irritated and inflamed, consume themselves, and send a maddening influence to the brain. THINGS DEPARTED. I USE the parlour, I am not ashamed to say it, of the Blue Pigeon. There was an attempt, some months since, headed, I believe, by that self-educated young jackanapes Squrrel, to Perhaps there is a fluid circulating from the tissue of the brain through the nerves, analogous to the blood, which the heart drives incessantly to the minutest veins of the body. And when the stomach fails, this fluid, derived | prevail on the landlord to change the appellathence, becomes acrid and irritating to that de- tion of "parlour" into coffee-room; to subgree, which produces delirium. However that stitute horsehair-covered benches for the may be, it is certain that hunger produces mad- Windsor chairs; to take the sand off the ness. With such a sentinel at the door, what | floor, and the tobacco-stoppers off the table. should the trader do? He seized his rifle, and pointing it towards the head of his visitor, prepared to fire-with a look more wild than before, the object, till now motionless, sprang back, and ran howling into the forest. On the next day he was discovered by some Indians and shot. [Democratic Review. ANGEL EVE. THERE was a sadness with the angels, In the spring-time of the year. Then before the heavenly Father Bowed the Angels to the ground: We have sought her, vainly sought her, But we found her harp was hanging Then out-spake the loving Father: But we knew not that our darling Their purple wings began to fold: There was gladness with the angels, Yet our thoughts, that once were clinging [Knickerbocker. I opposed it. Another person had the impudence to propose the introduction of a horrible seditious publication, which he called a liberal newspaper. I opposed it. So I did the anarchical proposition to rescind our standing order, that any gentleman smoking a cigar instead of a pipe, on club nights, should be fined a crown bowl of punch. From this you will, perhaps, Sir, infer that I am a Conservative. Perhaps I am. I have my own opinions about Catholic Emancipation, Parliamentary Reform, and the Corn Laws. I have nothing to do with politics, nor politics with me, just now; but I will tell you what object I have in addressing you. I can't help thinking, coming home from the club, how curiously we adapt ourselves to the changes that are daily taking place around us; how, one by one, old habits and old customs die away, and we go about our business as unconcernedly as though they never had been. Almost the youngest of us—if he choose to observe, and can remember what he observes must have a catalogue of "things departed;" of customs, ceremonies, institutions, to which people were used, and which fell gradually into disuse; which seemed, while they existed, to be almost necessaries of life, and for which now they don't care the value of a Spanish bond. There was a friend of mine, a man of genius, whose only fault was his continuous drunkenness, who used to say, that the pith of the whole matter lay in the "doctrine of averages." I was never a dab at science and that sort of thing; but I suppose he meant that there was an average in the number of his tumblers of brandy and water, in the comings up of new fashions, and in the goings down of old ones; then of the old ones coming up again, and so vice versâ, till I begin to get muddled (morally muddled, of course), and give up the doctrine of averages in despair. I have a copious collection in my memory | hackney-coach off the stand, and to ride in it. of things departed. I am no chicken (though He must be a Conservative. What have they done with the old hack not the gray-headed old fogy that insulting Squrrel presumes to call me); but if I were ney-coaches? Have they sent them to Paris to tell you a tithe of what I can remember in as raw materials for barricades? Are their bodies yet mouldering, as in a vale of dry bones, in some Long Acre coach-builder's back-shop? and some day, mounted on fresh springs, fresh painted and fresh glazed, newly emblazoned with heraldic lies, with flaunting hammercloths and luxurious squabs, are they Hackney-coaches, for instance. Why, a boy to roll once more to courtly levee, or civic of twelve years of age can remember them; feast, to stop the way at ball or opera, to and yet, where are they now? Who thinks rattle nobility to the portals of St. George's, of them? Grand, imposing, musty-smelling, Hanover Square, to be married, or follow it, unclean old institutions they were. Elabocreeping, and with windows up, to be buried? rate heraldic devices covered their panels; What have they done with the old cabriodim legends used to be current amongst us lets, too-the bouncing, rattling, garishlychildren, that they had all been noblemen's painted cabs, with a hood over the passenger, carriages once upon a time, but falling-with and a little perch on one side for the driver? the princely houses they appertained to-into They upset apple-stalls often-their fares too decay, had so come to grief and hackney- frequently. Their drivers were good whips, coach-hood. They had wonderful coachmen, and their horses skittish. Where are they too-imposing individuals, in coats with capes now? Do they ply in the streets of Sydney infinite in number. How they drove! How or San Francisco, or have their bodies been they cheated! How they swore! The