EXTRACTS FROM A LADY'S ALBUM. TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE." "Sir. "I am a feeble female, but I will lift up my voice against the innovating cant of the present era. It is said, sir, that the world is beginning to appreciate sterling merit' in lieu of tinsel and empty show. What do they mean, sir, by sterling merit?' Descriptions, forsooth, faithfully drawn from nature, scenes delineated by the artist from the some source! While I have a voice, sir, I will uplift it against such low-bred vulgarity and plebeianness. To prove to you the evident superiority of that refined taste, which is now sacrilegiously aimed at, I take the liberty of forwarding a few extracts from my own album; a work which, whether we consider the uniqueness of its interior or the beauty of its binding, deserves the sincerest patronage and support. If you should meet with any contributions for my album, sir, please to forward them to Bloomsbury Villa, Bloomsfield-common,' where they will meet with all consideration. "Yours obediently, "BELINDA BAGSHAW." FRONTISPIECE (by myself).-Dear little angels' heads disporting themselves in an intricate convolution of very vermilion rose-buds. In the centre a missionary in a lavender coat and flake-white terminations, with the motto, "Subscriptions thankfully received." VIGNETTE (by Arabella Higginthorpe).-Music-books, guitars, and wind-instruments. PAGE 1.-Original lines (by Cleon), commencing "The last links are broken, that bound me to thee." P. 2.-Ode to her dead poodle (by Susan Jane Scrimms). "Oh, Pompey, thou beloved one! No more thy curly tail Shall waggle playfully in fun, Or bend before the gale! Thy eb'ny nose, alas! shall bear The bits of bread no more; No more thy bow-wow' shall they hear, Who knock at the front-door." P. 3.-(By P. Q.) "How that old man sighs! Mark his unshaven countenance, and the holes in his stockings! Penury has marked him for her own, he has got no money in his pocket! He stands by his father's halls-the shutters are closed-oh agony !-and-" To let, inquire below," is painted on a great board in the window. He takes out the cylindrical tobacco, and chews in despair! P. 4.-A Poonah butterfly. Pages 5, 6, 7, and 8.-Blanks. P. 9.-A view of Ehrenbreitstein done in gum and coloured sand, with beautiful lines thereon, by Mary Jones (from "Childe Harold"). P. 10. (By my talented drawing-master, T. Tibson, Esq.) A dead flat with nothing upon it :-considered by the best judges to be very spirited. P. 11. A painting representing a beautifully-coloured bird (of whose genus or species my friends profess themselves doubtful), cut out of rice paper, and whistling. (Done by my little brother Adolphus). P. 12.-Lines by Sophia Maria Smith. "How lovely to lie mid the blossoming flowers! But lovelier to talk to my own sweet O'Brien, As he lovingly comes through the hole in the pales!” P. 13.-A Poonah butterfly. P. 14.-Lines on a thunderstorm, by myself (from Montgomery). Also a correct representation of one at sea, with the haughty mariners floating on the turbulent billows in different attitudes. P. 15.-Second contribution, by P. Q. "How that young man groans!-Tis Orlando!! Note that Apollo-on forehead-those darkly-pencilled eyebrows-that Phidian nose, surmounting those two twin mustaches, softer than the hair of the nocturnal feline disturber. Ha! little does he know the impending precipice! P. 16.-A Poonah butterfly. P. 17.-A circle of Poonah butterflies. F. NEGUS. A QUARREL WITH SOME OLD ACQUAINTANCES. BY LAMAN BLANCHARD, ESQ. (13.)-"A GUILTY CONSCIENCE NEEDS NO ACCUser." THE greatest criminals are commonly those who suffer least from the stings of conscience. Little sneaking rascals, indeed, who are always taking care of their consciences, experience twinges as often as they bring their consciences into scrapes. They need no accuser, because they are afraid of plunging into crime. They are always clinging to the skirts of villany, and letting go before they are quite carried off their legs, whither they know not where. They flirt with Vice, but venture not to take her in their arms and hug her as a bride. No, they have a conscience-that is, they are knowing enough to perceive that the cost of following up the vicious game will overbalance the profit of it. If they at last screw up their courage for a piece of knavery, it is sure to be of the very silliest and most unproductive character; such as picking a friend's pocket of the purse he would willingly have lent them, or breaking open a poor-box when they might easily have guessed from the cobweb suspended over it, that there was not a sixpence within. This done, their detection is inevitable; not because conscience flies in their face and proclaims their guilt in looks more expressive than words; but because they miserably bungled in the committal of the act