Charles Martingale, Esq., having read the above, says it's all humbug. He lodges in Piccadilly (very cheap, only £120 a year, including a servant's room,) goes to the Bag for breakfast, where he meets his friends; reads the Morning Post, has a game at Pyramid pool, some Sherry and Seltzer water, and goes back to dress for the Park, where he sees his friends again. Then there is sure to be a dinner party, and a ball or two afterwards, which he tops off with Vauxhall, and perhaps a look in at the Haymarket as he goes home. Or else he does the domestic, and takes a friend in a Brougham to Richmond or Greenwich for dinner. What more can a fellow want to amuse himself? Let him go to Races, or the Horticultural, or the Opera, or the Play, if he likes; and one thing he wants to say is, that he thinks Curliwig no end of fun in a farce; and, as to buffoonery, fellows may just as easily do that on paper.
Martingale, what do you mean, Sir? Well, it's very unfair to run down native talent. And—one other thing—he'd a doosid dead sooner have a tankard of club beer than the miserable thin stuff they call Claret here. So he wishes this put in, though he doesn't know about literature and all that, just to show the public that it's not everybody that is so easily taken in by foreigners as a fellow he won't mention.
LARVÆ OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
AT the City Court of Sewers—according to the Times—certain gentlemen carrying on a nasty business in St. Mary Axe,
"Were summoned upon the certificate of the Medical Officer of Health, stating that there is upon these premises a large store of hides and horns of cattle in an offensive state, and the same is likely to be prejudicial to the health of persons whose habitations are in the neighbourhood of the same."
The cattle were dead—but the hides and horns were alive. We shall be excused further details. But
"One of the defendants said, he had been on the spot many years in constant attendance on the business, and he had not, during the whole period, a moment's illness. He believed that, so far from being prejudicial, the ammonia, which had been represented as so offensive, had operated as a preventive of the cholera in the vicinity of the place in which the hides were deposited."
According to this gentleman, if putrefaction generates the bane, it also develops the antidote; but, unfortunately, when both are taken together it usually happens that the former is a great deal too strong for the latter. We must note one more exquisite morsel of physiology.