upon a culprit, they must needs know what
becomes of the executioner afterwards; and
as though they had not enough of things as
they are, clamour for things as they were, and
as they ought to be. These embarrassing
thinkers are distinguished in infancy by a
propensity for poking their flaccid little
fingers into the eyes of their nurses and
relations, doubtless following out some
infantine theory as to the structure of the
orbs of vision; in childhood, by constant
endeavours to teach difficult feats of
gymnastics to dumb animals and to make them
eat strange viands;— such as wooden
pineapples glued on the plate; and, by the ripping
up, scraping, pegging, and otherwise
mutilating all their toys— notably in the case of
Shem, Ham, and Japhet from the Noah's
ark, whom they make to swim in the wash-
hand basin (in company with the magnetic
duck and the elastic eel), and otherwise
maltreat till every vestige of paint disappears
from their strange faces and stranger costumes,
and Ham, the traditional blackamoor of the
family, has nothing to reproach himself with
on the score of colour. At school they are
remarkable for surreptitiously keeping hedgehogs
in their lockers, flaying the covers off
grammars and copybooks to make silkworm
boxes, and for persisting in the refusal or
inability to acknowledge that the angle A B is
equal to the angle C D, stating that it isn't and is
much larger. In manhood and mature age, they
either become busy-bodies, insufferable bores
telling you irrelevant history and "trying
back" a score of times during the narration
to relate the lives and adventures of the
actors therein, and of their relations; or, they
invent steam-engines and cotton-looms,
discover planets, settle the laws of gravitation,
and found systems of philosophy. The
astronomer and the quidnunc; Plato and the
child who does Shem, Ham, and Japhet's
washing, Sir Isaac Newton and the gentleman
in the sky-blue coat, green umbrella,
white hat, striped calimancoes, eye-glass and
Hessian boots, with whom Mr. Wright,
comedian, is acquainted; have more in
common than you would imagine, sometimes.

I must confess, myself, that my train of
thought is essentially of a Bohemian and
desultory nature. My life has been a
digression. I never could remember a thing
in time, or forget it in season; for, though I
respect and glory in the statute of limitations
as a legislative enactment, I can't apply it to
men or to things. I was always more curious
about the strings than about the puppets. I
like Punch; but I like the velveteen-clad
histrion who lies perdu behind the striped
drapery, and without whose aid Punch could
not squeak, and Shallaballah would be yet
unbastinadoed; much better I like the "flies"
and the mezzanine floor than the green-
room or the prompt box. I have a desultory,
unprofitable fancy for old books, old pictures,
and old furniture; but, like the imprudent
poor relation who was disinherited for liking
gravy, I am sensible of having lost several
friends by an inveterate habit of rummaging
over ragged book-stalls and brokers' sheds,
and standing, speculating, before rag and
bottle-shops. I was cut dead once by an
intimate acquaintance for walking down
Drury Lane with two copper candlesticks, of
curious make, which I had just purchased of
a neighbouring broker, who tempted me sadly,
besides, with a human skull, a life-preserver,
and two volumes of "Elegant Extracts," for
five shillings— a bargain.

Some random speculations I have already
indulged in as to some curious dualities of
costume and character in man and woman-
kind. I find myself constantly recurring to
the same subject, constantly poring over that
eccentric etching by Gillray, called the
"doublures" where heads of dukes and
politicians, philosophers and divines, cast shadows
on the wall, which, though rendering feature
for feature, yet are strangely metamorphosed
into satyrs, demons, donkeys, and Silenus's.
If I have not hopelessly wearied you with
double men, will you accord me, reader, a
modicum of patience while I babble of double
cities.

Of cities in plain clothes rather— in their
apparel of homespun, very different from the
gala suit they wear on high days and holidays,
and in books of travel. And, I pray you, do
not taunt me with being fantastic for giving
corporeality to mere agglomerations of houses,
and for assuming that cities may wear clothes,
plain or otherwise. I appeal to the walls and
ceilings of Greenwich Hospital, Windsor
Castle, and Hampton Court, where sprawl
the saints of Verris and Laguerre. Cities of
all sorts sprawl incarnate on those gigantic
works of art; painted by the mile, and paid
for, as the bills delivered of the artists inform
us, by the yard. The galleries of Versailles
boast battalions of personified cities, some in
holiday clothes, some in plain clothes, and not
a few with no clothes at all. Louis Philippe
commissioned Pradier to execute two statues
of Lille and Strasbourg for the Place de la
Concorde— which stand there to this day, and
are noble specimens of embodied cities, though
I certainly miss the paté de foie gras from the
trophies on the pedestal of the latter capital.
If the "gentle Severn" be allowed to have a
"crisp head;" if half-a-dozen rivers embodied
in bronze are allowed to empty water-jugs in
the courtyard of Somerset House; if the
very north wind itself is with impunity
individualised and made to figure in pictures
and sculpture as a blustering railer, with
puffed-out cheeks, I certainly may be allowed
to give my cities flesh and raiment.
Moreover, I have history and custom on my side.
Doesn't Mr. de Quincey call Oxford Street,
and, by implication, London, a "stony-hearted
step-mother ?" Is not Venice called the
Queen of cities ?  Was not Babylon the great
distinguished by a very rude name ? She must