286

LEATHER LUNGS THE "LEG."

BY THE EDITOR.

CHAP. XIII.-THE AT HOME" CONTINUED.

"An abstract and brief chronicle of the time."

If you desire to turn a visitor to present account, never let him feel that he is the subject of a reception, or that his appearance has put an abrupt end to a story or a conversation. This, however, is among those nice points of social practice to which your parvenu seldom or never attains. He falls into silence, on the approach of his betters, instinctively, and imagines it good manners. The man of high breeding knows that it is the especial office of politeness to leave every one at his ease. There are, of course, occasions of etiquette to which the rule does not apply; but in the daily intercourse of life, the more form and state are eschewed, the more the true principles of good taste-which is good breeding in action-are complied with. For this reason, or to serve some end of my own-the reader is left to attribute it according to his charity-when, on the announcement of "Colonel Howard de Montmorenci," the "Leg" became as mute as a mackerel, I glided on with the subject under discussion.

"Don't leave the land of romance so abruptly for the region of reality never abandon the Rhine for the Borough," I was observing as the door opened, and a voice on the threshold, in good-humoured accents, exclaimed

"Who's that talking about Paradise?" Before answering the inquiry the reader should be introduced to the querist. If familiar with town during the years '43 and 44, he must have met him every time he put his head out of doors (the reader is assumed to be of the masculine gender). The visitor, of course, here appears under a nom de guerre, and no disparagement to his respectability, for the practice of appropriating miscellaneous titles has latterly become quite the fashion.

This was a precious precedent for those having the misfortune to be born to villainous patronymics:

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

But a camel could pass more readily through a needle's eye, than a young fellow, called Snooks, or the like, into the privileged list of a

patroness of Almack's. So fastidious have some grown latterly on this point, that really good names have been let down, merely because it was possible to turn them to undignified account. There is an on dit extant, that not very long ago two men of condition were chatting at White's window, in St. James's-street, the subject of discussion being the faculty of remembering names, for which George the Third was so remarkable. "A good deal of it was the effect of analogy," said one. "For instance, you had been presented as Cooper: the next time the King happened to see you, he would thus begin to muse: "The gentleman's name is, Tubs-Tubs-Tubs : ah, yes! bless my heart! Cooper, Cooper, Cooper." Very soon after this conversation the other wrote himself Couper. Still worse, if possible, than a purely plebeian appellation is the attempt to graft upon it a sonorous antecedent: Ajax Achilles Agamemnon Smith, Napoleon Buonaparte Byron Brown are far more intolerable than the originals in all their primitive deformity. Howard de Gibbs, too, would never do; neither would Somerset St. Giles. But the specification of our new comer harmonized perfectly; and if he had not any patent for bearing it from the Herald's College, it sat as jauntily on him, or perhaps more so, than had he been "to the matter born." Entering, with a carriage of ultra ease, and a smile upon his handsome face, he exclaimed: "Who's that talking about Paradise? Allow me to present one of the most recent arrivals from Elysium." The gallant speaker certainly looked like one whose lot had been cast in a pleasant land. In the capacity of a habitué of the Bench, he was a graphic illustration of Goldsmith's old soldier's opinion of a prison:"People may say this or that about being in jail, but for my part it was the pleasantest place I was ever in, in the whole course of my life." The Colonel was a rosy-gilled, laughing-eyed Epicurean, who, you would swear, to judge by outward tokens, knew as little of care as he did of the quadrature of the circle. He was a living version of the axiom, "vive la bagatelle." You saw in him a man on the best terms with himself and all mankind, as well as a large portion of womankind to boot. He looked well, dressed well, and was well; what more would you have? And yet, from the Bushman of the African desert to the Provisional Committee-man of a defunct Railway, perhaps no human being was ever persecuted by his kind as was the Colonel at the moment of his introduction to the reader. Instead of "capering nimbly in a lady's chamber," or on the back of the most accomplished charger in Rotten-row, his days, when he was "out," were passed between Portugal-street and Chancery-lane-grim alternatives-or between four walls stuck in the clouds, when he was "in." The cornet, that rejected turkey without truffles, and dallied with his Chateau Margaux, had been promoted to field-rank, which flew at liver and bacon, and d-n'd the eyes of those who delayed its beer. The five-and-twenty, that reclined on silk ottomans to breakfast, and told its tailor to go to the devil, had become the five-and-forty, that played rackets for half-and-half at seven in the morning, and at noon promenaded Piccadilly familiarly with a bum of the house of Israel. Thus it is to have a soul above sheriff's officers, a stomach indifferent to turtle or tripe. It is the custom

