oppressed by this exhibition, which seemed to
me indescribably miserable and sad. The crazy
stammerings of the pipe and tabor—the crazy
looks of the poor fellow himself (who ought to
have been taken care of in some asylum, instead
of being left to battle with savage street boys,
from whom he would sometimes fly, making
goblin outcries of fear and wrath)—and the
ugly dolls themselves, looking like a deputation
from the rag-and-bone shops, instinct with a
kind of jerking and galvanic life,—all this often
made me shrink in the avenues of Soho at the
time I am writing about. Another dismal
entertainment was also common—performing
monkeys, in the never-varying red coat, and
always accompanied (as they are now, though,
thank Heaven! they are going out of fashion)
by the most doleful and whining of organs. The
bear in She Stoops to Conquer would dance to
"none but the genteelest of tunes:" monkeys,
I suppose, will dance to none but the most
melancholy. I always know when a street
monkey is coming, by the music he carries with
him; and I am much mistaken if the organs
appropriated to this line of business at the
present moment are not the very same which
harassed my young soul in the days of '30-31.

It is a strange, dreamy habit of my mind that,
when I enter a neighbourhood with which I was
familiar years ago, but which I have not recently
visited, everything seems to bear a sort of
ghostly similitude to the vanished time. I do
not often track the labyrinth of Soho now; but,
going there the other day, I almost fancied
myself back again in the dim Past. In one of the
streets lying off from the Square, I came across
a withered old man with a guitar, who appeared
to me like the Rip Van Winkle of street
musicians, only half awake from a sleep of Thirty
Years. I look at the grimy brick-and-mortar,
at the dingy shops, at the desolate area-rails;
and I see no change. Do they ever repaint
and beautify in this region? I doubt it. Have
the natives any knowledge of alterations in the
fashion? I suspect not. The women wear no
crinoline and no hats; the men, in the matter of
natural decoration, stick to the old bottle-brush
form of whisker which was considered quite
"the thing" in the days of the Fourth George
and William. In the course of an hour's stroll
I saw not a single beard and moustache.
Towards Seven Dials, the stock in the shop
windows is marvellously antiquated. Here, for
instance, in this print-shop, I find a set of
insipidly romantic plates from the Annals of my
young days, and a portrait of the First Gentleman
in Europe, in his wig and cravat as he
lived. Some loyal inhabitant of Soho, who
wishes to be up to the time, will probably buy
that portrait, and, with pardonable vanity,
invite his friends to see it. And yet what a
while ago it seems to me since, in this shadowy
province, I heard the bells ringing (I beg your
pardon— I mean tolling) for the death of that
pattern for kings, husbands, and gentlemen!
I pass on with a sense of unreality, and make
my way into the Square. Yes, here are the
houses I gazed up at; here are the gravel walks
I trotted along; here are the trees; here is the
statue of that other First Gentleman and model
king, Charles the Second. The statue and the
pedestal now strike me as being diminutive in
height, whereas in my imagination they had
towered sublime with an altitude they do not
really possess. I recollect that thirty years
ago this statue was the occasion of much
anguish to the mind of the gardener, who used
frequently to find the monarch's head
ignominiously crowned with an old and battered hat,
placed there by rude boys who had no respect
for royalty. This worthy man had repeatedly
to climb the projections of the pedestal, and
with a rake dislodge the squalid adornment, so
that Majesty might once more look respectable
in the eyes of passers-by. Of the Square in
those days I may note another peculiarity. Its
floral productions were limited, if I am not
greatly mistaken, to mignionette and French
marigolds. At least, I have a distinct
recollection of those two flowers, and have no
recollection of any other; and to this day I have
nothing to do but, to sniff a sprig of mignionette
to bring back the place and the time with
singular vividness. Strange magic of the sense of
smell! Standing on the very site of those
early recollections, looking at the unaltered
house-fronts, and seeing all things as they were
then, I have not so keen a perception of the
old days as when, in a totally different spot, I
inhale the breath of one poor flowering stalk,
and find in it the breath of the Past. In this
one case I simply recollect bygone things; in the
other, childhood itself comes back, and the dead
live once more.

Has nothing changed since that time, except
myself? Yes, much. Those years, 1830-31,
would seem antediluvian to the smart young
fellows of twenty who have been born and bred
in the days of railroads and electric telegraphs.
Railroads were just beginning in the north, and
the south knew them not. It was in 1830 that
Huskisson was killed at the opening of the
Manchester and Liverpool line, the first ever
constructed. People talked about the rail as a
wonder, or depreciated it as a dangerous
innovation; and any one who had actually travelled
in that way was a man who could command his
listeners, and was privileged to bore them by
unlimited repetitions of his experiences. The
stage-coach, with its four dashing horses, its
driver with a flower in his mouth, and its guard
with trumpet and pistols, was still a feature of
the streets. Omnibuses were just beginning:
Shillibeer started them in that very year 1830,
with three horses each. Of cabs there were not
many, and they were called "cabriolets," except
by the vulgar, who have now carried their
point. They were made in the fashion of
gentlemen's cabriolets, only that they were
provided with a sort of pouch at the right side,
where the driver officiated, causing the vehicle
to sway a good deal in that direction. You sat
with your face to the opening, as in a modern
Hansom and could draw a curtain before you if