Patrick's, for instance,
and is it possible to conceive a more despicable situation (short of
crime) than this poor miser deserves in our chronicle.
The third column opens to us a scene of a very opposite character, the
Newmarket Craven Meeting--the most brilliant assemblage ever known
there; the town crammed with the children of chance, the innkeepers
trebling their charges, and like the Doncaster people, doing "noting
widout the guinea." What an heterogeneous mixture of fine old sport,
black legs and consciences, panting steeds and hearts bursting with
expectation and despair, and the grand machinery of chance working
with mathematical truth, and not unfrequently beneath luxury and the
mere show of hospitality.
The moralist will turn away from this rural pandemonium with disgust;
but what will he say to the records of wretchedness and crime that
fill up nearly the remainder of the folio. A Coroner's Inquest upon
a fellow creature who "died from neglect, and want of common food to
support life"--and another upon a poor girl, whose young and tender
wits being "turned to folly,"--died by a draught of laudanum--are
still more lamentable items in the calendar.
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