professional abilities, and still more of his good sense and knowledge of the world, and doubted not, as he had smarted severely for his follies, that he would now take up, and consider that men's talents were given to work out their own advantage.
Charles, seeing his drift, encouraged him to open his whole budget, through which he learnt that, from his youth, he had made it a practice of levying contributions on people of no taste, by which means he was become the Apollo, or rather the Orpheus, of the day; that he was looked up to as the regulater of style and leader of fashion in music; and all this he laid open in a plain narrative of his life and principles, without omitting a single circumstance of either his own duplicity, or the credulity of his patrons.

Having heard him to an end, this was our hero's answer.
'And so Mr. Toogood, because you have all your life, under the appearance of cringing, trimming, and many other truckling and wretchedly accommodating shifts, vitiated the public taste, and scandalized a beautiful and useful art, you would have me copy your creeping servility!—Sir you affront me both as a musician and a gentleman, by your unworthy and contemptible proposal. It is such as you the world has to thank for introducing mystery and difficulty into the plainest system of rational pleasure the soul of man can receive; for setting up an inexplicable standard to judge of that which is the essence of ease and simplicity. No, Mr. Toogood, I despise the servility of your mind as much as I reprobate the fallacy of your doctrines; and, much as I value popular esteem, I should disdain to accept it otherwise than as a tribute to exertions intended to convey rational pleasure and solid advantage.'

Charles however did nothing by this sort of conduct but invite enemies. But this did not stop him. He really could not bridle his resentment. To see men pervert the very end of nature's gifts, and endeavour to confirm others in error, instead of leading them out of it, deserved, he said, reprobation of the severest kind, and he was determined

at least to drag such monstrous impostors into open day, and expose their deformities, after which it would be the world's fault if such counterfeit coin was suffered to pass current.
Charles had yet done but little in the way of profit. Indeed he did not see how he could; for it was so dirty a road, that he had not the resolution to follow it. It