we had friends; and above all, the monster Courvoisier, the Swiss valet, who murdered his master, Lord William Russell, whose atrocities are impressed upon me from my having heard them much discussed, more particularly the style of defence adopted by his counsel, Charles Philips, at the house of Mr. Clarke, senior partner of my father's solicitors, Messrs. Clarke, Finmore & Fladgate, of Craven Street, Strand, who resided on Highgate Hill, and with whom I often spent the Sunday afternoons. Mr. Clarke, who was afterwards solicitor to the Ordnance Office, was a man very well known in legal circles, and entertained largely; he and his family were very kind to me, and I used hugely to enjoy listening to the talk of the guests, with whom the house was filled. The Eglinton tournament, in which Louis Napoleon, afterwards Emperor of the French, took part; the Chartist riots at Newport, headed by Frost and Williams; and the frightful accident on the Paris and Versailles Railway, when all the passengers in a long train were burned to death, the doors on both sides of the carriages being locked, so that escape was impossible, are all well-remembered events.

Even in those my juvenile days I was a kind of newsprovider for my schoolmates, and my return from a casual visit home, or to my grandfather's, were days looked forward to by them, as I was sure to bring back some stories which I had heard or read. I was an eager devourer of all kinds of literature from my earliest years, and used to read, stretched on the hearth-rug, with my book between my elbows, on which I rested, or at night curled up in a chair, with a candle and the snuffer-tray in close proximity.

The casual mention of the snuffer-tray, an article never seen by modern readers, brings to my mind a thousand and one changes in things, manners, and customs between the present time and the days of my childhood, forty years ago, which will properly find mention in this chapter. In those days, though there was gas in the streets and shops, and wax - candles for the great ones of the earth, those who could not afford such luxuries were compelled to seek their illumination in tallow-candles, which

required snuffing-i. e., the removal of their burnt wicks -about every quarter of an hour. "Require no snuffing," was the boast in the advertisement of the Palmer's composite candles, which were the first improvement, and one variety of which was, I remember, burned in a lamp, forced down on a spring into a socket, and liable to shoot out like a rocket. Mention of Palmer's name reminds me that there were no so-called "night-lights," only a long "farthing rush-light," set up in the middle of a huge tin light-house perforated with round holes, the reflection of which on the walls and ceiling was ghostly in the extreme; no lucifers, but a round tinder-box, with a flint, and a bit of steel on which to strike it, and a bundle of long sulphur-tipped slips of wood called matches. The lucifer, or congreve-match as it was called, as originally produced, was ignited by friction on sand-paper, and had a very unpleasant smell.

In those days the "new Police," as they were still called-for they had not long been invented by Sir Robert Peel in supersession of the old watchmen-were very different in appearance from our present guardians. They wore swallow-tail blue coats, with bright metal buttons, and, in summer, white duck trousers and white Berlin gloves. In lieu of helmet they had an ordinary chimneypot hat, only of extra strength and stiffness, and with a glazed oil-skin top. Their rivals in the affections of domestic servants, the Household troops, were also very differently costumed: in place of the tunic they wore a scarlet swallow-tail, with ridiculous worsted epaulettes, a huge stock under the chin, white ducks, and a bear-skin shako almost twice the height of that now carried. Neither policeman nor private soldier was permitted to grow mustache or beard. The "general" or country postman wore a scarlet swallow-tail coat; the "twopenny or London district man a blue uniform; a collection for the night mails was made at 5 P.M., by men who paraded the streets, each armed with a bell, which he rang lustily; and many of the despatches of letters from the headoffice, then in Lombard Street, to the various sub-offices were made by horse-post, the letters being enclosed in

leather valises, which were strapped behind the postboys.

