to be the British constitution; of which
he knew, honest man, about as much as
he did of Confucius. This, however, is by
the way. Praxlights, the sculptor, had to
build a house to contain a studio for his
statue, and had to pull it half down before he
could get it out again. He goes about now
with a horsewhip, with which he has been
heard to menace the reverend Gilead
Tuberose, chairman of the statue committee, who
was supposed to have a secret leaning towards
Jack Fiddas, Praxlights' rival (" that horrid
Irish stone-cutter," as he contemptuously calls
him), and who by his casting vote caused the
golden snuff-box and silver chisel, with which
Praxlights was presented on the day of
inauguration of the statue, to be debited
against his, Praxlights' account. Be it as it
may, my godmother has cut me, and the live
lord, Heaven knows where he is, and the
duke he is dead, and I am none the better
for their patronage, and have not one shirt or
boot the more for their condescension. They
lived at Court, and I live up a court, so
there is or was something in common
between us.

Sometimes of a fine May day when the
sun is shining brightly, and after the streets
have been well watered, on a Thursday, and
during the height of the London season,
I please myself to come forth from my court,
in the parish of Saint Crapulens, and to pay
a visit to that other Court, which foreign
diplomatists love to call the Court of Saint
James's, and in which I include the front of
Saint James's Palace, Mr. Sam's library, the
two first clubhouses in St. James's Street,
and, Mr. Crollins the tailor's. I delight in a
drawing-room. Ragged, horny-palmed,
foodless wretch as I may be, the sun is mine;
the music of the Life Guards Band, the Park
patereroes, the gorgeous bouquets and silk
stockings of the tremendous footmen, the
gold, the lace, the jewels, crosses and orders—
all these for the moment I possess. When,
squalid beggar with never a coat to my back
as I may be, a Doctor of Divinity condescends
to share the same pavement with me, and
in full canonicals too; when a bishop
condescends to hustle me; when I am for a
moment a privileged spectator of an altercation
between Inspector Bumps of the A
division (very grand in silver lace and white
gloves on drawing-room days) and an
ambassador—a gorgeous creature, a pillar of pride
on which they have hung votive crosses and
stars, like the wreaths of immortelles on the
railings of the column in the Place Vendome
—I cry " here is equality." When I see the
horses with their satin coats, their small
nervous heads, champing and stamping in
their splendid harness; when I see those jewel
boxes on wheels, called carriages; when I eye
reverently the rosy coachmen with their well-
fitting wigs and buckled shoes; when,
encumbering the very roadway, dodging among
scaffold poles, edging between carriage wheels,
popping round corners, and treading the
pavement gingerly, I encounter lords, ambassadors,
generals, lawyers, and divines—I cry "here is
splendour." I gaze with admiring astonishment
at Mr. Sheriff Slowbob, who has
evidently been puzzled where to put most
silk and gold—on his coach or on himself. I
glance complacently at Hon. Curtius Cow,
of the United States, who is about to introduce
to the Presence his cousin Eufus Cow,
of Caucus County, Va., now on a literary
mission connected with the "Johnnicakopolis
Democrat," and formerly as neat a hand
at sampling 'dry goods as any man in the
Empire City. He had a trifling "difficulty"
lately with Colonel I. Bonaparte Fownes,
who, meeting him in Coon Street, and on a
disputed question of "drinks" unpaid for at
the colonel's store, drew a revolver, and fired:
whereupon Rufus out with a bowie knife,
and, to use his own expressive epithet,
"barked" the colonel, ripping him up indeed
"from the nave to the chops." I regard
with respectful complacency the fine old
wrecks of generals and admirals laid up in
ordinary and gold lace; it is good for my
eyesight to see their weather-beaten old faces
and white hair. And, oh! sight of sights, I
stare with rapt, yet tender and reverent love
and admiration at the fair young daughters
of Albion, at the almond eyes and pearl
necklaces resting on necks more pearly; at the
rosy lips and blonde tresses, the small hands
and feet, the slight symmetrical forms; at the
plumes and diamonds, the rustling silks and
long sweeping trains. I chuckle when I see
these children of the aristocracy, and as I am
elbowed by a vicious-minded looking old
Austrian minister plenipotentiary, with a
coat on, that seems to have grown white in
the face with fear and hatred of English freedom,
and covered with a leprosy of orders—
I say to him mentally, "Match that if you
can, old boy." Nor, looking towards where
the people stand, and stand unrebuked, though
within popular limits (for on drawing-room
days the shibboleth of the Police
Commissioners' "move on" slumbers a little), looking
towards the hard-fisted, labour-stained
inheritors of the wooden spoon, who gaze
with an equably placid grin at the spectacle—
looking even towards the tattered and forlorn
philosophers, such as I am, I do not read in
their faces anything approaching to that
expression of ferocious contempt and pusillanimous
hatred which I have caught lowering
on the features of the lookers-on at the
grandest foreign merry-makings. "Curse
them," the look seems to say; "they beat me,
and starve me, and cheat me; they wring
their golden toys and gewgaws out of my
labour and sweat: they grind me under the
wheels of the tawdry carriages." But here I
con a different page, and different faces.
Well, the faces seem to say there is a great
deal of nonsense and extravagance, and a
great deal of what may be popularly termed