Crystal Palace were not of a gigantic description.

In my search after the foreign ladies and
gentlemen, I visited the elegant establishment
of Mr. Veery, in Regent Street, where I found
the same foreign ladies and gentlemen, eating
ices, whom I have always seen; and the same
gorgeously-bearded Italian nobleman, in the
wonderful extent of shirt-front, picking his
teeth after his dinner, whom I know to be
attached, in a vocal capacity, to the Royal
Italian Opera. I loitered in the Quadrant;
but there were as many cigars and beards
there in the year 1840 as when I loitered. I
strolled into Golden Square; but the private
hotel had no more than the usual complement
of Spaniards and Italians. I looked in
Sherrard Street, and dined at that wonderful
Italian table d'hôte, where there are also
warm baths. I had maccaroni and ravioli;
and wondered which was the dining-room,
and which the warm bath. I found few
foreigners at Bertolini's, and not many above
the average array of premières danseuses at
Dubourg's. I studiously investigated every
foreign haunt—every place where, from old
foreign connections and habits, I knew the
children of the sunny south were wont to
"hang out." I found many, but not the
thousands—the teeming hordes—I had pledged
my word for.

And yet they are all here, I will pledge
you my word still. The fez is here. I know
where to find the sombrero and the bernouse;
and I can put my hand on the snowy camise
and the shaggy capote. There are immense
numbers of foreigners in London; but shall I
tell you the truth about them, dear reader?—
LONDON HAS SWALLOWED THEM ALL UP!
This Moloch of a city—this great Dragon of
Wantley—holds them all in her capacious
maw, and would hold twice as many. I
never had such an idea of the immensity of
London as now, knowing, as I do, how many
foreigners there are in it; for when I had
left off seeking them in the places I most
expected to find them in, they started up by
thousands in localities where I never had the
least idea of seeing them. They beset me at
public dinners. I came across them in hospitals
and prisons. They beleaguered me in
markets and shops. In the next pew of the
chapel served by the minister I sit under, there
were no less than eight Norwegians, who
behaved themselves as decently throughout
the service and sermon as though they had
been Christians.

I dined at Greenwich. Young France sat
beside me, gorged with white-bait, and steeped
in brown bread and butter. A fez—two fezzes
—three fezzes, were deep in some iced drink.
I hope it wasn't cider cup. As I came out
of the door I found Columbia smoking on the
threshold: and at the railway station there
was a collision between two Hidalgos, with
blue blood at least in their veins, and a porter.
Young France sang songs in the carriage to
us, all the way to town; and I lost my heart
irrevocably to young (female) Germany. I
shook hands with old Belgium (grey-headed
and silver snuff-boxed) on parting. I confess
that he spoke much better English than I did
French; and that he knew a great deal more
about the Navigation Laws and the Cotton
Manufacture than I shall ever do.

I went to the Derby; and the Grand Stand
had quite an irruption of fezzes in it.
Carriages-and-four passed me on the road full of
foreigners; and, to say the truth, I myself
lunched on what a French acquaintance called
a "cosh foreinan,"—which was indeed an
ancient mail-coach, with the letters painted
over, laden with no less than four-and-twenty
male and female French people. On coming
back, the Cock, at Sutton, offered a very good
model, on a small scale, of the Tower of
Babel; and I think I must have heard tea
called for in at least twenty-two languages.
They ought to have secured George Borrow,
Elihu Burrit, or the Ghost of Pic de la Mirandole,
as waiters.

A friend of mine, the Middlesex Cock-sparrow,
indeed, had a "benefit" lately at the
house of that well-known boniface, and erst
champion of the ring, Stunning Smithers. The
Cock-sparrow, it appears, had lately had a
difference with a police magistrate relative to the
value of the hat, coat, and left eye of a police
constable, all three of which he had damaged
(the latter beyond redemption) in a nocturnal
affray. The magistrate had assessed these
damages at a somewhat high figure; so high,
indeed, that my friend was obliged to be
continually walking up-stairs at a banking-house
at Brixton, for two mortal months, before he
could get a receipt in full. When he came
out, however, his friends, to use the language
of the placard he caused to be printed, "rallied
round him;" and a choice exhibition of sparring
took place between Porky Grimes, the
Clerkenwell Bruiser, Nigger Hopkins, Charley
Fidd, with the Cock-sparrow and Stunning
Smithers for the wind-up. A whole host of
foreigners "assisted," as the foreign phrase
was, at the benefit. How they came there,
and who was kind enough to be their cicerone,
I am unable to state; but there they were,
great in hats and beards of every imaginable
shape. They called the exhibition "boaks
Anglais," and were in ecstacies with the
wind-up—shaking hands with the Cock-sparrow
all round, and tumultuously promising
to be present at a "little mill" which was
shortly to take place between the Clerkenwell
Bruiser and Nigger Hopkins, for twenty
pounds a side.

At the theatres, also, I discovered that the
foreigners mustered in immense force. Not,
curiously enough, at the great foreign
establishments, but at the smaller national temples
of the drama. They seemed well pleased,
though, I must say, wondrously perplexed at
the "screaming farces" they witnessed. I
wonder whether it ever struck them that