in his private character, he would use his influence with the king to have the order revoked. Elated with this apparent chance of escape, the unlucky individual thus destined to be "squeezed" would, perhaps, offer a sum larger than the minister had anticipated. But even this was sure to be indignantly refused, and not until the victim had been visited over and over again, and no hope of any larger offer remained, would the bribe be accepted. Thus, and by a variety of other means, the bobarchee gathered a vast amount of wealth. On the death of the monarch who had so blindly favoured and elevated him, he fared but poorly, however, for the new king threw him into prison. It was now his turn to bribe, and a timely present of fifty lacs of rupees to an influential person, procured his release. Even then he had an immense fortune remaining, and thinking it best to secure both his person and his money against further annoyance and depredation, he left Lucknow, and settled down in our dominions.

While residing in Calcutta, I was brought into frequent contact with individuals belonging to the Eurasian or half-caste population, and as comparatively little is known of this class of people in England, I shall here make a few remarks on their character.

They are generally the descendants of European fathers by native mothers. The great majority of them are of Portuguese, many of British, and some of French extraction. Altogether they form a community by themselves, as distinct from the European society around them as from the Hindoos and Mahomedans. They do not travel, here they live and multiply, marrying generally among themselves. As they are daily increasing in number they will, of course, in time become so numerous as to consider themselves a nation, and to demand a place in history. Should such, however, be the case, I do not think they will occupy a very high position in the scale of nations. Great talent (I will not mention genius) and sterling abilities seem very scarce amongst them. They devote no attention to the cultivation of the arts, they manifest no zeal in the pursuits of science, no independence, no brotherly feeling towards each other. The females, at best, receive but a superficial education, it generally extending only to reading, writing, and the mechanical performance of music, dancing, and ornamental needlework, and in none of these do they show any extraordinary skill. As girls they are flirts and coquettes; as women they are vain, idle, and slovenly.

Let me be candid, however. I have found among the Eurasians men possessing a versatility of talent that would do honour to any of our own countrymen, and females adorned with every grace and accomplishment. But such characters are very, very scarce.

FLIGHTS OF FANCY.

THERE is nought can compare with this steed of mine, Unrivalled for pace and speed,

No Arab courser of purest line,

Can match with my gallant steed!

And e'en in my heart it holds the place
Of a friend, a companion dear;

There's no pleasure to me like its rapid pace,
No joy like its wild career!

I mount my steed at the break of day,
And forth from my home I ride!
And seldom our onward course we stay
When the sun sinks below the tide ;
Full often when all around us sleep,
Our restless spirits wake,

And then in the gloom of darkness deep
Our giddy flight we take.

Away! away! through the world we fly !
In a moment we 're leagues afar;

Nor stormy ocean, nor mountain high,
For an instant our course can bar.

Like an arrow my courser flies through the air,
And skims through the land and sea,

And the fairest spots of this earth so fair
Have been trod by my steed and me.

We pass through the vineyards of merry France,
Where all nature seems to smile,

And where light-hearted peasants, by song and dance,
Their hours of repose beguile.

Sometimes will my steed his course direct

To St. Peter's lordly dome,

But we slacken our speed in sad respect

For the memories of Rome.

Full often we shape our rapid flight
To the sunny hills of Spain;

And we pause in declining day's soft light

On Granada's verdant plain.

The Alhambra's spires and turrets frail,
With the rich tints of evening glow,

And the setting sun casts a rosy veil

On the Sierra's spotless snow.

Thus we visit each fair and well-loved scene,
Uncheck'd through each land we rove,

We laugh at the dangers that intervene,
None to us can a barrier prove.

Sometimes Imagination's aid

Gains us an entrance free,

But our happiest flights to those scenes are made

Where memory gives the key.

Together in sorrow, together in mirth,

Together till life shall end;

Oh! gloomy indeed were to me this earth,

If deprived of my faithful friend!

My steed o'er all other steeds to place,

Who can venture to doubt my right?

