set out all their stock in their shop windows, put on white cravats, curl their hair, and trust to Providence! The most ridiculous and unnatural, although highly fashionable, alliance between poverty and pretension, so prévalent now-a-days, has given rise to a custom of giving cards from clubs, as thus:-

MR SIDNEY Biddulph,

Rag and Famish Club,
St Luke's Square.

MR ADOLPHUS CUB,
One-and-Ninepenny Club,

Covent Garden, and so forth.--Now, you must always avoid fellows who give you the card, not of their residence, but of their club; depend upon it, the leprosy of poverty hangs about those fellows, and if you are seen for one moment in their company, you will be suspected of having caught the infection, and have to perform quarantine for life. The idea of one gentleman inviting another to call and see him at a club!-Call and see me at Bartholomew Fair, or pop in upon me at Epsom Races, is quite as much of an invitation.

We recollect once being seduced, by associations arising from remembrances of old school-fellowship, into going to see a friend of ours at his club. Shade of Brummell-what a refinement of horrors! On enquiring for our friend, our message ran the gauntlet of half-a-score undisciplined louts in parsley-and-butter coats, and staring scarlet breeches, running across the hall in horrible confusion; having ascertained, in the course of half-an hour, that the person enquir ed for was within, we were thenbut not till then-ushered into a halfnaked room, without light or fire: this Pandemonium was called, we were informed, the waiting-room, and here, among a lot of strange-looking creatures like ourselves, "in waiting" were we forced to abide the coming of our old school-fellow, and in a corner to whisper into each other's ears our pleasurable reminiscences. There is only one excuse for a man having a card with a club on it: it is quite an allowable failing when one has the misfortune to be a member of Parliament, and, of course, to be liable to the horrid inflictions, than which the rack is more tolerable, of being eter

nally dunned by your infernal constituents to do something" for them; which, being literally translated into English, means laying yourself under obligations to enable these fellows to "do nothing" for themselves.

Several of our parliamentary friends, consequently, are obliged to carry two card-cases, the one containing the address of their private residences, the other that of some political club: when encountered by one of these horrid bores, and there is no other means of escape, of course you shake him warmly by the hand, beg of him to dine with you any day, and poke into his muttou fist the card of your club: the fellow infests the waiting-room for a week or two, but of course you are not to be caught, and your independent elector, wearied out, re-emigrates to his paternal morasses, where he boasts that he dined with you every day—you blessing your stars, in the mean time, that you see no more of him till the next general election!

Military and naval men, too, whose lives are necessarily migratory, and who do not come regularly to town for the season, are entitled to receive your invitations at their club; but no man, whether civil or military, with the least pretensions to good taste, gives invitations to his club, unless to persons who may not with propriety be received any where else: if any such are given to you, it is impossible for you to maintain your position without giving your entertainer the cut direct.

Quasi fashionable neighbourhoods abound; we would willingly leave them in well-deserved obscurity, but we feel it our duty to warn all pretenders to fashion, that is to say, of several hundreds of thousands who have no pretensions at all, of the fatal mistakes they may commit in this particular. We must caution them to avoid the more northerly parts of the popu lous borough of Marylebone, the new streets and squares to the northward of Hyde Park, and the territories, of whatever descriptions, in the vicinity of Pimlico. The last-mentioned neighbourhood, especially, is proverbially fatal to fashionable expectations; yet many simple-minded persons from the country, opine that, in the neighbourhood of a royal palace, they must be right. Nothing is more conclusive of the sensitiveness of the world

of fashion upon its geographical exclusiveness, than the fact, that even royal preference cannot establish the aristocracy of a vicinity famous only for its brick pits and its ale.

Privy Gardens, May Fair, and Spring Gardens, may probably assert the custom of society in favour of their strictly fashionable character: the two latter, however, have assumed somewhat of a quasi character of late years; the streets secondary to Belgrave Square, and those leading from Piccadilly, are very much in the same condition.

Mixed neighbourhoods are so numerous as to defy classification: one end of a street, as Piccadilly, shall be intensely vulgar, the other shall aspire to the Corinthian capital of society. In these difficult circumstances, the man who would stand well with people of fashion, must not only regard his street but his number; any figure under fifty, for example, in Piccadilly, and you are ruined for life. One side of a street, as Arlington Street, shall be exclusive, the other no better than genteel; so that in fashion, as in politics, you must deliberate wisely and well before you take a side.

