The HUSTLERS are a sort of pocket-handkerchief and purse and pocket-book-taking set of pedestrians, who, from mere inadvertency, in the hurry and confusion of a crowded city, are accidentally apt to put their hands into your pockets, but are always gentlemanly enough to apologize very handsomely the moment the mistake is discovered; though it is not uncommon, if not found out, to catch them wiping their unconscious faces with your best cambric; or looking, by a gas-light, over the contents of your pocketbook, not those contents in the third page, and being light readers, when they have digested them, it is surprising to see how careless they are of all your careful memoranda, flinging down some area all your dinnerengagements, in the face of, and as if they meant to insult, the cooks where you did not mean to dine; or else, perhaps, dropping them down a gulley-grate, which has a direct commuication with the Fleet, and through that with the Thames, where it is, after many days, picked up by the drag-net of a flounder-fisher, who opens it, and sighs over the "poor drowned gentleman" that it is supposed to have belonged to, and comes to your house, from the direction he finds in it, offering to yourself to drag for your body, which, of course, you very politely decline for the present. In the meantime your hardened Hustler mixes himself up, as promiscuously as before, with the undistinguished mob, and perhaps the next day falls into a similar error; and there are people to be met with who set their

dislike so stoutly against these probable mistakes, that they will sometimes put an unfortunate hustler under a pump, and having drenched him into a dropsy, set him going again with the most unmerciful propulsions of their feet against the broadest part of his back.

The SWAGGERERS are a description of personages who either clear the pavement themselves, or expect that it should be cleared for them by others. These are the Mohawks of the west end of the town, and consist, generally, of unfledged ensigns, just appointed to carry colours, though they cannot carry themselves; and a few privates, or private gentlemen, called so by courtesy, just come of age, or come to town; or old to the town and newly from the Bench, these especially seeming as if they intended, by their frequent jostling and jolting against the honester and humbler passengers of the pavement, to rub off in Westminster the white-washing they received in Surrey. All, and every one of this class, expect you, upon the flourishing of a cane,-price sixpence plain, and ninepence tasseled,―à la militaire, to disperse to the right and to the left, or have an elbow in your ribs, which might pass for a horse's leg; or else stand prepared for a fall, and an exchange of cards. The best way to treat a thorough Swaggerer is to pull his nose, and deny him the honour of knowing who tweaked it.

The LOUNGERS are a more harmless, but still offensive, class of the same species, who are the daily pest of Bondstreet, and the nightly pest of box-lobbies. You may hear

any one of them long before you catch sight of him, for the jingling of his spurs, like the tinkling of that bell which precedes the procession of the Host, gives solemn warning to your humble unspurred walker to do the homage of clearing a thoroughfare for him, if you are not expected to crook "the pregnant hinges" of your knees. You may know one of them by his loose gait, and looser gaiters, or by his Anglesea trowsers and Wellington pelisse; by his blue cravat and brilliant boots, which "glare a horrid Day" and Martin-like lustre; by his bee's waist, and pigeon's breast; by his Uxbridge-brimmed hat, that looks as if it had fell out of a high window on his head by accident; and by the elegant orderly disorder of his hair, which in its disposition and general effect looks like nothing on earth so much as the sprawling spread of the black corktree, and seems, by its arrangement, to have been combed by a chevaux-de-frise. A complete lounger seems as if he was made for no other use than to fling himself into a chair, as if he meant to throw himself away; to yawn, and "my-dear-fellow" every one he addresses, whether peer or pick-pocket; and gulp ices and trifles, and gurgle down soda-water and noyeau. To look vacant and weary of every thing but himself, and ogle a pretty woman through his glass, adjust his collar, or his cravat, and fillip his boots with his walking-whip!

The PLODDERS are your men of easy circumstances, from success in trade, and they pass for such, as they tread their quiet, regular, jog-trot way through any street which

leads to the Bank. They are usually elderly students in the old school of Commerce, and of some sixty years or so of age, and sixty thousand in the funds, besides lands, loans, tenements, and hereditaments, all the gradual acquisitions of a quiet perseverance in the good old easy ways of trade, by which men made a fortune out of nothing in forty years: while, according to the new system, a trader is to make one in ten, out of a capital at starting of fortythousand, which, in less than eight of the ten, he has somehow or other lost, and in the ninth year finds himself member for Southwark,-that is, he has a seat in Banco Regis, instead of the Commons; or else is in the "durance vile" of Ludgate, swallowing in thankfulness my Lord Mayor's leavings at a civic feast, instead of being, as he expected about that time to be, my Lord Mayor himself. The old gentlemanly plodders usually carry a cane, which they are very partial to shake at passing puppies, or their seniors, dogs, but never use wantonly nor cruelly. They walk very erect, because they have been all their lives upright men. In "summer time, and heavenly weather," they habitually take off their hats every five or six hundred yards, and wipe their foreheads of the powdered perspiration, and shake their pig-tails from their retreat behind the coat-collar, which being duly regulated, and pointed due West, as they are steering "Eastward-hoe!" they gently fit their hats on again, as if they were always new, and not to be roughly handled, and planting their canes firmly under their hands again, pursue their leisurely path,

and seem the only persons undisturbed by the "disturbance rude" of a crowded city. They are always glad to meet with an old trading chum, when they usually withdraw from the pouring current of the populace to some nook, where the hand-shaking, which began a few minutes ago, is concluded; and exchanging snuffs, and placing their canes behind them, so as to form a line of continuation from the point of the pig-tail to the ground, they coolly chat over the first political news of the morning, or the last of last night. Meanwhile, the modern men of trade scour past them like so many beagles, breathless after a false scent, and glance looks of half-contempt at the surefooted plodders of the old school.-New European.