very shortly. This is absolute-coming in from Axbridge, I met the place a full mile west of where I left it-a mile on the road between Tyburn turnpike and Bayswater.

Here

Works that, but yesterday, were the business of years to think of, are projected now, and completed, almost between to-day and to-morrow. is a bridge built that has cost half a million! Paying about as much, I understand, as may keep it in repair. And yet nobody seems to suffer; and another, a wilder speculation than the first, at the east end of the town, is undertaking.

Luxury makes laudable progress too-not among the people of rankperhaps it could not well get much farther than it has got with themand present circumstances seem likely rather to abate it but the second class in the metropolis, the de facto traders, are pressing harder than ever upon the rich, and driving them fast into projects of exclusion and barricade. Clerks now keep actresses; linen-drapers speak Italian; and tailors keep hunting-horses, and go to the French play. This it is that pulls down the coffee-houses, into which all may walk, and sets up the clubs, into which even he who would eat a twenty-shilling supper cannot enter. And, for the lower ranks, as regards external appearance, literally, now, you can't even guess at the condition of any female in London by her dress, there is not a woman-servant in this house where I am living, who does not go abroad, on her holiday, in velvet and feathers; and in such attire altogether as the wife of a man of moderate income, very osten, could hardly hope to compass.

So, indeed, for the gentleman; in style and dress, no man ever looks like what he is; until at last, venture to seem anything but a chimneysweeper, and (in a strange neighbourhood) you run good chance to be set down for an impostor. As for "Cap. tains," the island is peopled with them. I can find no dignitaries (except now and then a "Major") else. Public exhibitors are getting into importance too; I saw a person that keeps a showbox somewhere in the Strand, so extreme the other day, in boots and mustachoes, that I learned his quality, by asking (in admiration) to what corps of Hungarians he belonged!

Here is a boot-maker, last week, has married a ward in Chancery! some ex-tailor's only joy, with fifty thousand pounds-has been in prison"consented to make settlements". and now backs boxers-drives tandem -and is a "character" "upon town." Another fellow, that I used to buy canes of in Oxford Street, across a counter-I saw at the Opera, dressed like a Pandour! he is a blackleg forsooth, and will be hanged, I dare say-to the emulation of every other stick boy about St James's!

Make allowance for the fact, that we all, at some time, come to say as much; and, even then,—things did not go thus in my day. There has been an advance in the imposture, as well as in the importance, of the country: an accession to its impudence as well as to its strength; an increase of business scarcely more at the Bank than at the Old Bailey, effected within the last twenty years. The people are fonder of show than they used to be; less jealous, a great deal, of the workhouse; and a spirit of thinking-acting-ouly with reference to the present, runs more than it did through all the arrangements of the community.

We build to a degree perfectly ludicrous-only for the hour-neighbourhoods rise up like fairy cities, and fall down within the time that they formerly took in being set about. Your new houses are showy; the fancy of the day calls them tasteful; and there is not much chance of their standing long enough to allow them to go out of fashion. You get everywhere a whitewashed front-plateglass windows-folding doors, and gilded cornices—a spiral staircase, that you risk your life every time you go up—and a drawing-room, that stands in your lease, with a clause, that you shan't attempt to dance in it—but, for a single circumstance of convenience or accommodation-a closet, a recess, a foot deep-there is not such a thing from the top of the building to the bottom! Your house-that is the object-must stand upon no ground; your garden -stabling-offices-there is not a stall in which a horse can turn round -are all cut and carved, and economical to an inch; your bed-chambers will be low and inconvenient; your cellars full of water, (for they have

found out that it is very sad nonsense indeed, now, the laying a "foundation"); and your back windows-at a rent that is perfectly facetious to talk about-will look upon a churchyard, a court filled with old-clothesmen, or a disreputable alley.

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The same quality of spirit-careless of the future-anxious only to be great (or seem so) in the present—in an increased degree actuates the trader. A botcher, without common stock of thread and needles-six yards of sky-blue drugget only in his shop, and sixteen starving children squalling in his "back parlour"-will still be Gros Marchand--take a house in the "Quadrant," or the "Arcade;" write himself up 66 Army Clothier" for a month, and go into the Gazette, as Special Tailor to the King's Monkey." And such places as these "Quadrant" houses are! So very foppishly gay and pretending in their exterior; within dark, narrow, mean, and thrust (behind) upon every_comfortless, and vile propinquity. ging tenants one half of them, (not to speak of those who run away,) regularly four times a year. Empty three months in every twelve; but producing a most disproportionable price during the other nine; for the failure of eleven speculators nowadays-Courage, mes amis !-never deters him who should make up the dozen.