itself, and rendered it impossible to trace the deed to any creature in the district but themselves. They were, in fact, thinking of conscience all the time they were perpetrating the offence; they were for indulging in the greatest possible roguery consistent with the least possible injury to conscience; they were for trying how far they might go in scoundrelism, without being scoundrels in their own estimation; they wanted to step barefooted into the water without so much as wetting the soles of their feet. There was thus a divided attention; the act of rascality was ill performed, and detection followed, because they had been balancing between self-estimation and the good opinion of mankind, and striving to be as perfectly innocent in their own eyes, as they wished to appear in those of other people. Conscience played the part, not of the honest accuser, but rather of the bungling accomplice. But among the greatest scoundrels, those whose glory consists in their having been a disgrace to their species, there are comparatively but few examples of the accusations of conscience. The villain of the first magnitude, or as he is more commonly designated the "monster in the human form," generally gets further and further beyond the range of the assaults of conscience as he plunges deeper and deeper into guilt. He is too busy in devising means to screen himself from the reproaches of others, to have leisure to heap any upon himself. His business is to escape punishment, not to inflict it. He does not stop to ask himself the question, what he is now, or may hereafter become, in his own esteem; but devotes all his care so to practise against the peace, the property, or the lives of his fellow-creatures, as not to forfeit more of their esteem than he deems superfluous to his security. Once to begin tormenting himself with suspicions, would be to invite the torture from other hands. He knows that to call himself a scoundrel, is to enable the bystanders to prove him one; to be self-accused is to be convicted by the world; to look like a villain is to be condemned; in short to have a conscience, is to be ruined beyond redemption. There is no fear that the blush of conscience will appear upon his cheek, while, there is no bloodspot visible on his hand. He is true to himself in proportion as he is false to others; and, if he is ever to be charged with his crimes, needs some other accuser than his own consciousness of the guilt in which he has steeped himself to the very lips. In fact, the stronger his consciousness of that guilt, the stronger his motive, and the warier his measures, for guarding against detection. The consummate villain, so far from suffering the attacks of conscience, and thus becoming his own accuser, understands nothing by the word but a convenience which his hypocrisy may resort to, when detection has come upon him by other means. A pretended conscience may serve him when the reality will not. When increased vigilance, or his own recklessness in the career of crime, has laid him open to conviction; when he happens to be caught in the fact, and stands condemned beyond all doubt or denial; a sham conscience often proves his friend. When nothing more is to be gained or hoped for in the character of the hardened villain, the affectation of remorse, an ostentatious penitence, a well-acted fit of horror at the picture of his own wickedness, has been known to render him timely and valuable service. He is now conscience-stricken! He has discovered that all mankind are sinners, and that he of all criminals is the vilest, the blackest, and the most undone. He has infinite compassion and lamentation for the world-he can hope and he can pray for other people-but for himself he has no pity. Not one word has he to utter in his own behalf-not one touch of self-mercy does his conscience allow itself to indulge in. His lightest deeds look darker in his eyes than the worst abominations on record. His own boyish robberies in orchards-the theft of his poor white-haired grandfather's knee-buckle, with which he commenced his career-are offences more inexpiable than any murders committed by his fellow-sinners. Other crimes may admit of excuse, his admit of none; other wretches may obtain pardon, he dares not dream of it. He lays on the lash from morning to night, only stopping to pray that balm may be poured into the wounds of every wicked creature living, except himself. All this produces its effect after a little time-it seldom fails. His self-accusations run into such excess, that the charges against him seem light, and his accusers as they listen, feel pity taking place of horror. The reproaches of his conscience are so noisy, that they drown all other reproaches; and the world begins to meditate, not how he is to be punished, but how he is to be soothed, how consoled, how got