1.  Imprimis, then, Mr. Advertiser!  If the culprit whom you are willing to recover be one to whom in times past you have shown kindness, and been disposed to think kindly of him yourself, but he has deceived your trust, and has run away, and left you with a load of debt to answer for him,—­sit down calmly and endeavor to behold him through the spectacles of memory rather than of present conceit.  Image to yourself, before you pen a tittle of his description, the same plausible, good-looking man who took you in, and try to put away from your mind every intrusion of that deceitful spectre which perpetually obtrudes itself in the room of your former friend’s known visage.  It will do you more credit to have been deceived by such a one; and depend upon it, the traitor will convey to the eyes of the world in general much more of that first idea which you formed (perhaps in part erroneous) of his physiognomy, than of that frightful substitute which you have suffered to creep in upon your mind and usurp upon it; a creature which has no archetype except in your own brain.

2.  If you be a master that have to advertise a runaway apprentice, though the young dog’s faults are known only to you, and no doubt his conduct has been aggravating enough, do not presently set him down as having crooked ankles.  He may have a good pair of legs, and run away notwithstanding.  Indeed, the latter does rather seem to imply the former.

3.  If the unhappy person against whom your laudable vengeance is directed be a thief, think that a thief may have a good nose, good eyes, good ears.  It is indispensable to his profession that he be possessed of sagacity, foresight, vigilance; it is more than probable, then, that he is endued with the bodily types or instruments of these qualities to some tolerable degree of perfectness.

4.  If petty larceny be his offence, I exhort you, do not confound meanness of crime with diminutiveness of stature.  These things have no connection.  I have known a tall man stoop to the basest action, a short man aspire to the height of crime, a fair man be guilty of the foulest actions, &c.

5.  Perhaps the offender has been guilty of some atrocious and aggravated murder.  Here is the most difficult case of all.  It is above all requisite that such a daring violator of the peace and safety of society should meet with his reward, a violent and ignominious death.  But how shall we get at him?  Who is there among us that has known him before he committed the offence, that shall take upon him to say he can sit down coolly and pen a dispassionate description of a murderer?  The tales of our nursery,—­the reading of our youth,—­the ill-looking man that was hired by the Uncle to despatch the Children in the Wood,—­the grim ruffians who smothered the babes in the Tower,—­the black and beetle-browed assassin of Mrs. Ratcliffe,—­the shag-haired villain of Mr. Monk Lewis,—­the Tarquin tread, and mill-stone dropping eyes, of Murder in Shakspeare,—­the