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Chan

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Then all these people deal in the vice of Furnished Lodgings" too; making themselves, where they should (if vain and impudent) be free and independent too-wilfully servants to every coxcomb who is casting away the little subsistence he has, so that his tawdry foppery may but contribute to the maintenance of their own. auctioneer, or attorney in small practice, who could afford to call a reasonable dwelling his own, will let a train of insolent lacqueys into his house, a riotous lad their master, and perhaps a limited seraglio; for no bribe but that the creature may put his "name" upon a door in "George Street, Hanover Square," and give "parties" in gilded rooms to brother "beaten things," when the rightful occupant is away.

Unde habeas quærit nemo! but have (in London) now you must-that's absolute! No matter that you ask nothing; that's not sufficient; you must not be poor. Dedicate your whole life to the study of our pleasures;

take advantage of our wants or of our vices; minister, with a large capital, to our very meanest necessities; but, some way or other, see you get country-houses, and carriages-be a sheriff or a baronet, or don't dare to show your face. Then away all start, one against the other; everybody promulgates the devil's right (prescriptive) to the hindmost; the marvel to any creature, who has lived where men are contented with a little, is how so much is made, and out of such seemingly small game, and by so many!

And it is a curious picture of the condition and habits of the countrya record which, kept five hundred years ago, would be more valuable now than all the histories together that we have in print-the common newspaper which comes into the world every morning at six o'clock, and lies upon our breakfast-table-and always full too, that's the strangest problem, regularly by nine. The whole world, take away alone America, possesses nothing like an approach to the same document. A foreigner finds it difficult to comprehend the daily amount of the actual domestic occurrencethe rapes, murders, forgeries, and all other interesting intelligence," which the metropolis affords—as I saw a Sunday placard specifying the contents of a paper the other day. But the real curiosity is in the page of advertisements the master-key which this furnishes to the state of England -of Europe-almost of the world.

The uncountable variety of callings and speculations that appear-some so great; some so apparently contemptible; and yet all opening mines of riches to so many! One column announces the preparation of a hundred ships, all ready to sail instantly, almost for as many different ports in different quarters of the globe. The next offers-" steampackets to Richmond," " every Sunday morning at nine"-" Refreshments on board," and "Two and sixpence each passenger." A third sets out with the word "Accommodation!"-"Any sum!" from two hundred pounds to ten thousand!"— ready to advance for the convenience of noblemen and gentlemen at a moment's notice." And at the top of the fourth, under the same title-“ Accommodation"--you find that "Ladies whose situations require a temporary retirement" may hear of "An airy

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situation," and "the strictest secrecy," by applying at "No. 34, next door to the grocer's, in James Street, Gray's Inn Lane." "Education" tempts you in every shape; from— "Yorkshire," at "Sixteen guineas ayear," where there are no extras or vacations," and "Fare by the waggon," only L.1, 12s., to-" Rus in Urbe !""Dr Dolittle's establishment"—"Grosvenor Place"-and Graduate of Cambridge," at "two hundred." And, if you turn to the next page, and have only the happiness to be insane, you will see that the "Tenderest attention" is paid to "Valetudinarians," at "Straight Waistcoat Lodge," between Somerstown and the Dust-grounds at Battle Bridge; "References of the first respectability" to persons who have been raving; and "Private families" accommodated with "keepers" upon reasonable terms, " by the day, week, month, or year.'

And all these fierce competitors for preference, in their thousand and one peculiar occupations and capacitiesthe projector upon India government, and the improver upon India soythe companies in Bridge Street, who think of nothing but assuring life, and the undertakers in Fleet Market, who thrive only upon its extinction-the draper, who founds himself entirely upon "Ten thousand pair of warm Witney blankets," and the perfumer, whose hope on this side the grave is only to ensure "Universal ease and comfort in shaving"-the patent penmaker, and the patent pin-maker-the mangle-maker, and the spangle-maker -the dealers in spring-guns, and in pop-guns perigord pies, and artificial eyes-sell you a mango, dance you a fandango-large Twelfth cakes, nobody but Farrance makes-Paris stays -raise the high-ways. These millions are but the few who court popularity, at a peculiar expense, and through one particular medium!

They are not the same as, but over and above, the decorators of the dead walls of the town, posts, obelisks, empty houses, and scaffoldings; who address themselves to the more busy crowd who have not time to read newspapers, and who can only pursue their researches, in pursuing their daily perambulations." Matrimonial joys" Suits for little boys" "Teach the deaf and dumb"-"Great reductions in brandy and rum""Man taken up on suspicion of steal

ing!"-" Tooth pulled out by Mr Tugwell, without feeling"-" Portable gas"-" Wild ass"- "Poison rats" "Re-beavered hats"- (6 Clergyman's widow in great distress"" New crapes and poplins, for summer dress." There is no spot on earth, I believe, certainly none that ever I have visited, where a man can get all he wants, and with so little loss of time or asking for, as in London.

