advanced state of civilisation, will persist in
wearing a pig-tail and hessian boots. It is
only on sunshiny mornings that you can see
this respectable old relic of days gone by. He
shuns bad weather, for rain would doubtless
impair the lustre of those (I think I may
call them, without exaggeration, matchless),
hessians, and the stiffness of his well-tied
pig-tail. He is a curiosity now. The butcher
boy puts down his tray to look at him; the
town-made dog cocks up his ears at him;
the adult servant-maid stands agape at him,
with the latch-key in one hand, and the beer-
jug in the other. Yet we wore hessian boots
ourselves in our youth, and our fathers wore
pig-tails. It must be always so. A wide-
awake hat and an all-round collar may be
curiosities in eighteen hundred and eighty.
I dare say the mob stared and gaped at the
last coat-of-mail, the last ruff and pair of
trunk hose, the last pinked doublet, the last
vandyked collar, the last Steenkerk cravat,
the last Ramilies wig, or the last hoop (a
ladies' hoop I mean), that appeared in London
streets. There are many bad things, which,
thank Heaven, are curiosities of London now:
the rack, the thumb-screw, the scavenger's
daughter, the little ease, the boot, the peine
forte et dure, the pillory, Tyburn, the Star
chamber, the Palace Court, the stocks, the
penal laws against Catholics. Let us hope
that, in a few years more, that baby chronicler
we spoke of may have to record, in his list of
London curiosities gone by, much red tape,
more rusty parchment, the whip, gin, sour-
Sundays, dirt, rags, much parliamentary
pork as exhibited in gammon, and much
parliamentary vegetation as exemplified in
spinach.

Who may this hessian-booted old gentleman
(without curiosity) be? Sometimes I
find him sunning himself in Long Acre, that
curious stream of the highest commercial
respectability running between vile shores—
the horrors of Seven Dials and St. Giles's on
one side, the slums of Covent Garden on the
other—the river that rises from the dubious
spring-head of St. Martin's Lane, affects a
junction with the Ohio of Drury Lane, and
then, as a broad estuary, changing its name
to Great Queen Street, falls at last into the
ocean of Lincoln's Inn Fields. When I meet
hessian-boots in the Acre, I take him
sometimes for a retired coachmaker, immensely
wealthy, lingering about his old haunts;
sometimes for a descendant of, if not that very
nabob who ordered his groom to go round to
the stables and order "more curricles" for
his guests. But, the next day perhaps, I
meet him, still sunning himself, in the street
of Esculapius, the doctors' walk Savile Bow.
Then I set him down as Queen Charlotte's
apothecary, or as one of George the Third's
medical attendants during his lunacy. I can't
help it, but I fancy him, too, sometimes as
the Doctor Fell whom Doctor Johnson
didn't like, though, to the best of my belief,
Doctor Fell was a college don and not a
medico.

Curiosity upon curiosities! are not the
coachmakers' shops in Long Acre—no; I
cannot call them shops—warehouses: no; sheds,
covered yards, I have it, repositories,
curiosities of London? There is nothing more
curious you may say in numerous members of
the same trade congregating in the same
street than that watchmakers should live in
Clerkenwell, Italian image-sellers and organ-
grinders in Leather Lane, silk-weavers in
Spitalfields, butchers in Clare Market, and
lawyers in the Temple. Yet the coachmakers
in Long Acre are to me curious among the
curious. Here, in this sorry neighbourhood,
crime and sorrow and hunger pacing
up and down; the gin-palaces yawning
like the horse-leech's daughters for prey; the
pawnbrokers' boxes ever open, like graves;
shabby trades and tenements squeezed in
between the huge repositories, like thin
passengers riding bodkin between
corpulent ladies in a stage-coach; steaming
eating-houses and pudding and pie shops;
dim chandleries, and places where tailors'
trimmings are sold; here, among the cabbage-
stalk refuse of the adjoining market, the lees
of wort from the brewery hard by, the
unaccountable gutter-muck heaps of back-slum
poverty (for those who have nothing, always
seem to throw away the most); here are the
carriages drawn up in trim array, painted,
varnished, seated on gossamer springs, gilt,
furbished, decorated, silk-lined, squabbed,
matted—with silver axle-boxes, plate-glass
windows, crimson curtains, bearskin hammer-
cloths, coats of arms, plated crests—that are
to carry rank and beauty, gold and blood, to
court and opera, concert and ball, Ascot race
and horticultural show. A few more days'
sojourn in the repository, a little more dusting,
mopping, brushing, and polishing, and my
lord's carriage will be ready for removal to
the mews near Belgrave Square; for the
high-priced horses (jobbed) to be harnessed
before; for the fat, curly-wigged coachman to
mount atop; for the ambrosial footmen with
the large calves and the gold-headed sticks to
get up behind. The carriage will be ready
then for the reception of my lord and of my
lady, of my lady's daughters, my lady's
governess, my lady's nurse, my lady's babies,
and my lady's lapdogs. O! lords and ladies
who ride about in carriages; O! countess
lolling on the cushions; O! noble lord going
down to the house to split hairs with your
noble friend; O! young nobility, moustachioed,
chained, and ringed, rattling to the club in
your broughams; O! loungers over silver-
fork novels, holders of parasols, nodders to
acquaintances in the Ring, condescending
interlocutors of the honey-spoken young men
in the employ of Messrs. Swan and Edgar
and Messrs. Rundell and Bridge; O! drivers
up to banking-houses, drivers out to Richmond,
"stoppers of the way" on rainy nights