Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/74

 by the hand, he told him, there was a deal of natural shrewdness in his countenance; and that Mr. Augustus Tomlinson did not doubt but that he (Paul) might have the honour to be murdered himself one of these days.—"You understand me!" continued Mr. Augustus,—"I mean murdered in effigy,—assassinated in type,—while you yourself, unconscious of the circumstance, are quietly enjoying what you imagine to be your existence. We never kill common persons: to say truth, our chief spite is against the Church;—we destroy bishops by wholesale. Sometimes, indeed, we knock off a leading barrister or so; and express the anguish of the junior counsel at a loss so destructive to their interests. But that is only a stray hit; and the slain barrister often lives to become attorney-general, renounce Whig principles, and prosecute the very press that destroyed him. Bishops are our proper food: we send them to heaven on a sort of flying griffin, of which the back is an apoplexy, and the wings are puffs. The Bishop of, whom we dispatched in this manner the other day, being rather a facetious