cut up, years ago, for firewood and lucifer keenest of your railway cabbies, the most ex-matches? tortionate of your crack Hansoms, would have Intimately connected, in association and in paled before the unequalled Billingsgate of appearance, with the Jarveys, were the Charthose old-world men, at the comprehensive leys, or watchmen. They went out with oil manner in which you, your person, costume, lamps, the Duke of Wellington's ministry, morals, family, and connections, were cursed. and the Bourbon family. Like the coachmen, As all boatmen at Portsmouth have (or say they wore many-caped coats; like them, they they have) been Nelson's coxswain, so used I wore low-crowned hats, and were rubicund to believe every hackney-coachman I saw to in the countenance; like them, they were be the identical Jarvey who had been put in- abusive. In the days of our youth we used side his own vehicle by the Prince of Wales, to beat these Charleys, to appropriate their and driven about the metropolis by that rattles, to suspend them in mid air, like frolicsome and royal personage, in company Mahomet's coffin, in their watch-boxes. Nowwith Beau Brummell, Colonel Hanger, and a-days, there be stern men, Policemen, in oilPhilippe Egalité. But the hackney-coach is skin hats, with terrible truncheons, and who now one of the things departed. There is "stand no nonsense;" they do all the beating one-one still, I believe-stationed in the envi- themselves, and lock us up, when we would rons of North Audley Street, Oxford Street. strive to knock them down. There is yet, to I have seen it-a ghostly, unsubstantial this day, a watch-box-a real monumental pageant-flit before me, among cabs and om-watch-box standing, a relic of days gone by nibuses, like a vehicular phantom ship. The somewhere near Orchard Street, Portman coachman is not the rubicund, many-caped Jehu of yore. He is a thin, weazened old man in a jacket (Hear it!) and Wellington boots. The armorial bearings on the coach panels are defaced; the springs creak; the wheels stumble as they roll. I should like to know the man who has the courage to call that Square. It has been locked up for years; and great-coated policemen pass it nightly, on their beat, and cast an anxious glance towards it, lest night prowlers should be concealed behind its worm-eaten walls. And, touching great coats, are not great coats themselves among the things departed? We have Paletôts (the name of which many remnant of a kettle. I wondered who suphave assumed), Ponchos, Burnouses, Syl- ported those public houses now; whether the phides, Zephyr wrappers, Chesterfields, taps were rusty, and the pots dull; or, Llamas, Pilot wrappers, Wrap-rascals, Bis- whether in sheer desperation at the paucity of uniques, and a host of other garments, more custom, the publicans had their beer from or less answering the purpose of an over coat. one another's houses, and at night, smoked But where is the great coat-the long, volu- their pipes and drank their grog in one minous, wide-skirted garment of brown or another's bar-parlours. So, yet wondering drab broad-cloth, reaching to the ankle, pos- and undecided, I passed through Highgate sessing unnumbered pockets; pockets for Archway-where no man offered to swear me bottles, pockets for sandwiches, secret pouches and came to the turnkipe, where I saw a for cash, and side pockets for bank-notes ? This venerable garment had a cape, which, in wet or snowy weather, when travelling outside the Highflyer coach, you turned over your head. Your father wore it before you, and you hoped to leave it to your eldest son. Solemn repairs-careful renovation of buttons and braiding were done to it, from time to time. A new great coat was an event-a thing to be remembered as happening once or so in a lifetime. lamentable illustration of the hardness of the times, in the turnkipe-man being obliged to take toll in kind; letting a coster-monger, and a donkey-cart through for vegetables; and a small boy, going Islington-wards, for an almost bladeless knife. Where is Cranbourn Alley? where that delightful maze of dirty, narrow, little thoroughfares, leading from Leicester Square to St. Martin's Lane? There was an alley of bonnet shops-behind whose dusty windows There are more coaches and coats that are faded Tuscans and Leghorns were visible, things departed, besides hackney-coachmen and at the doors of which stood women, and long great coats. Where are the short slatternly in appearance, but desperate and stages? Where are the days when we went accomplished touters. Man, woman, or child, gipsying, in real stage-coaches, from the it was all the same to them; if they had Flower Pot, in Bishopsgate Street, to Epping made up their minds that you were to Forest, or to Kensington, or to the inaccessible buy a bonnet, buy one you were obliged Hampstead? The time occupied in those to do, unless gifted with rare powers for memorable journeys now suffices for our trans-withstanding passionate persuasion and awful portation to Brighton-fifty-two good English | menace. miles. Where is the Brighton coach itself? minded old gentlemen emerging from the its four blood horses; the real, live baronet, who coached it for a livelihood; and, for all the "bloody hand" in his scutcheon, sent round his servant to collect the gratuitous half-crowns from the passengers. Piteous stories were told of feeble "courts," half-fainting, laden with bonnetboxes, and minus their cash, watches and jewellery, which they had left behind them, in part payment for merchandise which they had bought, or had been compelled to buy. Things departed are the pleasant view of The Lowther Arcade was not built in those London from Shooter's Hill, the houses on days; and, in Cranbourn Alley, there were the river, and, over all, the great dome of toy-shops, and cheap jewellery warehouses, St. Paul's blooming through the smoke. What and magazines for gimcracks of every deis the great North Road now? one of the scription. Moreover, in Cranbourn Alley was Queen's highways, and nothing more; but, there not Hamlet's-not Hamlet the Dane, in those days, it was the great coaching but Hamlet, the silversmith! How many thoroughfare of the kingdom. Highgate times have I stood, wondering, by those dirty flourished; but, where is Highgate now? windows, when I ought to have been wending I was there the other day. The horses my way to Mr. Wackerbarth's seminary for were gone, and the horse-troughs, and the young gentlemen! Peering into the dim obhorse-keepers. Yet, from the window of the scurity, dimly making out stores of gigantic Gate-house I could descry in one coup d'œil, silver dish-covers, hecatombs of silver spoons looking northwards, thirteen public-houses. The and forks-Pelions upon Ossas of race-cups street itself was deserted, save by a ragged and church services, Hamlet was, to me, child, struggling with a pig for the battered a synonyme with boundless wealth, inex haustible credit, the payment of Consols-the | name; neither do I mean those individuals grandeur of commercial Britain, in fact. who, rejoicing in the appellation of Francis, Hamlet, Cranbourn Alley, and the Constitution! Yet Cranbourn Alley and Hamlet are both things departed. are willing to accept the diminutive of Frank. I mean those folded sheets of letter-paper, which, being endorsed with the signature of In the shops in this neighbourhood they a peer, or of a Member of Parliament, went sold things which have long since floated thenceforward post-free. There were regular down the sewer of Lethe into the river of frank-hunters-men who could nose a Member Limbo. What has become of the tinder-box? who had not yet given all his franks away, -the box we never could find when we with a scent as keen as ever Cuban bloodwanted it; the tinder that wouldn't light; hound had for negro flesh. He would give the flint and steel that wouldn't agree to chase in the lobby; run down the doomed strike a light till we had exhausted our legislator within the very shadow of the patience, and chipped numerous small pieces Sergeant-at-Arms' bag-wig; and, after a brief of skin and flesh from our fingers? Yet contest, unfrank him on the spot. They were Bacon wrote his "Novum Organum," and something to look at, and something worth Blackstone his "Commentaries," by tinder- having, those franks, when the postage to box-lighted lamps: and Guy Faux was very Edinburgh was thirteen-pence. But the nearly blowing up the Legislature with a franks are gone-gone with the procession of tinder-box-lighted train. The tinder-box is the mail-coaches on the first of May; they gone now; and, in its place, we have sinister- have fallen before little effigies of the sovelooking splints, made from chopped-up coffins; reign, printed in red, and gummed at the which, being rubbed on sand-paper, send forth a diabolical glare, and a suffocating smoke. But they do not fail, like the flint and steel, and light with magical rapidity; so, as everybody uses them, I am obliged to do so too. back. English Members of Parliament have no franks now; and the twenty-five (though of a metallic nature) allowed, till very lately, to the Members of the French Legislature, have even been abolished. And, while I speak of lights and smoke, I never think of franks without a regretful another thing departed comes before me. remembrance of another thing departed-a There is no such a thing as a pipe of tobacco man who, in old times, stood on the steps of now-a-days, sir. I see English gentlemen go the Post-office in St. Martin's le Grand, with about smoking black abominatians like Irish a sheet of cartridge-paper, and whom I knew apple-women. I hear of Milo's, Burns' cutty by the appellation of "it forms." "It forms,” pipes, Narghiles, Chiboucks, meerschaums, he was continually saying, "now it forms a hookahs, water pipes, straw pipes, and a host of jockey-cap, now a church-door, a fan, a mat, other inventions for emitting the fumes of to- the paddle-boxes of a steamer, a cocked hat;" bacco. But where, sir, is the old original alder- and, as he spoke, he twisted the paper into man pipe, the churchwarden's pipe, the unadul- something bearing a resemblance to the articles terated "yard of clay?" A man was wont he named. He is gone; so is the sheet of foolsto moisten the stem carefully with beer ere he cap we used to twist into the semblance of put it to his lips; when once it was alight, it cocked hats, silkworm-boxes, and boats, when kept alight; a man could sit behind that pipe, boys at school. The very secret of the art is but can a man sit behind the ridiculous fig-lost in these degenerate days, I verily believe, ments they call pipes now? The yard of like that of making Venetian bezoar, or clay is departed. A dim shadow of it lingers