The East Indian, colonial, and merely wealthy circles, gather toge, ther at the hither-end of Portland Place, and diverge round the Regent's Park, occupying those stately terraces, as new as their own families, and, like themselves, exhibiting fewer evidences of good taste than of magnificence. Harley Street, for example, is the headquarters of oriental nabobs-here the claret is poor stuff, but Harley Street madeira has passed into a proverb, and nowhere are curries and mulligatawny given in equal style. The natives here are truly a respectable, praiseworthy body of men; and if it were not for the desperate but unavailing efforts of their wives and daughters to lug them

into circles where their wealth excites only envy, and their ostentation provokes only contempt, would be above all praise or blame. Their dinners we eat, if not with admiration, with respect; more solid than re cherché, there is an old English substantiality about them that forbids severity of criticism. Pitying the poverty of their claret, we forgive them for the richness of their madeira -their evening parties we wish we could recommend-we might be se vere upon this head, but, as we have just returned from an exhibition of this sort, we say no more. The lobster salads were respectable, and gra titude should last as long as diges tion.

Of high genteel neighbourhoods, Baker Street, Gloucester Street, Portman Square, the swarm of little streets nestling at the verge of Park Lane, and those lying between St James's Street and the Great Park, may be taken as examples. The people inhabiting this class of neigh bourhoods are usually scions of respectable, and distant connexions of noble families, remarkably correct in their style of living and equipage, but evidently of slender means; however, they boast this advantage, that an educated taste can do more in this style of living with a thousand ayear, than vulgar opulence can with ten times the revenue. Beyond the necessary wants and requirements of genteel life, all superfluity, unless sustained by exquisite taste, tends rather to diminish than to increase respect. A pony-carriage, tastefully appointed, shall excite the admiration of the Ring, while a coach and six, with outriders, shall, by the ostentation of its extravagance, become a laughing-stock upon wheels.

None understand these delicate niceties so well as your highly genteel people.

AFTER a week in London, the time at last arrived to betake ourselves to Blackwall on our way to Edinburgh, by the General Steam Navigation Company's ship the Clarence. Accordingly, on Saturday the 5th of June, we packed up our traps, put two nurse maids and three children, one only six months old, into a couple of cabs, and walked, accompanied by our spouse, to the Hungerford Stairs. The journey commenced under evil auspices; every thing seemed to go wrong. The first sight that saluted us on reaching the river, was a Blackwall steamer puffing with all its might towards Waterloo Bridge, and we had to wait a quarter of an hour before the next one started; and even then we had to be contented with a vessel bound to Greenwich, trusting to our own ingenuity to find our way across. All these delays were doubly provoking on the present occasion, as we had determined to have a pleasant party by way of a finish to the week's dissipation; and had agreed to meet some friends at Lovegrove's, at a white-bait dinner, before we embarked. By the time we reached London Bridge it was already past the appointed hour; it began to rain; the boat was full of cockneys, male and female, who were talking and making love after their kind; and we began to fear that we should come in at the end of the feast, which, though a good deal better than the beginning of a fray, is still not by any means desirable on its own account. Well, on we went through groves of masts, hissing and spluttering to the best of our ability, till the noble hospital received us on its majestic quay. But alas for the white-bait, the water-souché, the salmon and cels, of which we had a very vivid presentiment! there was no steam-boat to be seen to waft us to the haven of our hopes. Wherries and Thames boats in general, we hold in utter abhorrence as nothing less than hearses in disguise; and therefore we determined, at whatever expense of time and hunger, to wait till a more eligible conveyance should appear. At last a bluff voice beside us whispered, in the tone of a moderate north-easter, "Here's the Black

