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THE OLD RADICAL.
"This very dirty man, with his very dirty face, Would do any dirty act, which would get him a place." Some time ago the writer was set upon by an old Radical and his wife; but before he relates the manner in which they set upon him, it will be as well to enter upon a few particulars tending to elucidate their reasons for doing so.
The writer had just entered into his eighteenth year, when he met at the table of a certain Anglo-Germanist, an individual, apparently somewhat under thirty, of middle stature, a thin and weaselly figure, a sallow complexion, a certain obliquity of vision, and a large pair of spectacles.

This person, who had lately come from abroad, and had published a volume of translations, had attracted some slight notice in the literary world, and was looked upon as a kind of lion in a small provincial capital.

After dinner he argued a great deal, spoke vehemently against the Church, and uttered the most desperate Radicalism that was perhaps ever heard, saying, he hoped that in a short time there would not be a king or queen in Europe, and enveighing bitterly against the English aristocracy, and against the Duke of Wellington in particular, whom, he said, if he himself was ever president of an English republic--an event which he seemed to think by no means improbable--he would hang for certain infamous acts of profligacy and bloodshed which he had perpetrated in Spain.

Being informed that the writer was something of a philologist, to which character the individual in question laid great pretensions, he came and sat down by him, and talked about languages and literature.