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10 This, however is fair enough; they are but discounting their past career, and the British public will for a long time continue to honour their drafts, which, in truth, at the time of presentation, should scarcely contain the words “for value received.”

There is also another point well worthy of consideration,—it is a great thing to be fat. To be a fat man is a great element of success in London. The world is willing to pay heavily for ballast. In almost every social circle you enter you will find a fat man to be the king of it. How unctuously common-places fall from his mouth, as though they were good things. How impossible it is to maintain against such an one that six times seven are forty-two, or that King George III. used to reside occasionally at Weymouth. He will smile blandly at you over a vast expanse of white waistcoat, and impart to the glass of sherry which he is sipping the force of a syllogism. You are lost in the opinion of the company, and retire into yourself with what our French neighbours would call “a yellow smile,” when you are instantly set down as an ill-conditioned fellow, deaf to the voice of reason. Let every one who can contrive it be fat and be forty. So will he surely sit under his own vine and his own fig-tree, and be glad. London is the paradise of men of sixteen stone. The rule, however, is not quite absolute. I have known a few thin men to succeed; but the laurel crown is scarcely ever awarded to them in a hearty and genial way. They get on as vampires and ghouls get on, by sucking the blood of innumerable victims. Their fellow-creatures are to this class of adventurers just so many oysters. They swallow them, but they do not fatten upon them. Neither did the late Mr. Dando. If any scheme be afoot for farming mankind for the profit of a few, of course a fat man will be the chairman, but a thin man will undertake the general management of the business.

I will only venture to add another preliminary remark or two. Next to corpulence I would place the faculty of “self-assertion,” as the second qualification of getting on in London, or indeed in any quarter of the globe of which I have had any experience. In sunny days, long since past, I remember to have visited in company with some friends, the beautiful Glen of Amalfi in the Salernitan Gulf. We engaged there a boat with four rowers and a steersman. The father steered, and his four sons laboured at the oars. Scarcely had we got out to sea when the unassuming mariner addressed us in these words: “Signori miei—la mia barca é buona e bella—i miei figliuoli sono buoni e belli—io anche sono buono e bello!” The fellow’s boat wasn’t a bit better than a dozen others which were lying there on the shore, his sons did not keep very good time, and subsequently when we hoisted a sail, the paternal helsmsmanhelmsman [sic] was continually sending his marvellous craft up into the wind. But the thing “paid;” by sheer force of bragging the man got more custom than his fellows. It is by no means impolitic in London to follow a similar system to that of my worthy friend, the Amalfiote boatman. My pill will cure all your ailments; my Eureka shirt will fit you to a nicety; remark the tone, the colour, the design, the what-d’ye-call-it in my picture; my play—Oh, injured Gallia!—is the only purely original thing of the season, alone I did it: do you bruise your oats in my way? If you cannot set any little performance of your own upon its legs, then boldly establish yourself as a censor or critic. Put the world to rights. Although you could not decorate a public-house door with a Cat and Fiddle, or a half-length of Sir Charles Napier in a creditable way, go in boldly, and regret that Mr. Millais has not an eye for colour, that Mr. Watts’ portraits are deficient in depth, and that Mr. Hook has such a poor idea of water. The divine art of music also offers a large harvest to any gentleman who may be quite unable to whistle three bars of “Rule Britannia,” as they were written. It is not even necessary to say much if you are desirous of founding a reputation as a critic—or oracle. Think of the great statesman in Sheridan’s play, who gained his honours by shaking his head in an emphatic manner. Douglas Jerrold in one of those marvellous epigrammatic sketches of his—he was not one of your critical, shake-head men!—drew a picture of a gentleman who passed through life universally respected and feared upon the strength of this short speech—“Ah! I could say something, but I won’t.” The thunderbolt was always kept in reserve. He walked amongst a crowd with a loaded pistol in his hand which he never discharged. At length when the doctor had taken his last fee, and the patient his last bolus, the mourning friends who surrounded the death-bed of this illustrious man intreated him not to go out of the world without informing them of the true nature of the withering sarcasm which had been kept in store for so many years. The poor fellow tried to shake his head for the last time, and while the pallor of death was stealing over his countenance murmured in a feeble way, “Ah! I could say it, but I won’t;” and then the oracle was for ever dumb. This also is a good system.

I protest that when I consider the magnitude of the task I have undertaken, I shudder at my own rashness. Put yourself on the top of an omnibus, and drive through London from north to south, and from west to east through the interminable rows of palaces, villas, houses, cottages, and ask yourself the question how it is that the inhabitants contrive to pay for their subsistence? Whence comes the money with which they are fed, clothed, and lodged? I suppose it requires something about 125,000l. simply to feed London for one day, estimating the sum spent on food at one shilling a head. This value is absolutely consumed and made away with, unless some of these wonderful projects for ruining the guano birds should take effect. There is something approaching to 50,000,000l. per annum gone at once. If the l. s. estimate be thought too high, on account of the babies and beggars, set it at what you will the result will be astounding.

Then there is the clothing, and the lodging, and the physic, and the consumption of horse-life for the purposes of conveyance; and the luxuries and superfluities. Walk along the public streets on any fine Sunday morning, and see the swarming crowds of reasonably well-attired people. The