the other, for almost treble that space, in the family of Roebuck.
Nature had been equally bountiful in the distribution of her favours on either side of the road, which fortuitous advantage art had been industriously called in to improve. If a neat hamlet and a white spire gave a more modern termination to the view, through a group of pines and cedars, from Hazard lawn; an old market town and a contiguous mouldering castle became visible, through an avenue of elms, from Roebuck park.
Every Chinese temple, urn, or statue, on one side, erected to fancy, consecrated to friendship, or dedicated to the arts, had, on the other, its rival

grotto, cavern, or hermitage. Here was seen a clump of elms, there a row of oaks; while the meandering avon—lest the lord of one mansion should be jealous of its favours lavished on the other—not only by the advantage of a distant height, plunged up a rocky cliff to delight one favourite with the awful concussion of a beautiful cascade, which falling, lessened into a gurgling rivulet; but, also, opening its smooth, capacious bosom, moved on in majestic silence, through the possessions of the other; stretching out on one side a small, irregular stream, which supplied the house, watered the garden, and turned the village mill.
Old Rust, the grandfather of Lord Hazard, was a skinner in the city. His profession unluckily made him rather a bye-word; for he had such a voracious thirst, or hunger, after money—for gold can be both eaten and drank—that it was