For the very thirst of gain, in fact, which makes us merciless and rapacious, completely ensures every one's getting his "money's worth," and in his own way, too, for his money. If you only want a ride that costs a shilling, you have a whole "stand" of hackney coachmen, threatening each other's lives which shall sell it to you. If you have ten miles to go into the country, the vehicle that carries you for half-a-crown, is, in truth, drawn and driven in a style ten times beyond the state of an Italian marquis. Would you dine?-from fifteen pence, to two guineas-in any quarter-in five minutes you have it on the table. If you want a coat, the fashion changes five times before you can determine which of the five hundred professors, who "unite elegance with economy" for prompt payment," best deserves your attention. If you have a complaint, a thousand remedies-every one infallible-are published in all the shopwindows-nay, on men's backs about the streets-for your particular salvation. And, after they have killed you, which every one of them can do ten times over, so it is a matter of perfect indifference which you pitch upon, there is a fight between the Woodencoffin Company and the Iron, in which material you shall be buried.

Then come the modes in which these speculators conduct their pursuits, and which are little less miraculous, if there could be any wonder in what one sees every day, than their variety, or their numbers. One man makes himself a landed proprietor by curing corns; a second "purchases perpetually," because he grinds a thousand children annually into cotton stockings; a third only repeats a liethe same lie-a given number of times, and arises a lord mayor. Falsehood, persisted in long enough—even those who know it is false cannot help dealing as if they believed it. They know it is a lie, but receive it as a metaphor, a figure, expressing not that

which it outwardly purports to express, but something else: as, for a familiar instance, the cries of fishwomen, "Live cod"-" Fresh salmon," &c. are understood to imply those commodities, not "live," or "fresh," but six weeks old. Thus, "Gervais Chardin-Parfumeur-à la cloche d'argent-Rue St Martin, a Paris"that single individual has supplied half England with French pomatum for the last forty years-the cover never once changed—which all England all the while knows to have been manufactured in Tooley-street. Ten to one, nevertheless, if there are not many who would leave off buying that pomatum, if it were offered for sale as English, and with the real maker's name upon it.

Two other rogues, in the city, have been making a laughable experiment enough upon the force of truth, or puff, between them; and, I believe, the matter is to end in an application to the Court of Chancery; but, for the time, the impostor has carried the day. One of these people, who are both hair-dressers, and live opposite to each other, near the Exchange, isor was lately thriving, by selling the fat of bears as a kind of cosmetic. The other (his neighbour), knowing that it was just as good to sell any other material in pots, with "Bear's Grease," for a label, as genuine bear's grease, immediately started with the same "pots," filled with an inexpensive unguent, in opposition. The true dealer, who keeps forty live bears in his cellar, and has himself taken up once a-week before the sitting alderman, as a nuisance, by way of advertisement, killed a bear upon this, hung him up whole in full sight in his shop, and wrote in the window, "A fresh bear killed this day!" The impostor, who had but one bear in all the world, which he privately led out of his house, after dark, every night, and brought him back (to seem like a new supply going in) in the morning, continued his sale, writing in his window, "Our fresh bear will be killed to-morrow." The original vender then -determined to cut off his rival's last shift-kept his actual bears, defunct, with the skins only half off, hanging up always at his door, proclaimed all bear's grease sold in "pots" a imposture;" and desired his customers to "walk in," and see theirs, "with their own eyes, cut and weighed from

"vile

the animal." This seemed conclusive for two days; but, on the third, the opponent was again in the field, with a placard, "founded on the opinion of nine doctors of physic," that bear's grease "obtained from the animal in a tamed, or domestic state," would not "make anybody's hair grow at all." In consequence of which he "has formed an establishment in Russia, (where all the best bears come from,) for catching them wild, cutting the fat off immediately, and potting it down for London consumption." And the rogue actually ruins his antagonist, without going to the expense of a bear's-skin, by writing all over his house, "LICENSED BY THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT"- HERE, AND ARCHANGEL.'

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"This is the state of man"—at least with us or something very like it; but yet I doubt, whether such a scheme of toil and trouble is the best mode of getting through life, after all. The million born under such a system have no time to live; they labour for twenty-three hours in acquiring a certain quantity of wealth, which they dissipate in some folly-which perhaps, at last, they care as little as it deserves for in the twenty-fourth.

As, to be safe, we must be great, I admire the country-am proud of it; but it is too populous-too much a town throughout-there is too much free speaking, and far too little free footing in it, for my indolent, vagabond disposition to be pleased with.

From the Land's End to John o'Groat's, every inch of ground that a man walks upon, in England, must belong to himself or to somebody else. If you shoot, the poacher has ten times more true enjoyment of the chase than the lord can have; for what can you kill but that which is your own already, or that which your neighbour has reared, and paid for as fully as he does his turkeys? It is a poor apology for field sport, to breed pheasants, fed, and almost marked like cattle, at a cost of five guineas a-piece; and then get a party, on an appointed day, to sit in arm-chairs and slaughter them, a hundred upon an acre! There is no true hunting now in England, but the hunting of three per cents, and of men.

There is no spot where you may go and wander-(I can understand, if not defend, the Conqueror's making a forest in Hampshire !)-wander for