cries such as " Butcher! " " Baker! " " Dust,
O! " " Milk below! " " Beer! " " Water-
cresses! " and " Clo!"

My cries range over a space of some
twenty years (I only quote those that are
within my own recollection), yet many of
them are obsolete now. They have had their
day, like dogs, and have died. Each year
has produced its new cry simultaneously
with its new bonnet. I can no more trace
the exact chronological succession of cries
than I can set down (without reference
to the Mode and the Belle Assemblée),
the rigorous scale of descent from the
monster-brimmed bonnet with all its bows,
feathers, and streamers of William the
Fourth's time, to the incomprehensible
mockery delusion and snare of gauze, ribbons
and artificial flowers, that ladies are now
wearing in a mid region between their back
hair and their cervical vertebrae. This last
thing is called and charged for in milliners'
bills as a bonnet. The vulgar have other
names for it, such as " kiss-me-quick! " "fly-
by-night! " " fantail! " and the like. Studying
it philosophically, myself, I am inclined
to regard it as a species of feminine porter's
knot.

When I was a very little boy indeed, whose
chief knowledge of the curiosities of London
was confined to the contents of the various
fruit-stalls and the theatrical "characters" of
that benefactor of youth, Mr. Marks — one
penny plain, and twopence coloured — I
remember that the fashionable, or at least
popular, London cry was " Flare up! " The
boys shouted it to one another; they screamed
it round old ladies as a war-whoop,
accompanying the same with a war-dance; they
hurled it round street corners at the then
very unpopular police force; hackney coachmen
on their boxes bade each other "flare
up." In the darkest depth and stillness of
the night "flare up" came floating on the
wind like the cry of a wolf with slang propensities,
whose " howl's his watch." " Flare up"
sparkled in the chorus of every comic song;
low comedians of transpontine theatres found
it invaluable in helping a dull farce along;
the gallery shrieked it; it came back from the
pit like a vocal boomerang. The cads, the
linkboys, the ham-sandwich, pig's-trotter, and
play-bill sellers, the lurchers outside the
theatres and public-houses roared it among
themselves for warmth and pulmonary exercise.
The cry was heard, not only at public-
house bars, in the streets, and courts, and
low places, but in society. Comic members
of parliament quoted it in the house;
ministers and members of the opposition
"flared up " in elliptical labels proceeding
from their mouths in high-priced political
caricatures; horses were entered for cups
and plates and sweepstakes under the name
of " Flare up! " It passed into the language.
From an imperative interjection (excuse the
grammatical solecism) it became a substantive.
A disturbance, a riot, an altercation, a joyous
orgy — these were called "flare-ups." The
substantive remains, and the term " a jolly
flare-up " is yet used to express a reckless
merry-making; such a combination of punch,
gin, bludgeons, door-knockers, constables,
ensanguined noses, lobsters, torn clothes,
watch-houses, bad characters, and tobacco-
pipes as were formerly the delectation of
Corinthian Tom, Bob Logic, and Jerry
Hawthorn. Such "flare-ups" flourished about
the year thirty-eight in the "salad days—
when he was green of judgment," of the
nobleman yet affectionately remembered in
police-courts and the cab-stands as " the
marqis." But the cry is dead. You don't
lear the boys cry " flare up! " now. It is no
longer the favourite sarcastic expletive of
hackney coachmen, cabmen, and omnibus
conductors. Nay, there are no hackney coachmen
left to " flare up " — dissipati sunt. They
are gone to the Limbo of Jehus: their
tombstones are their licenses, their coffin-plates
their badges. To limbo are gone the purblind
old watchmen whom Tom and Jerry used to
beat; to limbo the old House of Lords, its
shabby throne, and dingy Spanish Armada
tapestry. They are gone: they have vanished
with the fourpenny newspaper stamp,
Grampound and Gatton, the mews at Charing
Gross, the resurrection-men, the Spanish
legion; with the yearly procession of mail-
coaches, Mr. Cobbett's pepper-and-salt suit,
and scores of good fellows who " flared
up " merrily twenty years since; but have
burnt to the socket, and are quite guttered
down and extinguished now.

Now, how and with what did "flare up"
originate? Who was to flare up, and when,
and why? Were mankind, twenty years
since, pitch, or tow, or turpentined oakum, or
greasy rags, that they were to " flare up"
incontinently at the mere lucifer-match bidding
of rude boys ? Was it possible for a bishop to
"flare up ? " for a dean of the Court of Arches?
Yet how frequently was the ribald behest
hooted in his ears, drive as fast, or pull up
his carriage windows as tightly, as he would?
It is my candid opinion — tracing things to
their mean first cause, as I am fond of doing,
and knowing how many mountains give birth
to mice, and, again, how many mice are often
parturient with mountains — that the slang cry
"flare up " arose from the incendiary exploits
of Captain Swing, and was kept alive with the
great European commotions that followed the
French Revolution of eighteen hundred and
thirty; that it was it the Carmagnole,
the yoke-off-throwing verb that had
kindred gerunds and supines, potentials and
subjunctives among French Philadelphi,
Italian Carbonari, German Illuminati, and
English Tradesunion men; and that, in other
moods and tenses, it was often unavailingly,
hopelessly, despairingly conjugated in the
cachots of Mont St. Michel, and the dungeons
of the Spielberg, and the Piombi of Venice.