a sense of his nothingness in this quarter, his lordship's coachman doesn't care how seldom he drives through the Bar. At times, also, among all this town life and bustle, and drawn up on one side in the muddy channel, may be seen some farmer's cart or light waggon; the heads of the cattle decorated with a now fading sprig or flower; the dog vainly barking himself hoarse as a patriot at all the strange sights and sounds,-the whole affair, cart, lading, horses and all, covered with the gathered dust of the journey,—and the driver's ears, amidst the uproar, still ringing with the remembrance of the lark's song that had travelled with him, mile after mile, in the early morning. Blessings on thee, many-voiced Fleet Street! for ourselves we have taken the full benefit of thy eternal tintamarre, and listen to thy hurly-burly with gratitude. Who would have chosen this as a scene for love-making? and yet to us it has proved propitious. Have we not connected with it our experiences? do we not remember one lovely inhabitant, and a long-sought-for conversation, a jealous meddling aunt-a first-floor front-and the divine hubbub below proving a convenient shield for half-uttered, and by the aunt unheard explanations? Tell us not of the manifold virtues under such circumstances of Salisbury Plain, of the Falls of Niagara, or a ball-room and Weippert's band-but give us Fleet Street! We respect this street of streets for more than one reason. It has negative virtues. It is not made up of linen-drapers and jewellers, like the west end, or of chemists and pastrycooks, like other newlybuilt neighbourhoods. Leaving unnamed its numerous and ingeniously classified booksellers, the shops here have to us the virtues of the poets. We are a forced habitué of town, but a lover of the country. Imagine then our delight in dwelling on all that can remind us of rural solitude or sports and the gay aspect of the young summer. Near the Bar we have long dwelt with affection upon an outfitting establishment for the angler which is found there, a magazine of wars, stratagems, and spoils against the finny tribes; did we ever pass this shop without being carried back in spirit to some choice spot in English river scenery, where we have passed happy hours fascinated with the sport and the charms of the surrounding sounds and scenery? The same with the florist's lower down in the street, where staid rows of carnations follow in their season similar regiments of early hyacinths,-albeit the flowers emerge most unnaturally from paper frills! But what of this? they are still flowers, and beautiful ones too. This thoroughfare should be a decided favourite with the utilitarian. It had, as we believe, but one blot, and that stood so long that we had our fears it might never be eradicated. We allude to the memory of the late wax exhibition. Toy-shops, picture-shops, and "publishers," were comparatively but freckles in the fair face of its beauty. A wax exhibition in Fleet Street! a cold semblance where life is quickest. "Had we commandment on the pulse of war" these things should not be. We often felt inclined to be uncivil to the unmoving figure of the old money-taker in the passage, but the sturdy "beef-eater" at the door had his due weight with us, and we have passed on, muttering the well-worn adjuration, "Hence, horrible shadow! unreal mockery, hence!" And, heedful of the admonition, the "mockery" has vanished. We respect its taverns too, and its coffee-rooms, innumerable and indescribable as they are, not for the sake of Samuel Johnson, or of that"facetious dog" Samuel Foote, but for our own sake, and for those of the excellent fellows who keep the same, and the still more excellent wines that keep them, in our remembrance. But we have yet to touch upon the glory of Fleet Street-the press! Little does the casual and unobservant visitor, as he passes onward to his man of business on 'Change, think of what is going on around him. If he be a public character, he, or his wife, or his child, his man-servant, or his maid-servant, his ox, or his ass, or the stranger that is within his gates even,- -or if the "gates" themselves offend any member of the literary republic, in this case, we say, little does he surmise in how many sanctuaries around him are busy editors at work upon his life and character! How much that is quite unknown even to himself, these great men could inform him of; how many piquancies and pleasantries are preparing, at his expense, for the Sunday newspaper! But seriously, this is a neighbourhood of printers and newsmongers. The great leviathan of our literature seems to have shed his sharp and bitter teeth in this quarter of the city, and these gentlemen have sprung up from the good seed. Those to whom their grimy and bloodless aspect is