YE VAMPYRES!

A Legend

OF

THE NATIONAL BETTING-RING.

I Legend

OF

THE NATIONAL BETTING-RING,

SHOWING WHAT BECAME OF IT.

BY

THE SPECTRE.

DEDICATED BY EXPRESS PERMISSION, AND WITH UVALTERABLE

GRATITUDE AND VENERATION, TO

LONDON:
SAMUEL TINSLEY, 10 SOUTHAMPTON ST., STRAND.

1875.
[All rights reserved. )

250. Me 194

PREFACE.

This is true liberty, when freeborn men,
Having to advise the public, may speak free;
Which he who can, and will, deserves high praise.
Who neither can, nor will, may

hold his peace :
What can be juster in a state than this ?'

EURIPIDES (MILTON's Translation).

a

As good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.

* Many a man lives a burden to the earth, but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.

'It is true no age can restore a life, whereof, perhaps, there is no great loss, and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books, since we see a kind of homicide may thus be committed, sometimes a martyr