wall dingy, ho! ho!" We looked, but nothing answering our expecta tion met our longing eyes; though certainly up the reach there did come something which, as it was no other sort of boat known to the sons of men, we felt convinced must be a steamboat; but still it carried its steam, as the saying is, with a difference. Instead of paddle-wheels and paddleboxes, to which custom has almost reconciled the eye, this nondescript crept up the river by the aid of a long upright iron bar, armed at the water end with one single paddle, which it jerked fore and aft at every motion, alternately with another at the other side. The advantage of this apparatus being, that it occupies very little space in the vessel, and can be unshipped in a very short space of time, a patent has been taken out for it to be applied in aid of sailing vessels, and it plies between Greenwich and Blackwall, to act, we suppose, as its own advertisement. We got all our impedimenta fairly shipped, and away we careered down the river on board our diminutive steamer, which kept tossing its long shanks about like a deranged spider, and were safely landed on the Brunswick wharf, where we saw resting on its shadow the stately Clarence. It was now seven o'clock; our friends were ready to receive us; the waiters in solemn procession, to the number of six, walked into the room, each bearing a miracle of the culinary art, which Mrs Hemans has unaccountably omitted to celebrate in her Treasures of the Deep: a few champagne corks flew out as if by accident, and at seven we had forgotten all the miseries not only of our journey from London to Blackwall, but of our journey through life. There are few pleasanter things in this weary world than a white-bait dinner at Blackwall. The view from the window is like a great peristrephic panorama of ancient Tyre; or rather, which is a far grander and nobler thing, it is a great moving panorama of the watery approach to modern London, where countless multitudes of ships-like the marriage procession of Aladdin-pass on in shining rows, to pour the wealth of Ormus and Ind

into the world's treasure-house. Here come ships from the Pacific, that have tossed and tumbled round Cape Horn; there's a huge brig from the Baltic; and here's an immense three-master from the city of palaces in "Gunga's sacred tide." And at this very moment that these are placidly floating homeward-loaded with the rewards of skill and industry-a vision rises before us of the sight we saw a little week ago, of the meteor flag waving from the mast-heads of all those glorious men-of-war at Portsmouth and Spithead. Gentlemen, here's ships, colonies, and commerce, and the three kingdoms, against the world!

But it is a most distressing fact that a white-bait dinner cannot last for ever. People began to pull out their watches and make ominous enquiries about conveyances back to town. In the mean time the plot was evidently thickening at the Brunswick wharf carts, coaches, and all manner of vehicles had been sounding on the rough stones, with redoubled activity, for the last hour; whistling, of a nature unknown to birds and landsmen, had been piercing the dull ear of the drowsy night for a long while; and we had barely time for a cup of coffee and its indispensable chasse, when a bell frightened the isle (of Dogs) from its propriety; an unearthly screaming of steam, as it forced its way up the narrow chimney, and hooted and whizzed at the top of it, to the alarm of all peaceably.disposed sailing vessels; and a multitude of other sounds too distinctly prognos. tic of an immediate flitting, hurried us to the pier without further delay; and as a very few minutes sufficed to satisfy us that all was right, children in bed and asleep, and luggage all safe in the hold, we felt quite delighted with our situation; and after a few convulsive strains, the great vessel moved slowly from her moorings, and dropped down the now darkened river, faintly smoking, slightly heaving, and dimly seen-like the ghost of a manufactory.

All mortals do not wear quizzingglasses or spectacles, and yet all mortals are short-sighted-beyond the skill of Wardrop or the magnifiers of Dollond-or what could have accounted for the satisfied appearance of every one on board, as long as we were on the smooth water west of

Gravesend, while innumerable white waves were boiling and roaring at the Nore, and a tremendous north-wester walloping the German Ocean, till it howled like a French thief at the whipping-post? But there we all were, as snug as possible, with the certainty-so we thought-of reaching Edinburgh at five o'clock on Monday. There certainly was a good deal of reaching before that time, but Edinburgh did not cast up till after many days. Small knots formed themselves round the tables in the saloon, either to consolidate old friendships among the passengers thus casually thrown together, or to make new ones. The stewards kept bustling about, carrying whisky and biscuits, and hot water and cheese, to the various "numbers;" while carpet bags, and dressing cases, and small portmanteaus were hurried into the cabins; and the stewardess- a nice little merry-faced woman-flitted across the doorway, loaded with silk cloaks and wicker baskets. Gradually the light of conviviality burned low-exclamations were heard in various tones of voice, "Well, I think I shall turn in,"-group after group disappeared, and we went up on deck to take a last look at the grand river and starry sky, before we wrapped ourselves into the wooden strait-waistcoat which people facetiously call a gentleman's berth. Great lines of grey clouds were sailing across the heaven -a sbarp whistling sound was audible among the cordage at the top of the masts, and we detected the captain looking upwards every now and then, and walking at an increased pace along the deck. We thought he was, perhaps, an astronomer; and sitting down on the grating over the cabin window, we lived over again the glorious week we had spent in the great city. We saw before us our countryman Lauder's admirable picture of the Trial of Effie Deans, which we had seen on Wednesday in the Exhibition. We recalled the careful looks of Jeanie, bending over the insensible father, and the agonized attitude of the beautiful Lily of St Leonard's, striving in vain to reach the broken-hearted old man. A fine picture painted by a great artist, who is also a great poet-only handling a brush instead of a pen-for there is great poetry in the telling of the