known, discover that the street is haunted by printers' familiars, not to say "devils." These satellites of that "mighty pen," the printing machine, are to be seen bending their steps in all quarters upon some errand of their great master. The causeway is theirs. How often have we seen people staring at that part of the machinery of a press which administers the ink to the type, and is technically called the roller, as these same rollers are carried about over the shoulders of boys, and have longed to tell the gazers that without the aid perhaps of that odd-looking affair, they might go without their morrow's "Chronicle." Here too is a crowd watching the printer's truck by the pavement's side, carrying away the forms, (or, in plain English, the mass of types set up together into the matter and form of a book or newspaper,) to the machine at some larger establishment. In three hours, good folks, some thousands of impressions from that same blank-like sheet of metal will be placed your hands. We have alluded to the demon-ology of Fleet Street :in wet weather our readers will have an excellent clue to them, in the fashion these original-minded personages have of sheathing their lower extremities in the broad sheets of a newspaper, to defend themselves as they trudge along through the mire. The idea of thus taking refuge in a public journal from the scattering of mud must be considered as strikingly peculiar. There are places in Paris across which the agents of police calculate that every inhabitant, who may his legs at all, will pass once at least in every three days: the good people in London are not so flighty; on the contrary, in be on many are but rarely found to stir from their native burrows. Marylebone seldom stirs without its own bounds; Pedlar's Acre vegetates contentedly beneath the shadow of the Waterloo Road; and Pentonville knows but little of life beyond its neighbour Islington. But yet, if there be a spot more generally sought than another, it is the one under consideration; this in all respects is the route to the capital. We meet every body in Fleet Street; but who has not lost themselves in vain speculations on whom this "every body" may be? We do not know a great man, till we see him in his book, in his place in parliament, behind his fiddle, or, though last not least, seated at the head of his table. The man on his way to buy stock to the tune of fifty thousand pounds is undistinguishable from him who is returning from selling out his last hundred. We say these several and differently situated parties comport themselves alike, and may not be easily distinguished, and we believe so; for a certain nonchalance and ease of countenance is as common to men moving in society, as a well-timed and unaffected style of dress. Being out at elbows and out of countenance are all but synonymous. A man's heart and a man's tailor may both turn bankrupt, but he himself must show no tokens of the failure. Yet men forget themselves in the solitude of the throng; and we are far from thinking, that a shrewd observer may not get at some inkling of the busy thoughts and cares at work even beneath the most staid-cut waistcoats and trimlybrushed hats passing on either side. That tall big man in a brown frock coat and well-worn hat, carrying a thick hazel walking-stick and taking up so much of the pavement, we know to be a very small annuitant; while, making his quiet way along, between the giant aforesaid and the shop windows, we observe a comparatively small individual, in black, of modest exterior and nervous look; he it is whose presence and judgment is just now looked for upon 'Change. That young man who has run over the child on the other side of the way is a young tradesman, posting to take up a bill in Lombard Street. He is happy enough now; but the scrap of paper which he is going to redeem has cost him many a weary day and night. He thinks, poor fellow, he will never give another! Mark too this gay equipage, and the two young and beautiful women within it, one evidently not long married. Some costly purchase is on the tapis; while unobserved and unobserving passes on the other side her greyheaded husband, on his road, when too late, to face his overwhelming difficulties. We tremble lest her bright eye catch his! no-he is past; that trial is spared him; and a few more days as of old may yet be hers. And see, too, that pale and abstracted woman is hurrying westward, a dark shawl as for concealment thrown loosely over a dress much too light and gaudy for the scene: blame her not for inappropriate costume; distress has come upon her suddenly; and see, a child is with her, for protection, or she would not this once take her boy to fret the fond father in his confinement; a lock-up house in Chancery Lane is her