SCENES AND STORIES, BY A CLERGYMAN IN DEBT. IF the

author be really a clergyman, he has evidently had more to do with the Inw than the gospel—though his law is sometimes none of the soundest. His charity thinketh no evil—of debtors, but scarcely restrains him from speaking evil of other men. In other respects, there is little relation to theology in his book ; it smacks more of the scribe than of the priest. The framework of Scenes and Stories is sufficient for its pur- pose. Mr. Montford, a well-educated, well-intentioned, well-prin- cipled young man, Arith a certain income of 2501. a year, gets into

gay company, and into debt. He is arrested and taken to a spunging-house; which affords the author an opportunity of in- troducing his readers to the areana of those barred mansions, and

telling some cf the stories by which their inmates contrive to while away the time. The next act in the drama is the Fleet ; whither Montford's attorney removes him by habeas, to avoid the disgrace

and inconvenience of Whitecross Street. His sojourn here ad- mits of a minute description of the prison and of the prisoners; `with some of whose names and persons the Clergyman appears to us to take an unwarrantable liberty. The episodic history of Mr. Nagle—a fashioeable lyrist and author, making his 10001. to 1500/.

a year—serves to introduce the reader to the Whitecross Street establishment ; and is intended to illustrate the evils of the law and the rascality of lawyers. The power of harassing a debtor,

which is given by the present system to a vindictive creditor, is

shown by the removal of Montfort and his new friend to Banco Regis. Upon the air, accommodations, and company of the Bench, our divine waxes eloquent; and, judging from the enter- tainments he describes, some of the debtors enjoy more of luxury within the walls, than hard-hearted creditors without can procure of comforts. The Clergyman was too much of a gentleman to visit Horsemonger Lane; but poor Tom Dibdin, who, he tells us, is confined there, has furnished a description of the place, where debtors " are fellow lodgers (with the intervention of a wall) with murderers, highwaymen, footpads, pickpockets, and swindling attornies !" Some notices of the most distinguished characters who have sojourned in the before-mentioned prisons—as Lord Cochrane, for example—complete the matter of' the volumes.

Had the execution of the work equalled the subject, it would have taken a foremost place in the ranks of literature. To this

station it has no claim : it is, however, a readable and amusing book ; possessing a sort of gaol-interest, and displaying an ir- regular and unstudied talent. As we intimated before, the sympathies of the writer are all one.sided ; and this feeling dis- torts his views and colours his stories. We are indeed given to understand that roguish debtors may he within the possibilities; but their existence is scarcely noted ; the persons who figure in his tales are the victims of too much good-nature or too great forget- fulness of their debts. The data on which his declamations are founded assume that the debtor is willing to pay if he had the means, and intends to pay when his exertions have obtained them;

but that creditors and lawyers shut him up in prison from sheer tyranny and a love of seeing a debtor in gaol. The other points of the question—the fair hopes of steady industry blasted, the re- trenchments of the little luxuries or comforts of a respectable home, the-galling feelings attendant upon loss of caste, the pros- pects of parents for the advancement of their children frustrated, or even the total ruin of the class creditores which follow from the "forgetfulness" of debtors, are altogether overlooked. We could expatiate upon all this at greater length, but the grounds on which the author puts the matter restrain us : misfortune and distress are sacred.

The Scenes of the Clergyman are better than his Stories. He does not appear to hr've allowed himself the time ter properly deve- loping a talc, even if he possesses the requisite qualifications; but he has a quickness of observatien and fluency of style foridese:iir- tion, though he sees only the more obvious points.

THE RECEIVING WARD OF WIIITECROSN STREET.

