Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 019.djvu/51

 1826/3 Posthumous Letters of Charles Edwards, Esq. No. VI. lg>

very shortly. This is absolute co- from Axbridge, I met the

ming in from Ax bridge, 1 met place a full mile west of where I left it a mile on the road between Ty- burn turnpike and Bayswater.

Works that, but yesterday, were the business of years to think of, are projected now, and completed, almost be tween to-day and to-morrow. Here is a bridge built that has cost half a million ! Paying about as much, I un- derstand, as may keep it in repair. And yet nobody seems to suffer ; and another, a wilder speculation than the first, at the east end of the town, is undertaking.

Luxury makes laudable progress too not among the people of rank perhaps it could not well get much farther than it has got with them and present circumstances seem likely rather to abate it but the second class in the metropolis, the de facto traders, are pressing harder than ever upon the rich, and driving them fast into projects of exclusion and barri- fiide. Clerks now keep actresses; linen-drapers speak Italian ; and tailors keep hunting-horses, and go to the* French play. This it is that pulls down the coffee-houses, into which all may walk, and sets up the clubs, into which even he who would eat a twen- ty-shilling supper cannot enter. And, for the lower ranks, as regards exter- nal appearance, literally, now, you can't even guess at the condition of any female in London by her dress, there is not a woman-servant in this house where I am living, who does not go abroad, on her holiday, in vel- vet and feathers ; and in such attire altogether as the wife of a man of mo- derate income, very often, could hard- ly hope to compass.

So, indeed, for the gentleman ; in style and dress, no man ever looks like what he is ; until at last, venture to seem anything but a chimney- sweeper, and (in a strange neighbour- hood) you run good chance to be set down for an impostor. As for " Cap- tains," the island is peopled with them. I can find no dignitaries (except now and then a " Major") else. Public exhibitors are getting into importance too ; I saw a person that keeps a show- box somewhere in the Strand, so ex- treme the other day, in boots and mustachoes, that I learned his quali- ty, by asking (in admiration) to what of Hungarians he belonged!

Here is a boot-maker, last week, has married a ward in Chancery! some ex- tailor's only joy, with fifty thou- sand pounds has been in prison " consented to make settlements" and now backs boxers drives tandem and is a " character" < ( upon town." Another fellow, that I used to buy canes of in Oxford Street, across a counter I saw at the Opera, dressed like a Pandour ! he is a blackleg for- sooth, and will be hanged, I dare say to the emulation of every other stick-boy about St James's !

Make allowance for the fact, that we all, at some time, come to say as much; and, even then, things did not go thus in my day. There has been an advance in the imposture, as well as in the importance, of the country : an accession to its impudence as well as to its strength ; an increase of busi- ness scarcely more at the Bank than at the Old Bailey, effected within the last twenty years. The people are fonder of show than they used to be ; less jealous, a great deal, of the work- house ; and a spirit of thinking act- ing only with reference to the pre- sent, runs more than it did; through all the arrangements of the commu- nity.

We build to a degree perfectly lu- dicrous only for the hour neigh- bourhoods rise up like fairy cities, and fall down, within the time that they formerly took in being set about. Your new houses are showy ; the fancy of the day calls them tasteful ; and there is not much chance of their standing long enough to allow them to go out of fashion. You get every- where a whitewashed front plate* glass windows folding doors, and gilded cornices a spiral staircase, that you risk your life every time you go up and a drawing-room, that stands in your lease, with a clause, that you shan't attempt to dance in it but, for a single circumstance of conve- nience or accommodation a closet, a recess a foot deep there is not such a thing from the top of the building to the bottom ! Your house that is the object must stand upon no ground ; your garden stabling offices there is not a stall in which a horse can turn round are all cut, and carved, and econo- mical to an inch ; your bed-chambers will be low and inconvenient; your cellars full of water, (for they have