destination. We have nearly brought these our remarks on an old acquaintance to a conclusion. Must our leaves-taking be in sorrow? The truth should be told, however, and the world must know how dull and life less a scene this is on one day in the week. It once happened to us to pass down Fleet Street on a Sunday forenoon. We shall not enter upon our feelings on that occasion. It was a different spot. There existed no tokens of connexion between the present and what had been, any more than there remains affinity between a dust-hole and a blazing hearth. Life, soul, fire, is extinct in both cases. A few old citizens, with large families, and ditto baskets, were hurrying and steaming towards the river-side, on a presumed visit to Gravesend; then came, prematurely rising and falling in his saddle, an unhappy-looking equestrian bound for the western road; a pair-horse coach, loaded with cockneys and their dinners, was labouring in the same direction; Sunday paper offices were going to shut up every moment, and still kept sending forth their quires of news and choirs of vocal news-venders; young ladies were going to St. Bride's in new bonnets, and young gentlemen were going with them in new blue gloves; a few tipsy men were being turned out of the public-houses, and were expressing an energetic determination to keep it up all day, as they had kept it up all night; the one man left at home to take care of the city, was carrying his dinner to the baker's; the sweeper at the Farringdon crossing had out his best broom, and the young lady at the pastry-cook's her best smiles; but it was dull: Fleet Street was out of spirits. An old acquaintance in decay is a melancholy sight; and by no chance whatever have we ventured that way again on a Sunday forenoon. EGOMET. SONNET. My fond one! when this morn Aurora sped, I roused me from a dream, a dream which shed Scenes which have smiled, when we together strayed; But which 'twere bliss to know, oh loveliest maid! E. C. SCENES IN SPAIN. BY AN OFFICER OF THE BRITISH LEGION. No. III. THE bugles had sounded the assembly-the different companies had marched up and taken their ground-the men for the guards had been told off, when the Adjutant came up to me with the unwelcome intimation: "Mr. Swivell, you are on the baggage to-day; will you have the goodness to fall in your guard at once?" "Why, really, Mr. Tartar, our regiment always seems to find baggage-guards for the whole brigade !" said I in apparent astonishment at the summons, endeavouring to find some pretext for getting out of it. 66 Can't help it, Sir; duty must be done," the usual and unanswerable response of our worthy Adjutant in particular, and of adjutants in general, to remonstrances of the kind. "The 6th found the duty yesterday; but when you have examined your guard, the Brigadier wishes to speak to you." Of all duties the most disagreeable is the baggage-guard-the constant and unremitting attention that is required-the scattered and extended line when the quantity of baggage is great--the squabbling of the muleteers and guard, in the attempts of the latter to urge on the speed of the mules-the frequent stoppages on the road occa sioned by the unruly animals kicking off their loads; and, above all, the jarring and unmilitary composition of the human portion of the baggage, consisting of sick, båtmen, women, skulkers, and Spaniards, render it a duty replete with trouble and responsibility. Truly, it often requires a well-stored vocabulary of imprecations to get through it at all with satisfaction to one's self or credit to the service. I was wishing the baggage at the bottom of the sea, as I made my way towards the General. "I understand, Sir," said the latter, who, by the bye, was a leetle prosy sometimes, though a cool and gallant soldier enough in the field, "that several of the mules are so entirely knocked up as to be unable to proceed. I have therefore directed Mr. Burton to be sent with a forage-party for fresh ones. Till his return, therefore, you will have to remain here, when you will follow the brigade as quickly as possible to, where it will halt to-night. It is probable that you will require a guide, which will be furnished you by the Alcalde of this place. You understand, Sir,-you are to take Mr. Burton's party under your command, and-" "Very good, Sir." About two hours after the last regiment had departed, the said Mr. Burton made his appearance with four mules which he had managed to press, in despite of the opposition of the owners, for the service, in a neighbouring hamlet. Not much time was spent in loading them, and at length the cavalcade, at the head of which marched the guide between two soldiers, to whom the usual strict orders were given for his safe keeping, slowly wound its way out of the village. |