For what can in speed match Fancy's pace?
What so reckless as Fancy's flight!

M. A. B.

USURY AND USURERS.

"There are boundless thefts in limited professions."-SHAKSPEARE.

Bill-discounting attorneys have a particular claim to be mentioned in a notice of notorious usurers. Most of them are of the rigid and rapacious school, and their profession gives facility to the full carrying out of their exorbitant views. What they fail to exact in meal, they frequently enforce in malt; that is to say, if they do not in the first instance draw the string of usurious discount so tight as other extortioners, they contrive in many instances to make up the measure of immense profit by costs. These are the men forming the class of persons who (to use the phrase of a learned counsel since elevated to the Bench of the Exchequer Court) "kill their own mutton;" they need no stranger hand for the work of slaughter of the unfortunate wight who is brought within the circle of their own practical and professional operations; they fleece, flay, and devour the pauvre mouton to the very bone.

Tailors are great usurers-that is to say, great discounters (the terms are synonymous), and if they do not ostensibly accommodate young spendthrifts of fashion with cash at so high a stipulated rate of interest as the professed bill-discounter, they more than realize the exorbitant modicum of benefit by outrageous charges for clothes supplied, and thus, under the cloak and semblance of generous and disinterested accommodation to customers, they apply the drawing plaister most successfully, and in reality levy as heavy impositions for their pretended favours as any other class of the usurious community. Young prodigals at college are a great source of revenue to discounting tailors, who fail not to indulge the young sparks to the full extent to which their indulgent sires, doting widowed mothers, and hoodwinked guardians, will supply the means of payment.

men.

Usury and bill-discounting is not, however, limited in its practice to any one class or condition of persons; and although it is more notoriously and extensively carried on by the professions and parties before described, it is largely adopted by every trade and calling: hundreds of small capitalists and second-rate tradesmen dabble, directly or indirectly, in loan and discount, and have a nibble at petty paper negotiations. In truth of this affirmation may be instanced the numerous Loan Societies which have of late started into existence in all parts of the metropolis, the members of which are, for the most part, tradesThese associations, under the professed object of assisting persons in need of temporary aid, carry on a right profitable traffic in the circulating medium, and that at by no means so moderate or equitable a rate of interest as they would have people to believe, regard being had to their precautionary system of drawing from the borrower in the first instance, and their weekly or monthly mode of payment of the sum borrowed. The expenses of inquiry, and fines imposed also for delay in payment, swell greatly the enormity of profit; and, last not least, it must be understood that these philanthropic and disinterested money-lenders also "kill their own meat," for many of the societies keep their regularly appointed man of busi

ness in the shape of a certificated attorney, at a fixed salary, and he is deputed to sue defaulters, and do the dirty legal work of the establishment; but all costs resulting from the law's process, adopted by the hired legal practitioner, find their way into the general fund of the most benevolent Loan Company, and increase greatly the dividend to the proprietors and shareholders. This is a matter of most disgraceful arrangement, and one calling for correction; first, because it necessarily begets and keeps alive an interested spirit for litigation in the whole body, as represented by the board of management-and, secondly, because it is immediately opposed to, and at variance with, the professional duty and reputation of an attorney, and strictly prohibited by the Act of Parliament, controlling and regulating the conduct and practice of attorneys and solicitors. It is questionable, indeed, whether an attorney entering into agreement, or lending himself or his name to any such arrangement of business with a loan society, does not place himself in the very dangerous position to be struck off the Rolls, and it is equally a matter for consideration, whether every member of the board of management, if not every individual shareholder of the company, be not liable to legal consequences for a breach of the statute.

To individualize the usurers or bill-discounters of the Metropolis is not the object of this paper. Suffice it to say, their name is Legion, and they may be classed into wholesale and retail negociators; the former doing business of magnitude and amount with the magnates of the land, the latter dabbling in petty and comparatively insignificant transactions with persons of lower grade in the social scale; but both classes acting on the broad principle of large and usurious exaction, and, for the most part, greedy in getting, tenacious in keeping, and sordid in spending-servi divitiarum, "slaves and drudges to their substance."

