sale brokers, ship brokers, and insurance brokers, with the inferior gradations of custom-house agents, wharfingers, lightermen, &c. transact the import and export business of London, by the instruction and authority of the merchant; nay, so universal is this system of agency, or doing business by proxy, that when application is made to a merchant respecting his goods, he cannot give an immediate answer, but either a reference to his agent, or a promise that he will inquire, and give the requisite information at an appointed time.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PEOPLE OF LONDON, WESTMINSTER, AND SOUTHWARK.

The predominant and most obvious characteristic of the common people of this great metropolis, from the merchant down to the vender of ballads and matches, is a bustling and incessant eagerness to get money, and a disposition. to spend it luxuriously. To the acquisition of gain all the powers of the body, and energies of the mind are directed by the great majority of tradesmen, who seem to think themselves born for no other purpose but to acquire wealth. In this pursuit they are generally successful; pro

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perty is obtained by industry, and the commercial man retires from business to enjoy the good things of this life, when his capability of enjoying them is almost extinct.

But many of the most sagacious of our tradesfolk, aware of the uncertainty of life, wish to profit by the present moment, and are not less remarkable for their propensity to good living, than their knowledge of business. The art of living well, or good living, according to the standard set up in London, does not always promote the health and serenity of the practitioner. View a voracious citizen, or a rustic visitor to the capital, seated in a tavern with the good things provided by culinary skill before him, what a number of innocent animals must be put to death to gratify his taste, and satiate his appetite! The most ferocious savage of the wild appears amiable, compared with such a gormandizer. The citizen devoted to good living, undoubtedly consumes more than double the quantity of aliment requisite for his salutary sustenance, and in the course of twenty years, devours a flock of at least forty sheep and lambs, and a herd of twenty oxen, fifty swine of different gradations of growth, one hundred. Newcastle salmon, and some millions of smaller fishes, including sprats and shrimps. As for liquors, such is his thirst, that the vine seems inadequate to supply sufficient

liquid for the dilution of his food, and the foul water of the Thames must be purified by the action of fire, and be improved in colour and flavour, by a fermentation with decocted malt, and an infusion of hops, to quench his feverish fervour. Such excess swells many of our “fat and greasy citizens," to that enormous corpulence, so frequently the subject of the caricaturist's art, and so continually a burthen to themselves.

Next to the love of money, and good living, a prominent charactéristic of the good folks of London, is a passion for public spectacles. Since the beginning of the present century they have been amused with several public exhibitions, the most remarkable of which was that of the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia, with their retinue of princes and heroes in June 1814. Wherever the Emperor and King appeared in public, acclamations from the throats of thousands stunned them. "Surely," said they to one another, "there must be something very remarkable in our appearance, or very absurd in the minds of the populace of London, to provoke such vociferation. They must have the best lungs in the world, and be very idle too, or they would not thus assemble in crowds, in the dusty streets, to gaze on a few foreigners." In fact, so perpetually were Alexander and William annoyed by the curious looks, and outstretched hands of the vulgar of every

class of society, during their continuance in London, that they were obliged to rise early, and ride out incognito, to have the pleasure of a view of the English metropolis. In one instance, Alexander's saddle-girth happened to get loose, he nimbly alighted and buckled it; and this imperial act was recorded among the wonders of the day in our newspapers, as if there was something extraordinary in an emperor's having the use of his limbs!

This was an era productive of magnificent spectacles. Those grand exhibitions in the Royal Parks-the Pagoda Bridge, the Temple of Concord, the Fair, and the Lilliputian sea-fight on the Serpentine river were the most memorable scenes of this splendid and expensive national farce.

Since that period, the people have been amused by processions at the general election, in which the brutalized mob evinced their savage disposition by outrageously insulting some of the candidates. They also distinguished themselves by their reception of Henry Hunt, on his return from Lancashire; and evinced their impiety and propensity to evil, by the approbation which they expressed of the publishing blasphemers on Ludgate-hill and in Fleet-street.

The passion for public spectacles is not confined to the canaille, or dregs of the people, for

genteel. tradesmen, handicraftsmen, and even professional men delight in theatric exhibitions, and are not only the principal patrons of the minor play-houses, but in many instances expose their own vanity and incapacity, as performers at private theatres. To such an absurd height, and extent too, is this most preposterous indulgence of folly and sensuality carried, that the satire of Petronius Arbiter is properly applicable to those ridiculous mimics of the mimetic heroes and heroines of the sock and buskin on the public stage:

"Mundus universus exercet histrioniam."

Or, as Shakspeare has it,

“All the world's a stage, &c."

While engaged in these light and frivolous pursuits, business is often neglected; and the admirer of representations of interesting events, sometimes makes a figure in the Gazette, an event which might have been prevented by industry and frugality. The fascinations of the stage are certainly numerous and seductive. There the imagination, the senses, and the sensual appetites, are stimulated by the combined powers of poetry, painting, music, eloquence, wit, humour, sentiment, and the paramount at