round the station; front streets gradually
generated back streets; back streets begot
courts and alleys. There is a decent
assemblage of customers, now, at the bar; a fair
coffee-room connection, and a very numerous
parlour company, composed of guards and
engine-drivers; strongly perfumed with lamp-oil,
who call the locomotives " she," the company
"they," and each other " mate." Though it
has been built some years, the Railway Tavern
has yet an appearance of newness. The paint
seems wet, the seats unworn, and the pots
unbattered. The doors have not that
comfortable, paint-worn manginess about the
handle common to public-house portals in
frequented neighbourhoods. The Railway
Tavern always reminds me of the one hotel
in a small Irish town—that square, white,
many-windowed, uncomfortable-looking
edifice, frowning at the humble, ramshackle
little chapel, awing the pigs and embellishing
the landscape; but seldom troubled with
custom or customers.

Out of the way, lumbering drink-dray of
ours, and let this smart gig, with the fast-
trotting mare braced up very tight in the
shafts thereof, rattle by! In the vehicle sits a
gentleman with a very shiny hat, a very long
shawl, and an indefinite quantity of thick
great-coats, from the pocket of one of which
peep a brace of birds. The gig is his " trap,"
and the fast-trotting mare is his mare Fanny,
and he himself is Mr. Sandcracks, of the farm
of Sandcracks and Windgall, veterinary
surgeons. He is going to refresh Fanny with
some meal and water, and himself with some
brandy and ditto, at the Horse and Hocks,
a house especially favoured and frequented by
veterinary surgeons, and the walls of whose
parlour (the H. and H.) are decorated with
portraits of the winners of ever so many
Derbies, and some curious anatomical
drawings of horses. The frequenters of the
H. and H. are themselves curious
compounds of the sporting character and the
surgeon. You will find in the bar, or behind
it (for they are not particular), or in the
parlour, several gentlemen, with hats as shiny,
shawls as long, and coats as multifarious, as
Mr. Sandcracks', discoursing volubly, but in a
somewhat confusing manner, of dogs, horses,
spavins, catch-weights; the tibia and the
fibula, handicaps, glanders, the state of the
odds, and comparative anatomy. They will
bet on a horse and bleed him with equal
pleasure—back him, dissect him, do almost
everything with him that can be done with
a horse. They must work hard and earn
money; yet to my mind they always seem
to be driving the fast-trotting mare in the
smart gig to or from the Horse and Hocks.

Medical men don't enter into my category
of "public " users. They have their red port
wine at home. The Medical students' public
is never known by its sign. It may be the
Grapes, or the Fox, or the Magpie and
Stump, but it is always distinguished among
the students as Mother So-and-so's, or old
What-d'ye-call-him's. The students generally
manage to drive all other customers away. Nor
chair, nor benches—nay, nor settles, are
required for the students' parlour. They
prefer sitting on the tables; nor do they want
glasses—they prefer pint pots; consuming
even gin-and-water from those bright flagons:
nor do they need spittoons, nor pictures on
the walls, nor bagatelle boards.

If I wonder how the veterinary surgeon
finds time to practise, how much greater must
be my dubiety as to how the medical students
find time to study! The pipe, the pot of half-
and-half, the half-price to the theatre, the
cider-cellars to follow, and the knocker-twisting
gymnastics to follow that (with,
sometimes,the station-house by way of rider)
appear to fill up their whole time—to leave
not a point unoccupied upon the circle of
their daily lives. Yet, work they must, and
work they do. The smoking, drinking, fighting
life, is but an ordeal—somewhat fiery, it
is true—from which have come unscathed
Doctor Bobus, rolling by in his fat chariot;
Mr. Slasher, ready to cut off all and each
of my limbs, in the cause of science, at
St. Spry's Hospital; but, from which have
crawled, singed, maimed, blackened, half-
consumed, poor Jack Fleam (he sang a good
song did Jack, and was a widow's son), now
fain to be a new policeman; and Coltsfoot, the
clinical clerk at Bartholomew's, who died of
delirium tremens on his passage to Sydney.

On again we roll, and this time we leave
the broad suburban roads, furzed with trim
cottages and gardens—white cottage bonnets
with green ribbons—for crowded streets
again. If you want to back Sally for the
Chester Cup, or Hippopotamus for the
double event, or to get any information on
any sporting subject, where can you get it
better, fresher, more authentic, than in one
of the sporting houses, of which I dare say
I am not very far out if I say there are a
hundred in London? Not houses where sporting
is casually spoken of, but where it is
the staple subject of conversation, business,
and pleasure to the whole of the establishment,
from the landlord to the potboy.

Let us take one sporting house as a type.
Dozens of pictures—Derby winners, Dog
Billies, the Godolphin Arabian; Snaffle, the
jockey; Mr. Tibbs, the trainer (presented to
him by a numerous circle of, &c., &c.). Nailed
against the wall are a horse-shoe, worn by
Eclipse, and a plate formerly appertaining to
Little Wonder. In a glass-case behind the
bar is a stuffed dog—Griper; indeed, the
famous bull-dog formerly the property of that
enthusiastic sporting character, Jack Myrtle,
who having had rather too decided a settling
day with one Mr. Ware, was done to death
at Aylesbury; the body of Mr. Ware having
been found in a pond, and twelve ignorant
jurymen having concurred in a verdict that
the bold Jack Myrtle put him there. The