good wages, a jacket with sugar-loaf buttons,
and tight buckskin small-clothes.

We generally long for the thing which we
are least likely ever to possess. The ugly
woman longs for beauty. The drunkard, in
his waking moments, longs for the firm tread,
clear eye, and assured speech, of the temperate;
and I have often conjectured that thieves are
beset at times with a dreadful longing to become
honest men. I was born to go afoot. When
Fate condemned me to the footpath, she also
presented me with a pair of bad legs; for Fate
seldom does things by halves. The consequence
is, that I have always been longing to ride in a
carriage of my own. Of my own, mind. Let
that you have, be yours and nobody else's. I
have longed for my own carriage this many
a year, and have gazed so enviously intent
on some of my acquaintance riding high
horses or careering along in the chariots
of the proud, that my toes have been menaced
by their chargers' hoofs, and my last carriage
has promised to be a stretcher to convey
me to the hospital after being run over. My
longings vehiculary have been catholic, and
perhaps a little capricious. In childhood I
longed for the lord mayor's coach, so grand, so
golden, so roomy. What happiness was his who,
with a fur porringer on his head, and a sword held
bâton-wise, looked from that coach-window like
Punch from a glorified show! There was a
story related to my detriment during nonage,
that I once expressed a longing for a mourning
coach. I will own that the cumbrous sable
waggon, so repulsive to most persons, exercises
over me to this day a strange fascination, and
that I have some difficulty in refraining from
stealing down the stable-yards of funeral post-
masters and peeping into the stuffy cloth
caverns, and seeking for strange sights in the
shining black panels, as the superstitious seek
for apparitions in the drop of ink of the Egyptian
magician, and wondering at the uncouth leather
springs and braces, and watching the harnessing
of the long-tailed round-barrelled Flemish
steeds, with their obsolete surcingles and chest-
bands. The which leads me, with a blush, to
admit that there may be some truth in the
report that in youth "my sister Emmeline and
I"—her name was not Emmeline—were in the
habit of performing funerals in the nursery, and
playing at Mr. Shillibeer.

But these, and the glorious mail-coach, with
the four thorough-breds, and the guard and
coachman in blazing scarlet and gold, and the
bran-new harness and reins, which used to burst
on our sight on the evening of the king's birthday
long bygone—these were but childish longings,
airy desires akin to that which children show
for the royal arms on a shop-front, or the
moon in a pail of water. Not until manhood
did I feel that full fierce longing, the longing
which is mingled with discontent, and is own
brother to envy, malice, and all uncharitableness.
I have given the Drive in Hyde Park a wide
berth, and have gone out of my way to avoid
Long-acre. The sight of other people's carriages                                                   made me sick. I never owned so much as a
one-horse chaise. I have not even a
perambulator.

My longing has varied with the countries in
which it has been my lot to long. I have longed
for a droschky with a bearded Istvostchik in a
braided caftan and a baubachil alozan from the
Ukraine in the shafts. There is a droschky,
I think, among the specimens of wheeled
carriages in the Crystal Palace, but I never
longed for an Istvostchik at Sydenham. I
desiderated the Russian vehicle only while I
was on Prussian soil. When I went away, I
began to long for something else. Nor, I fear,
shall I ever possess a droschky of even the
humblest kind, which is nothing but a cloth-
covered saddle, on which you sit astride, with
splash-boards to protect you from the wheels;
for in the latest edition of Murray I learn that
droschkies are going out of fashion, and that
the Petersburg railway stations are now beset
by omnibuses and hack cabs. I never longed for
an Irish outside car, although I have seen some
pretty private ones; and crinoline may be
displayed in its widest sense and to its greatest
advantage on a "kyar," say between two and
five in the afternoon, in Grafton-street, Dublin.
My soul has often thirsted for a private Hansom.
What luxury in the knowledge that
those high wheels, that stiff and shiny apron, all
belong to you! I think I would have a looking-
glass in the splash-board, in lieu of Mr. Mappin's
proclamation of the goodness of his knives, and I
am sure I should be always pushing open that trap
in the roof and bidding the cabman drive faster.
And I have longed for a mail phaeton—not so
much for the sake of the two proud steppers
and the trim lamp with their silvered reflectors,
as for the sake of the two grooms who, in black
tunics, cockaded hats, white neckcloths, and
pickle-jar boots, sit in the dickey with their arms
folded, like statues of Discipline and Obedience.
I knew a gentleman in the city of Mexico,
and he owned such a mail phaeton with two
such statuesque grooms as I have described.
Little did he reek, good hospitable man, that
the guest he was wont to drive out in the Pasco
de la Vega envied him, with a green and spotted
jealousy, his mail phaeton and his trim grooms.
He had encountered the most appalling difficulties
before he could find two human beings
who, even after long drilling and for liberal
wages, could be induced to sit in the dickey—or
is it the rumble?—and fold their arms without
moving. The Mexicans are a very busy people;
but neither the Spaniards, nor the half-castes,
nor the Indians, understand sitting behind a
horse. They prefer sitting across him. My
friend sent to the United States for grooms.
They returned him word that there were no
grooms in the Union who would fold their arms.
A lawsuit took him to New York, and he had
another mail phaeton built for the Central Park;
but the grooms were still lacking. He tried
Irishmen, and he tried negroes. Tempted by
abundant dollars, they would consent to wear
the cockaded hats and the pickle-jar boots, but