The dress of the men and women of that time can be studied in the illustrations to "Nicholas Nickleby," and other contemporary publications; "dandies" wore highcollared coats and roll-collared waistcoats, short in the waist; round their necks were high stiff stocks, with "an avalanche of satin " falling over the chest, and ornamented with a large and a small pin connected with a thin chain; and high, sharp-pointed-almost Gladstonianshirt-collars. No gentleman could wear anything in the daytime but Wellington boots, high up the leg, over which the trousers fitted tightly, covering most of the foot, and secured underneath by a broad strap. The great-coats of those days were no misnomers. They were really enormous garments, adorned with several capes and deep pockets; they were Chesterfields, Petershams, Taglionis, Sylphides; and well I recollect some splendid driving-coats, ornamented with enormous mother-o'-pearl buttons as big as crown-pieces, with pictures on them of mail-coaches going full speed, which were exhibited to admiring crowds in the tailor's window in Regent Street. Afterwards came the neat paletot, the blanket-like poncho, the blue pilot, and the comfortable Inverness. Some old gentlemen wore cloaks, too, in my youth; and I have a dim recollection of one kind, properly, I believe, called roquelaure, but known to the London public as a "rockelow."

Other personages of the streets, common in those days, have long since disappeared: the dustman, with his call "Dust O!" and his ever-ringing bell; the "buy-a-broom girl, with her Dutch garb and jödling voice; the thin Turk, turban-topped, and vending rhubarb from a tray suspended from his neck; the Jew boys who hung about the coach-offices, with their nets of lemons or oranges, and were closely elbowed by the peripatetic cutler, the blades of whose knives were always open, and constantly being polished and sharpened on a tattered leather glove. Gone is the three-hatted, bag-bearing Jew, with his neverceasing cry of "Old clo', clo' !" gone are the Quakers

s considered "fast" to ride in a hanas tabooed to ladies. There were omng like the present commodious vehiped, with a seat across the end, with knife-board" accommodation outside. s of railways the carriages had not atnt amount of comfort: the first-class immense improvement on the cramped ch; but the second-class had no linings the third-class was little better than a he mail-coaches themselves I have not though, as the "Great North Road" ate, I must have seen them very often. er the Brighton coaches, and my astonher shaking hands with the coachman, nt Cotton; and the laughter at my godyng, when he told us that, passing by ellar, a coachman had familiarly tapped with his whip, and, looking up in a rage, is "rascally nephew, Edward Thynne." ces were uncommon; a pair of “muts was de rigueur; but a "pair of musvere called, was never seen, save on a ncing-master, or a "snob," and the culd was wholly confined to foreigners.*

rt Smith had just returned from his Nile trip and ople, with a flowing beard, he was a candidate for

In those days it was no uncommon sight, on looking up at the cry of "Sweep!" to see a sooty imp protruding from a chimney-pot, and waving his brush. This was the veritable "climbing-boy," who was popularly supposed to be the slave of a tyrannical master, whose ascent of a difficult chimney was said to be hastened by the burning straw in the grate beneath; who wore a brass plate, with his master's name and address, on the front of his cap; who danced in the streets on May-day in company with Jack-in-the-Green, "my lord," and the girl who rattled the ladle as a suggestion for donations; and who-the little sooty imp-was, in all our childish minds, the hero of the story in which the tired-out little sweep lay down on the bed in Montagu House, and being found there, was recognized as the child who had been stolen thence some years previously.

What a change in the aspect of the streets of London since those days! Gone is the colonnade over the shops in the Quadrant, which extended from the County Fire Office to Glasshouse Street, which was taken down, partly to give more light to the shopkeepers, but mainly at the pertinacious insistance of one of them, a stationer named Dolby, who denounced the covered way as affording a retreat for "dissolute persons." Poor "dissolute persons," ever hunted into the hard, cold streets! Gone is the Rookery, a conglomeration of slums and alleys in the heart of St. Giles's, a resort of really desperate characters, which was pulled down and smashed up when New Oxford Street was made. Before that, all the vehicular traffic, and every pedestrian who did not care to run the risk of being mobbed and hustled, turned off to the right on reaching the commencement of Tottenham Court Road, where stands Meux's Brewery, and, making a considera

the Garrick Club. It was unofficially notified to him from the committee that his beard was most objectionable. A. S. distinctly refused to be terrorized into shaving, but declared he would have no objection to modify the hirsute adornment after his election. The "beard movement," as it was called, by which we ot rid of the imperative necessity for the appalling razor, did not take place until after the Crimean War. It was immensely assisted by an article in Household Words, entitled "Why Shave?"