Victor Leblanc the friend of my boyhood,
sitting in the place I had formerly occupied, and
confessing in open court that he had been
actuated throughout, by feelings of hatred and
jealousy of my success in life. Having once
got rid of me, he felt confident of winning
Louise. But here he was defeated. For,
when hard pressed by her own family to
forget me, and marry, Louise had firmly
refused, expressing her determination to enter
a convent if further troubled upon the
subject. So, being an only child, she was
allowed to have her own way.

Victor Leblanc was sentenced to hard
labour for life, the farm-servant to twenty
years imprisonment; and, two days afterwards,
I was solemnly reinstated in my legal
rights.

In another fortnight I was quietly married
in the little church of Bazeille.

AN OFFICIAL SCARECROW.

IF any Right Honourable Prime Minister
of England were to request the favour of my
attendance at the Treasury one morning, and
when I was standing before him upon the
Turkey carpet in the lofty room, were to say
to me heartily and benevolently, absence
in his voice and manner of all official
restraint: "Tomkins, you have, in your time,
done the state some service, and hang me if
you shall not have any office you like to
name," I solemnly believe that I should
respond by naming the office of Examiner
and Licenser of Plays. I do not covet
the emoluments of the appointment—for the
sum of four hundred pounds per annum,
salary, and a fee upon every play, song, or
entertainment intended for representation on
the stage, would have few charms in my eyes
—but it would be because I long to fill such
a sphere of usefulness in the government of
my country. What pride and joy there
would be in feeling that I was the guardian
and conservator of public morality, the
one single barrier left to stem the tide of
written impropriety and represented vice?
While on every side there raged around me
the violent, uncontrolled liberty and licence
of literature and the press, I alone should
remain calm and dignified, working in my
little circle of self elected and time-honoured
utility, checking the encroachments of a
freedom that is not required for the public
good, and purifying the poisoned spring of
the people's amusements at the fountain
head. Could any man, with an inborn sense
of the virtues of order, decency, and
propriety, of the incalculable benefits arising
from a careful governmental supervision of
thought and action, wish for a more congenial
employment? I think not.

Of course, in filling an office of this kind,
much must depend upon the individual tastes
and habits of the censor. What is one man's
food is another man's poison. I can imagine
a censor with a partiality for the spicing of
oaths contained in the old style of comedy,
while another censor would have as much
horror of this peculiar means of excitement
as a field-preacher. One censor may be
rather loose in his notions of morality, may
be prone to tolerate that which can scarcely
be endured, may be charitably broad in his
critical interpretations, mentally quoting that
highly convenient maxim which wishes evil
unto him who evil thinketh. Another censor
may carry fastidiousness to a pitch that is
absurdly unbearable: may see an impropriety
lurking in every phrase, and a double meaning
conveyed in every point. It is an established
law, that one censor cannot recall and re-
censor the work which his predecessors have
censored. He may expend his fury upon
the translated productions of an unscrupulous
French stage, that come under the operation
of his personal pruning-knife, but those
performances that have gone before he has no
power to touch, while the effusions of the
elder dramatists stare him in the face, and
mock him with what great critics are pleased
to call their rude, hearty, honest, and rampant
strength. When the Parisian vaudeville has
gone forth from his office, without stain and
without reproach, he must be painfully
conscious that there are still in existence
many fine Beaumonts and Fletchers, certain
acting editions of Romeo, and of Othello, to
say little of Congreve, and a host of that
period.

But still, notwithstanding these drawbacks
and annoyances, his position is an enviable
one. Other functionaries who administer
the routine of government, may enjoy an
importance far transcending his; their pay
may be greater, and they may dine more
frequently at the table of their monarch;
but these things are no measure of the
real benefit they confer upon the country.
It is not only in the capacity of moral
sentinel that the licenser of plays may be
regarded with envy; he has another function.
To his care is confided the safe custody of
Church and State, the preservation of political
dignity, and the protection of royalty from
the rude attacks of unscrupulous dramatic
satirists. When the vulgar burlesque writer
hurls his wordy missiles with a reckless hand
at the head of the devoted minister for the
time being, it is the proud duty of the
licenser of plays to interpose his slender
shield, and turn back the shafts of ridicule
intended for his master. The licenser of
plays is elevated into a serene political
atmosphere, high above all the paltry
considerations and influences of party spirit. He
stands immoveable, while administrations
come and go. He knows nothing of the
subtle distinctions, between Whig and Radical,
Tory and Conservative. To him they
are all talking, working, governing men.
They claim the shelter of his small, but
hospitable office, and, like a large-hearted