The prevalence of this evil, induced the legislature, in 1725, to make the reception of stolen goods capital.  The first sacrifice to this law was the noted Jonathan Wild.

The officers of justice, in 1732, pulled Walton out of his bed, in an obscure cottage, one furlong from the town, now Brickhill-Lane, carried him to prison, and from thence to the gallows—­they had better have carried him to the workhouse, and his followers to the anvil.

To him succeeded Francis Kimberley, the only reasoning animal, who resided at No. 60, in Dale-End, from his early youth to extreme age.—­An hermit in a crowd!  The windows of his house were strangers to light!  The shutters forgot to open; the chimney to smoak.  His cellar, though amply furnished, never knew moisture.

He spent threescore years in filling six rooms with such trumpery as is just too good to be thrown away, and too bad to be kept.  His life was as inoffensive as long.  Instead of stealing the goods which other people use, he purchased what he could not use himself.  He was not anxious what kind of property entered his house; if there was bulk he was satisfied.

His dark house, and his dark figure corresponded with each other.  The apartments, choaked up with lumber, scarcely admitted his body, though of the skeleton order.  Perhaps leanness is an appendage to the science, for I never knew a corpulent conjurer.

His diet, regular, plain, and slender, shewed at how little expence life may be sustained.

His library consisted of several thousand volumes, not one of which, I believe, he ever read:  having written, in characters unknown to all but himself, his name, price, and date, in the title-page, he laid them by for ever.  The highest pitch of his erudition was the annual almanack.

He never wished to approach a woman, or be approached by one.  Should the rest of men, for half a century, pay no more attention to the fair, some angelic hand might stick up a note, like the artic circle over one of our continents, this world to be let.

If he did not cultivate the human species, the spiders, more numerous than his books, enjoyed an uninterrupted reign of quiet.  The silence of the place was not broken:  the broom, the book, the dust, or the web, was not disturbed.  Mercury and his shirt, changed their revolutions together; and Saturn changed his, with his coat.

He died, in 1756, as conjurers usually die, unlamented.

MILITARY ASSOCIATION.

The use of arms is necessary to every man who has something to lose, or something to gain.  No property will protect itself.  The English have liberty and property to lose, but nothing to win.  As every man is born free, the West-Indian slaves have liberty to gain, but nothing to lose.  If a rascally African prince attempts to sell his people, he ought to be first sold himself; and the buyer, who acts so daringly opposite to the Christian precept, is yet more blameable.  He ought to have the first whip, often mended, worn out upon his own back.