Arrived in the Receiving Wald, the detour, if he he at all respectable, is stai tied at the society into whose " strange circle" he finds himself cast. lie will survey one group round the tire, that may consist of one, perhaps two gen- tlemen, two or three men of business of the middle class, and the rest labourers, —the lowest and poorest of the " English canaille." A seomill sin assembly may have gathered at the far end of the room—they will be talking or eating

together : the nian is the prisoner, the woman, who has just brow in their common dinner in a handkerchief between two plates, is the wife, and it may Ire that a child or two have accompanied her to partake their father's meal : he is too poor to provide them with another at Lowe. A third group is perhaps divided along the firm, which reaches from the door to the steward's pantry : it presents a boy of fourteen or fifteen playing with his IDA which has been handed to him ou his entrance into the prison, or seeking to catch flies on the wall, not well knowing why lie has been brought or when he is to go away. Near to him is an Irish bricklayer, who has brought his towel, but left his hod behind : he has been taken in execution, when in the act of mounting his ladder,.

for AT : he is to wipe off his debt, tolfeit his wages, and for the fine deprive his Emily of the benefit of his labour, by remaining in Whitecross Street ten days. The new debtor turns his eve from the wooden form to a window at the other end of the room, at which he sees a young Frenchman weeping. It is not often that men weep. When they do so from trivial causes or misfor- tunes, it is accounted cowardly ; and vet many an Englishman ushered suddenly into the French prison, St. Pelagic, Ilia wept himself to madness. That young Frenchman did not owe one penny in the world : he had been, however, served with a writ by sonic claimant with whom he had a running account ;—that is, a piece of paper, of which he did not know the meaning, had been put into his hands, and he had put it into his pocket. There it had reposed, unheeded and undisturbed, until judgment had gone by default ; and the Frenchman was taken from his lodging and brought to Whitecross Street. lie could not speak one word of English : he had passed through high-walled courts, (link avenues, and grated iron doors ; he found himself suddenly in an apartment, large, dreary, desolate, and untenanted save by a few individuals, none of whom understood, while sonic laughed at his language. Ile must have fancied himself among criminals, for many cf those around him he saw were of the vi!est and most de- graded of the community—dustmen, scavengers, sweeps. A feeling of degra- dation, if not of actual fear, near akin to horror, must have possessed him, and it is no marvel that he wept like a child.

At a little desk which projects between the two end windows, stands the • steward of the ward entering the name of a new comer, or it may be the break- fast or dining account ; and on his light is the waiter, just emerging from his pantry sanctum with a tablecloth in his hatul, which he is about to lay upon the wooden board or table at which two individuals have been playing a game of chess, and for one of whom dinner is now to supersede the checkmate. The whole picture is worthy of Crnikshank, and would nioraliz... as wdl as the wisest and most philosophically-fraught of the paintings of lhigart h. We have introduced, among the inmates of the ward, a mere hay and a brick- layer; and we have spoken of dustmen, s:Ntvengers, and sweeps. We will make a remark upon the system which insults gentlemen and tradesmen by putting them on a level with these Myron ings of society, and which is at the same time equally injurious to the principles of industry and honesty and the arguments of common sense. These poor men if they must lie called bad or dishonest men, punish them at bridewell or the treadmill, and do not let their penance he the penance of the simply unthrtunate) are brought into prison from the Lord Mayor's Court, the Sherig's Court, and the Court cf Requests; and their debts vary from one to forty shillings. The lowest tent of their impri- sonment is ten days; and they remain in visor. one day for every shilling they owe above ten of debt and costs.

The ostensible object of tine author in writing his book is to assist in abolishing imprisonment for debt ; and in the closing pages he earnestly calls upon the Legislature to pass the bill Sir JOHN CA7a.BELL has just brought into the Commons. We are inclined, though with less of rhetoric, to join in his recommenda- tion. It is a mockery to give a man, as at present, power over a debtor's person, and none at all over his property ; whilst it is con- trary to all reason and justice to award the same or nearly the same punishment to the injured, the unfortunate, the careless, the imprudent, and the fraudulent, or to compel an involved man to continve his career, and dribble away his means, because he him- self has no power to wind up his affairs. At the same time, we are prepared for results which the writer does not seem to anticipate; and we look forward to the abolition of imprisonment for debt as likely to introduce a much sounder state of credit. At present, many :speculate upon the power of arresting, who rarely or never use it. When the person is protected (unless in eases of fraud), and property only available to the creditor, the circumstances and character of tile debtor will be more closely scanned ; credit itself will, we suspect, be limited ; and the resources of gentlemen- swindlers, or of extravagant or thoughtless young men of good connexions, restricted or destroyed—to the advantage, we trust, of those who not only intend payment but do pay.