off. Poor creature, they cry, his conscience is his rack! Why should further punishment fall on him? What are all other torments to those of a heart which remorse, the vulture, is gnawing night and day! And hearken, how mercifully he judges others, and how uncharitably, how unjustly he condemns himself! "There is every excuse to be made for him," ejaculates one. "There is more of good than evil in his nature after all," rejoins a second. "If he did cut his master's throat, it was but a momentary aberration," pleads a third. "He spared his fellow-servant, when he could easily have murdered him, too," pityingly suggests a fourth. "It was his excellent moral principles that held his hand," reasons a fifth. "If a man of such sound religious feeling were to be cut off in his prime, it would be a loss to society," moralizes a sixth. "Without approving the offence, we really feel, we feel deeply for the unfortunate offender," whimpers half the world. If the offender should be hanged in spite of the sympathy of his admirers, he goes out of the world a saint. The condemned cell is the deserted seat of every virtue, and the scaffold a stepping-stone to eternal happiness. People only wish, for their parts, that they had half so fine a chance of it as the good man with the rope round his neck. The rope itself is cut into pieces of three inches long, which are bought up as relics. The buttons of his jacket are treasured in the museums of the saintly; his aphorisms on conscience are transferred to school copy-books; and the tender-hearted, petition the surgeons for one of his little fingers to preserve it in spirits. If he should escape that doom-on the ground of an insufficiency of motive for the perpetration of the deed which nevertheless he did perpetrate or by virtue of his having become extremely penitent and conscience-stricken, not the instant he committed it, but the instant his guilt became manifest-then a new course of crime is freely opened to him in another quarter of the world, by the humane interest which follows him from this. He is sent from society here, not because he is unworthy to remain, but because he is much too good for it; and the first thing he hears on his arrival upon the new scene of life is, that he is sure to be better off than he was. He is a felon, but he had no motive; he is an atrocious criminal, but he has a conscience. Did he murder his master? Hundreds are anxious to hire him as a servant. Did he set a house on fire? Hundreds of householders are eager to obtain him for a lodger. It becomes a maxim that the reformed assassin makes the best protector-the principle of anti-combustion is recognised in the detected incendiary. All are ready to aid him-his guilty conscience that needs no accuser has made him so interesting. Had he never committed the worst of crimes, he might have starved in his innocence and piety, for aught they would have cared; but having repented, the moment he was convicted on the clearest evidence, he takes precedence in popular affection of every honest man in the place. His virtue would have been of no use to him but as a dernier ressort. The lesson taught to him and others is, that a conscience may be of great service, but it must be a guilty one, or nobody will take the least notice of it. As his contrition is in proportion to his crime, so his interest with the devout and charitable is proportioned to his contrition. Hence the quantity of his guilt is the real measure of the false sympathy he excites. The quality attributed by Iago to the Venetian dames, "whose best conscience is, not to leave undone, but keep unknown," is the conscience of more respectable people than it would be pleasant, were it possible, to number. These are what Sydney Smith calls the undetected classes of society. Their conscience never upbraids them with any thing it has allowed them to do. It is only another word for self-interest. If they decline engaging in any rougish adventure, it is because they do not see their way clear in it, or because they foresee a failure. Čonscience to them is the police-officer watching at the corner of the street, or the warning voice that reminds them of the steel traps and spring guns that lie in the way of the nefarious enterprise. Their conscience, in any such cases, will not permit them to become participators. Once convinced that their interest is not in the direction of the crooked path, they will walk conscientiously in the straight one: until a convenient cut to the right or left presents itself, and then, the advantage large and palpable, the risk little or nothing, conscience lures them down it-solemnly assuring them as they steal along, that the deviation is a sacred duty a duty imposed upon them as husbands and fathers-a duty they owe to Mrs. Slyboots and the dear children. Conscience, with these |