story. We recalled, no less vividly, the sculptured forms of two beautiful children-a young boy trying to win over an offended little girl-the gem of the whole statue gallery of the Exhibition, and superior in gentleness and beauty to Chantrey's Sleeping Cherubs in Litchfield Cathedral. We brought before us, not less vividly, the majesty of the colossal figure of Mr Tennant a most majestic imper sonation of deep thought and dignified worth-and felt not a little proud that the creator of those two noble works was another of our countrymen-Parke. We, after that, went to the Opera; and as we got opposite Halderman" Armers," we heard the clear notes of Grisi and Madame Loewe, united to each other by the inimitable tones of Rubini, in the trio in the first act of the Don Giovanni Protegga il giusto cielo. Then we heard Persiani and Lablache, and again felt some ticklings of vanity that we should have listened to an opera, sung by the six finest performers in Europe-Lablache, Tamburini, Rubini, Grisi, Loewe, and Persiani. At last, in the course of our reminiscences, just about oppo. site Gravesend, we went again to the Opera House, and heard Mademoiselle Rachel in the Horace of the grand Corneille-a clever impassioned actress, able in some degree to get over the monotonous drawl of the French alexandrines, and the insupportable dulness of the individual part, Camille-and therefore a woman of genius; but as to dignity or the expression of the tragic passions, negatur. It may, perhaps, be French passion; but, to our plain ears, it sounded like very fine declamation by a young lady in a passion of a very different kind. We advise all persons unprovided with a wife to beware of any young lady with the tremendous powers of scolding possessed by Miss Camille. We confess we were neither surprised nor sorry to see Horace junior put an end to her vixenism and misery by a false stab with a tin dagger-if it had been a pinch on the ear, we should have been glad to see it real. After all these recollections, a turn or two about the deck, and on enquiry if all was right in the ladies' cabin, we plunged into the lower regions, and after sundry attempts to find our berth, performed

the difficult achievement of getting into bed; and with our head filled with a confused jumble of all we had been meditating before, with Effie Deans, and Rubini, and the two statues by Mr Parke, singing, "Non ti sfidar O misera," we sank into a profound and comfortable repose.

At eight o'clock next morning we looked out of our dormitory, and thought we were spectators of a field of battle. Gentlemen in all sorts of picturesque attitudes and unstudied costumes, were spread helplessly along the floor; while one or two, who retained the perpendicular, were so unsteady in their movements-toppling over, first to one side, then to the other-staggering among the recumbent bodies of their companions, and making such desperate efforts all the while to stand still, that it almost appeared as if those staid and respectable individuals were endeavouring to dance Jim Crow for our amusement. However, we participated too fully in the unsteadiness under which they were labouring, to remain long under so pleasing a delusion. There are no words capable of a greater variety of deep tragic intonation than "Steward, bring the bucket." All men under the excitement of real feelings, are more effective than the most consummate actors. We accordingly felt as if we were surrounded by Keans and Kembles; but our friend, the steward, exhibited a pattern of equanimity, and command over his feelings, worthy of a Roman father, and seemed to have no more sympathy for the agonized wretches before him, than if they had been so many pigs. It almost appeared as if he disputed the right of any man to be sick in June. There were no preparations for such an uncalled-for occurrence, and the buckets so feelingly invoked were as intractable as the spirits of Owen Glendower. The more they were called for, the more they did not come. The vessel, which was very high out of the water, pitched and reeled, first from stem to stern, then from starboard to larboard, yawing, creaking, shrieking, and groaning in all her timbers, as if she had got into a position she did not at all like; and from sheer curiosity to discover what could be the meaning of all the hullabaloo, we managed with surprising dexterity to slip into our clothes, and by dint of holding on by