sometimes in the parlours of old city taverns; I met with it once in the Bull Ring at Birmingham. I have heard of it in Chester; but in its entirety, as a popular, acknowledged pipe, it must be numbered with the things that were. Where are the Franks? I do not allude to the warlike race of Northmen, who, under the sway of Pharamond, first gave France its staining glass for windows. Whole hosts of street arts and street artists are among the things departed. Where is the dancing bear, with his piteous brown muzzle and uncouth gyrations? Where is the camel? Where the tight-rope dancers? the performers on stilts? Where are these gone? Say not that the New Police Act has abolished them; for though that sweeping piece of legislation has silenced the dustman's bell, and bade the muffin boy cry muffins no more, we have still | talised by Mr. Warren was wont to shave the organ-grinders with, or without, monkeys, himself. the Highland bag-pipes, and the acrobats. The fantoccinis are almost extinct; and I suppose Punch will go next. It is all very well, and right, and proper, of course. Dancing bears, and camels, monkeys, and fantoccinis, are all highly immoral, no doubt; but I should just like to see what the British Constitution would be without Punch and Judy. The small-coal man is gone; the saloop stall; the blind man and his dog are becoming raræ aves; the grizzled Turk with a dirty turban, and a box of rhubarb before him, is scarcely ever to be met with. In his stead we have a liver-coloured Lascar, shivering in white cotton robes, selling tracts of the inflammatory order of Piety, and occasionally offering them in exchange for gin. Age, caprice, the encouragement of new favourites, are driving these old-established ornaments of the streets away. Of the buildings, the monuments, the streets, which are gone, I will not complain. I can spare that howling desert in the area of Leicester Fields, with its battered railings, its cat-haunted parterres, its gravel walks, usurped by snails, and overgrown with weeds. I like Mr. Wild's Great Globe better. I can dispense with the old Mews of Charing Cross, and the bill-covered hoarding surrounding them, though I love the latter, for the first announce ment of the first play I ever saw, was pasted there. I like Trafalgar Square (barring the fountains) better. I can surrender the horrible collection of mangy sheds, decomposed vegetables, and decaying baskets, which used to block up Farringdon Street, and which they called Fleet Market. I can renounce, though with a sigh, the Fleet Prison, acquiesce in the superiority of New Oxford Street over St. Giles's and the Holy Land, and of Victoria I do not quarrel so much with the ever- Street, as compared with the dirt and squalor changing fashions in dress. I can give up and crime of Westminster. Yet, let me heave without a sigh the leg-of-mutton sleeves, those one sigh for King's Cross, that anomalous dreadful pear-shaped monsters of silk and little area where many roads converge, and muslin, they wore about the year '30. I will many monuments have stood. not clamour for the revival of the bishop's stone monster, an adamantine Guy Fawkes, sleeves-unwieldly articles that were always which was traditionally supposed to represent either getting squashed flat as a pancake in a George the good, the magnificent, the great; crowd, or dipping into the gravy at dinner. his curly wig, his portly mien, his affable I will resign the monstrous Leghorn hats countenance. Little boys used to chalk their the short-waisted pelisses,the Cossack trousers, political opinion freely on the pedestal, accomand flaming stocks in which we arrayed our-panied by rough cartoons of their parents, selves, when George the Fourth was king; and guardians, their pastors and masters; but let me drop one tear, heave one sigh, omnibus drivers and conductors pointed the to the memories of pig-tails and Hessian finger of hilarity at it, as they passed by; it boots. was a great statue. They have taken it away, with the Small-pox Hospital into the bargain, and though they have set up another George, stirrupless, hatless, and shoeless, in Trafalgar Square, and the Hospital is removed elsewhere, the terminus of the Great Northern Railway, and the pedestal with three big lamps now standing in their stead, are a dis-sight to mine eyes, and make me long for the old glories of King's Cross and Battle Bridge. There was a Both are things departed. One solitary pig-tail, I believe, yet feebly flourishes in some remote corner of the agricultural districts of England. It comes up to town during the season; and I have seen it in New Burlington Street. The Hessians, though gone from the lower extremities of a nation, yet find abiding place on the calves of the Stranger in Mr. Kotzebue's play of that name, and over the portals of some bootmakers of the old school. The Hessians of our youth are gone. mirror-polished, gracefully outlined, silken tasselled Hessians exist no moré-those famous boots, the soles of which Mr. Brummell caused to be blacked, and in the refulgent lustre of which the gentleman of fashion immor-going. Chalk Farm Fair a melancholy mockery The Smithfield is going. Tyburn is gone (I am not such an old fogy, Mr. Squrrel, as to be able to remember that; nor so stanch a Conservative as to regret it, now that it is gone). Bartholomew Fair is gone. Greenwich Fair |