a want of foresight in the whole arrangement of the deed, and the attempts to conceal it, which argued strange inconsideration, which a professed robber would not have exhibited.  There was just one single shade of redeeming character about a business so brutal, perpetrated by men above the very lowest rank of life—­it was the mixture of revenge which afforded some relief to the circumstances of treachery and premeditation which accompanied it.  But Weare was a cheat, and had no doubt pillaged Thurtell, who therefore deemed he might take greater liberties with him than with others.

The dirt of the present habitation equalled its wretched desolation, and a truculent-looking hag, who showed us the place, and received half-a-crown, looked not unlike the natural inmate of such a mansion.  She indicated as much herself, saying the landlord had dismantled the place because no respectable person would live there.  She seems to live entirely alone, and fears no ghosts, she says.

One thing about this mysterious tragedy was never explained.  It is said that Weare, as is the habit of such men, always carried about his person, and between his flannel waistcoat and shirt, a sum of ready money, equal to L1500 or L2000.  No such money was ever recovered, and as the sum divided by Thurtell among his accomplices was only about L20, he must, in slang phrase, have bucketed his pals.[219]

We came on as far as Alconbury, where we slept comfortably.

May 29.—­We travelled from Alconbury Hill to Ferry Bridge, upwards of a hundred miles, amid all the beauties of “flourish” and verdure which spring awakens at her first approach in the midland counties of England, but without any variety save those of the season’s making.  I do believe this great north road is the dullest in the world, as well as the most convenient for the traveller.  Nothing seems to me to have been altered within twenty or thirty years, save the noses of the landlords, which have bloomed and given place to another set of proboscises as germane us the old ones to the very welcome,—­please to light—­’Orses forward, and ready out.  The skeleton at Barnby Moor has deserted his gibbet, and that is the only change I recollect.

I have amused myself to-day with reading Lockhart’s Life of Burns, which is very well written—­in fact, an admirable thing.  He has judiciously slurred over his vices and follies; for although Currie, I myself, and others, have not said a word more on that subject than is true, yet as the dead corpse is straightened, swathed, and made decent, so ought the character of such an inimitable genius as Burns to be tenderly handled after death.  The knowledge of his vicious weaknesses or vices is only a subject of sorrow to the well-disposed, and of triumph to the profligate.