to cry up the sages of old, and to quote them as examples of moral daring, and scorn of popular prejudice; yet should we see men, proclaimed outlaws in the morning, lounging about Bond-street in the afternoon, or denounced as forming discreditable connexions seeking the society of their calumniators, could we choose but say, "Here are those who put to the blush the philosophy of Socrates and Zeno."

It does not concern our history what reply was given to the interrogatory of the new arrival, announced as the "Howard de Montmorenci," but what I did was to shake him heartily by the hand, and what the "Leg" performed was a shocking bad caricature of a salutation. The Bencher was always good company, though neither remarkable for sparkling wit or much originality of thought: I had therefore come to the determination of seeing him discuss his broiled bone, and picking up such trifles of gossip as the scene of his present action-for the Bench was his home, a discharge being little more than an invitation to a morning walk-helped him to. Besides, I was really curious to learn how his host would go about to turn him to account. His guest, to my knowledge-and I had known him long and intimately-had not possessed five pounds of his own, or, indeed, of any body's else available for his own purposes, for the previous twelvemonth. He had regularly passed through all the phases of ruin: first, his fortune went; and, as soon as his credit became a little blown, arose the necessity for bolstering it by an appearance that hourly hastened the catastrophe. When I first became aware of his being completely cleaned out, I hinted that he might contrive to do with less than sixteen horses in his stables and a service of close and open carriages in his coach houses, to say nothing of a suburban retreat and its usual accompaniments. He assured me it was impossible: that putting down one item of his establishment would put up all his creditors to his situation; for they were all watching him as vultures do a wounded deer, each ready to pounce on him at the first indication of his weakness. Of course, under such circumstances, his fate was sealed, and he fell from the sixty per cent. gentlemen of Burlington Gardens and their vicinity, into the clutches of the bill stealers and the pawnbrokers, from whom he went to the Jews-that buy up men's hopes from their "uncles"-and from thence to the devil.

or

There he was, as has been shown, when the Leg sent to invite him to a broiled bone after the French play. Old-fashioned people will wonder how new-fashioned people are enabled to walk out of prisons into play-houses, and from turtle and tokay to Almack's House, without fourpence in their pockets, and with exceedingly damaged reputations, and on the strength of the fact being so; they will imbibe unfavourable opinions of the age we live in. It is therefore the historian's duty to set them right on the subject. This privilege, they are to understand, is confined to a small clique; and this even has not been able to obtain footing in every circle. There are certain families into which the set never can and never will get. By force of extreme impudence, aided, however, by extrinsic advantages-in almost every case peculiar and appealing to some strong sympathy-a dozen or so of roués are to be met with at the parties of the English aristocracy, and to be seen at public places

to which they obtain admission on sufferance of todying lessees or private compassion; but to them the cream of British society is as wholly forbidden as access to the harem of the Sultan. Let oldfashioned people be assured that the countenance which Young London shows to its titled fashionable disreputables is anything but a cordial one, albeit it may be more in sorrow than in anger.

It has been well said that custom makes a nature in us. All the employments of life have their mark more or less impressed; but of all the brands we are destined by fortune-or, rather, the want of it— to bear, the most indelible is that stamped by captivity. It seethes up the little well of human feeling he ever possessed, and sends forth the felon from his cell-a fiend; it smothers the small sense of shame, the flashing spark of honour in the prodigal, and returns him to the world a bold, bad man. A debtor's prison is the tomb of all the exalting qualities of humanity. Its inmates are as those from whom the spirit has passed, leaving behind nothing but "rottenuess and dead men's bones." How long will the law of this land be the agent

to hurry the wretch,

"Cut off ev'n in the blossom of his sin

Unhousel'd, unanointed, unaneled,"

into the presence of his Maker, or to render it impossible for the honest and industrious debtor to say to his creditor-" Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all"?....

