In the course of social transition, professions, like dogs, have their day.  A calling honourable in one century, becomes infamous in the next; and vocations grow obsolete, like the fashioning of our garments or figures of speech.  In barbarous communities, the strong man is king:—­

  “Le premier roi fut un soldat heureux.”

Where human statute is beginning to prize the general weal, the legist is of high account, and the priest paramount.  Higher civilization engenders the influence of the man of letters, the artist, the dramatist, the wit, the poet, and the orator.  Or when, with a wisdom surpassing the philosophy of the schools, we tumble down to prose, and assume the leathern apron of the utilitarian—­the civil engineer, or operative chemist, starts up into a colossus.  Sir Humphrey Davy, and Sir Isambert Brunel, are the true knights of modern chivalry; and Sir Walter—­our Sir Walter—­never showed himself more shrewd than in his exclamation to Moore—­“Ah, Tam!—­it’s lucky, man, we cam’ sae soon!” Great as was his influence, equaling that of the other two great Sir Walters, Manny and Raleigh, in their several epochs of valour and enterprise, it is likely enough, that, if born a century later, the MSS. of the Scotch novels would have been chiefly valuable to light the furnace of some factory!

So much in exposition of the fact, that, so long as the world possessed only three of what we choose to call quarters, an executioner was an officer of state; and that, now it possesses five, the female of highest renown, and greatest power of self-enrichment, is the danseuse, or opera-dancer!

Many intermediary callings have disappeared.  The domestic chaplain of a lordly household is now nearly as superfluous as its archers or falconers; and the court calendars of former reigns record a variety of places and perquisites, which, did they still exist, would be unpalatable to modern courtiers, though compelled to earn their daily cakes, however dirty.  Just as the last golden pippin of the house of Crenie was preserved in wax for the edification of posterity, a watchman has been deposited, with his staff and lantern, in the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, or the Museum of the Zoological, or United Service Club, or some other of your grand national collections, as a specimen of the extinct Dogberry or Charley of the eighteenth century; and in process of time, as much and more also will probably be done to a parish beadle, a theatrical manager, a lord chamberlain—­and other public functionaries whom it might not be altogether safe to enumerate.

Among them, however, there is really some satisfaction in hinting at the hangman!—­For, hear it, ye sanguinary manes of our ancestors:—­“Les bourreaux s’en vont!” Executioners are departing!  We shall shortly have to commemorate in our obituaries, and signalize by the hands of our novelists—­“the last of the Jack Ketches.”  In these days of ultra-philanthropy, the hangman scarcely finds salt to his porridge, or porridge to salt.