There is an aristocracy in usury, as in all other callings and professions; the high and mighty, that is to say, the most moneyed and extensive practitioners of the vulture tribe, are great and important personages in their own estimation and conceit. Sensible of the power which gold gives to its possessor, and of the abject homage it commands, that it will

"Place knaves,

And give them title, knee, and approbation,
With senators on the bench,"

they are occasionally most difficult of access; they measure men by their means, and mete out their money and their civility accordingly; they are approachable and courteous only in the ratio of hope and expectation that is within them, of the amount of benefit to result to them from the interview granted. They know pretty well the exact necessities of their customers, and to what extent they can tax their respective pockets, and trifle with their time, their tempers, and their patience, with impunity; their ante-chambers of business are crowded, like a minister's, with applicants waiting audience, and it is no unfrequent occurrence with the more grasping and avaricious of the tribe to take advantage of extreme necessity, and, instead of cashing a good bill off-hand, dole out a few pounds from time to time, like a parish allowance, thus frustrating at once the beneficial object of the discount. Many of this class sport equipages, and live in splendour, and at their tables are occasionally to be seen, as guests, the most reckless and

fleece-worthy of their numerous clients. Some of them gloss over the enormity of their exactions by a show of charity, scraping together unjust sums with one hand, and attempting to cheat the devil by giving a mite thereout for pious uses; others assume to themselves the virtue of the most disinterested motive in their 60 per cent. negotiations, and ascribe all their exactions to philanthropy and generosity; their sneaking souls not even possessing the manliness to avow a determination to dive into the pockets of men for the most they can find within them. There are exceptions, however, to this latter contemptible spirit of hypocrisy and humbug. One is particularly instanced in an individual known to the author of this paper; he is a most decided worshipper of mammon, but therewith has many generous impulses to which he occasionally gives practical indulgence; he has the honest candour to declare himself to be a money-grubber, and boldly and unreservedly asserts that,

that money comes within the principle of the Hudibrastic proposition, and is, under the present sanction of law, a salable commodity; that he therefore disposes of it at a price warranted by the demand, the average rate of which he fixes at 40 per cent., being 20 per cent. below the majority of London discounters. He makes no mystery of his mode and principle of business, professes to be influenced by no motive of kindly sympathy or benevolence, but to be governed solely by the one great and all-absorbing desire of money-making; he has no need to hunt up or cater for customers, they flock to him of their own free-will and necessitous impulse, as hungry men walk to a feast to appease their appetites, and he satisfies their hunger at his own rate of charge. His doctrine is, that the act is voluntary on the part of the borrower, to take the loan or accommodation of money on his (the lender's) terms, and that men pre-informed of such terms, and yet seeking to be so accommodated, have no just ground to complain of extortion. However fallacious and inconclusive, in a moral sense, may be the reasoning thus advanced, there is much candour to recommend it, and in such respect it has merit over the mock-disinterested professions of the Joseph Surfaces of the class who would not only hoodwink their victims, but cheat themselves into a belief that they are extortioners upon principle, and serving the best interests of society by their grasping and avaricious practices.

There is nothing astounding in the assertion that immense fortunes have been realised by the trade of money-lending and practice of billdiscounting, when it is predicated of such practice that from 40 to 100 per cent. is the interest ordinarily taken for the accommodation of a loan, and that instances are by no means rare where the rate has even exceeded the latter sum. Many examples might be adduced in illustration of such abominable excess. One, however, will suffice to impress the inexperienced reader in such matters, with an idea of the rapacity which characterises the bill-discounting principle. A young baronet, wanting a few months of his majority, and his friend, a wild and thoughtless young gentleman, who had but recently come into possession of 7000l., but who had been living at the rate of 70,000l. per annum, had both immediate occasion for ready money to supply their gaming and horse-racing engagements, and excesses.

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The