A sojourn in the Bench had not improved the outward, nor, it is fair to infer, the inward man of my gallant friend. At the first glance you saw that he wore himself with that jaunty, raffish air which is the infallible characteristic of a jail-bird; and his vocabulary, always a little more inclined to slang than was seemly, now averaged nine-tenths of cant.

"Will you drink something before the broil comes?" asked the Leg.

"Will a duck swim ?" replied the colonel.

While brandy-and-water and cigars were being duly paraded, the guest drew from the pocket of his pea-jacket a small volume, and laying it on the table, with an emphasis observed :

"I say, Leathers, they're all into you-from the Society of Vice to the Satirist inclusive: here's a new fellow having a poke!"

"Oh! he's heartily welcome," cried the gentleman of the house, with anything but a grin of kindly reception however. "He is as welcome as the flowers in May-let's see who is our friend:" and taking up the book he opened it at the title-page-" Pedestrian Reminiscences, by Sylvanus," he read. "I wonder if that's Sylvanus Goosequill, the beauty that used to write in the magazines. Well, if his work's about the ring, he might have chosen a better name, I think."

"Quite the other way," said Howard de Montmorenci: "Capital

A work, just published by the Messrs. Longman, of a very novel construction, and containing some bold strokes and personal sketches, very racy.

name-Pedestrian Reminiscences: Leg Reminiscences-only the author's gentility-what would you have?" and here he took a pull at his tumbler with uncommon relish.

"What does he say about me?" asked the Leg, who had not accompanied the colonel in his relish, or the laugh which followed it. "What does he say about me, I'd like to know."

"With all the pleasure in life," rejoined the other: "here's a touch at Cotherstone's year......

"Let us take a peep at The Corner on Sunday.

"What's Gaper's price?" said a very distinguished elegant-looking fellow of the true English countrified cut of a gentleman-a cut, let me tell you, it is in vain to look for in any other part of the world I ever saw. Consummate cleanliness, joined to exquisite taste in dress, is the peculiar feature that strikes you. The gentle voice, quiet composed manner, and harmonious, composed look, add a charm and a finish to the beauty of countenance that is certainly only found in the higher classes in England. I am endeavouring to form a collection of facts, and am far too matured to have any remaining tinge of prejudice about me, I firmly believe. Besides, knowing it would defeat my object, I should naturally discard it; but I say with truth, a perfect air noble' beauty of mouth, eye, complexion, bust, teeth, and hands, in both sexes alike, are only to be found (in the mass, of course, always to be understood) in Great Britain.

"I met a very pretty American woman lately, with whom I had some conversation about good looks, saying, with justice, how much they had reason to boast of them in her own vast country. She replied, I thought so till I arrived in London; but there you have such skin, complexion, and figures, that we know nothing of in America.' She was as generous as she could well afford to be, and I have not the least doubt spoke as she thought.

"However, What's Gaper's price? inquired the tall man in leather trousers and maroon double-breasted coat with club buttons, and large fawn-coloured cravat. I've not quite done yet, and can take the odds to a thousand.'

"Beggar my looks!' said a little very anxiously smiling elderly man in long gaiters and long black frock coat, of the old chaise-driver or Sir Tatton's length of flap: this is coming it too strong to be pleasant. I'm clean forty thousand agin him.'

"What will you take, my lord?" asked Sunflower. you five thousand to two that Cotherstone beats him.'

I'll lay

"Thank ye! it will not suit my purpose. I'll take six thousand to one outright!'

"Beggar his long limbs!' said the little old fellow in the jarvey's coat, "he'll make his spindle-shanked brute first favourite yet. I must get Gully to see him before he springs him to even betting, though he has no more chance on his merits than a man in boots.'

"I'll lay a thousand to ten against naming the three winners,' said old Crocky, paddling his way into the ring, with a fin turned almost behind him.

"I'll lay five to one bar one,' bawled Leatherlungs."

"So I did, and no mistake!" observed the Leg, "and good bet