Dining Rooms. The stearine in Price's Candle
Manufactory yet remains, I am informed,
unconsumed by Cossacks; and all men, rash
enough to wage war with John Doe and
Richard Roe, will find, to their cost, that
"Middlesex to wit" has not yet been superseded
by any "Département," "Arrondissement,"
or "Division Militaire," whatsoever.
Still, the foreigners are in London.

Where are they? How has room been
found for them, as well as for the huge body
of provincials also sojourning in the metropolis?
I myself (and the confession is humiliating,
after my invective on the soothsayers) must
admit having previously indulged, to some
extent, in the prophetic line about these same
foreigners. I predicted Regent Street blocked
up, and Pall Mall rendered impassable. My
friends and acquaintances, joining me, saw,
in futuro, a crop of fezzes in the streets,
rivalling the poppies in a wheat field. I and
they babbled of the confusion of tongues—
the polyglot dynasty of dialects—septentrional,
meridional, oriental, and occidental, which were
to reign in places of public resort. We heard
a myriad of voices at Her Majesty's Theatre
calling on Mr. Balfe for the "Marseillaise,"
the "Hymn of Pio Nono," "Was ist der Deutscher
Vaterland," "Viva la Constitucion," the
Romaic war song, "Tambourgi, Tambourgi,"
and "God save the Emperor Francis." "Yes,"
we said, "we shall see them." The mercurial
Gaul, with beard unkempt, and chapeau à la
Robespierre. The German, meerschaumed, kraut
perfumed, and thumb-ringed. The Yankee, in
his rocking chair at the window of Morley's
hotel, walloping "his own nigger" in the face
of the Anti-Slavery Society, and
bowie-kniving the last British traveller who has
published his impressions of America. The
Mexican careering through Barbican, lassoing
the cattle coming from "Smiffel." A council-fire
of the Duckfoot Indians held in Covent
Garden market, and "La allah, il allah:
resail allah!" resounding through the no-longer
deserted halls of the Arcade of Lowther. In
our mind's eye, Horatio, we saw these things.
Also, churches for all nations and all creeds,
from fire-worshippers to Obeahmen. Also
eating-houses, providing a curriculum of
comestibles from stewed dog to potato salad. Also,
taverns, where the Tartar might take his
modicum of quass and mare's milk, and the
water-carrier of Bagdad his fill of Raki.

The Exhibition is now nearly over; but the
actual state of affairs has not, I must further
confess, quite come up to what I consider the
mark. Thus, my friends and acquaintances
have been apt, lately, to fall, what is nautically
termed, "foul" of me; reproaching me (and,
doubtless, in private themselves) as regards
the discrepancies existing between what I
fancied would be, and what really is. "Where
are the fezzes?" they impetuously demand.
"We have seen but three to-day. One, to our
knowledge, belongs to an Egyptian youth,
walking King's College Hospital, and who, if
his father wasn't a negro, might certainly
apply for a criminal information against his
lips and shins for libel; while the other
appertains to a commercial traveller in the
dry-goods line, who has just returned from a
three weeks' holiday in Paris."

"Where is the Bedouin in his bernouse?—
the Iberian in his sombrero? where the fierce
Suliote in his 'snowy camise and shaggy
capote?' Is not all this that you (and we)
have predicted—'bosh'—and have you not
laughed at our beards? I say, sir, that
there are, and have been, comparatively, no
foreigners in London." To which I answer,
that they have been, and are, here. "Then,
where are they?"

With some idea of solving this question to
my own satisfaction, if not to that of my
co-inquirers, I have been on a little voyage of
discovery, lately, after our ultramontane
visitors. I have chiefly consulted my own
nose as a guide in my researches, following it,
indeed, with remarkable pertinacity. I am
also under considerable obligation to my eyes,
for the aid they have afforded me; and I
should be doing an act of injustice to my ears,
were I to omit to make honourable mention
of the aid they have been to me in the
matter.

I was unable, at first, to trace the foreigners
in any considerable numbers beyond Leicester
Square on the one hand, and the interior and
exterior of the public conveyances on the
other. These latter I found continually
passing me, crammed, inside and out, with
aliens. There were no bernouses, and few
fezzes; but there were legions of marvellous
beards and moustachioes, and hats of every
degree of eccentric construction and soft
material. I grew gradually awake to an
alarming number of foreign inquiries as to
what "back fare" meant, and of disputes
with cabmen as to the amount of the fare
itself;—the ideas of the foreigners being
generally regulated by the contents of their
guide-books, which being compiled, as a
general rule, from other guide-books knocking
about on second-hand book-stalls any time
these ten years, gave very contradictory and
often apocryphal statements on this vexata
quæstio; while the notions of the cabmen
were as generally guided by the recognised
laws of vehicular extortion, and the received
statutes made and provided in the case of
making hay while the sun shines. Having
a slight acquaintance with the principal
languages of Europe, I deemed it my duty, in
this the outset of my career, to be of such
service as I could in the way of interpreting
to these perplexed persons; but I found that,
in most cases, the aliens were more inclined
to pin their faith on their guide-books
(probably on the venerable principle of "what is
in print must be true") than on my
representations. One corpulent Frenchman I
witnessed, vainly endeavouring to discover
the legal fare from St. Katherine's Docks to