So saying, the Clown flings a summerset, and proceeds to pick pockets, swallow sausages, and burn himself with the hot poker, varying these practical pleasantries with dissertations on morals and metaphysics.
THE POST OFFICE LONDON DIRECTORY FOR 1854.
We have perused this volume with considerable pleasure. We observe that it contains two thousand four hundred and ten pages, most of them comprising three columns of closely printed matter, and but that we found it impossible to take the book up, we have no doubt we should have found it equally impossible to lay it down. As a literary composition it is really remarkable, for the tone which the author takes up at the beginning is preserved to the very end, and the same unflaggingness, if we may be permitted the word, which on page 1 introduces us, with a Palmerstonian jauntiness, to Mr. Abbott's coffee-house in the Whitechapel Road, conducts us, with a Gladstonian tenacity of purpose, to Mr. William Young, the accidental secretary of deaths, on page 2288. But do not let us be misunderstood. There is no monotony of treatment. We are successively presented with a series of tableaux, or rather tables, of life, of a perpetually varying character. We first find "our warmest welcome at an inn," and Green Dragons, Blue Lions, Essex Serpents, and White Horses, spit, roar, hiss, and neigh before us in all the frightful friendliness of provincial hospitality. Then we are shown official circles, and there is no mistaking the individual who is delineated, whether he lounges and reads the Morning Post in the Treasury, sternly overhauls the national ledger in the Audit Office, or waits upon the tides, or overhauls the travelling baskets of returning young ladies, near the Custom House Stairs. Anon, the mysteries of the streets of London are laid open to us with a minuteness which neither Asmodeus nor Mr. Peter Cunningham has ever attempted. But our author is not confined to the trottoir; trades—whose followers look jealously on the census-paper, and by no means affectionately on the income-tax return—are thrown open, and to him everybody reveals his business instead of telling the prying writer to go about his own. He equally shines in his portraiture of political life, and not a senator, hereditary or accidental, spiritual or temporal, escapes his eye. The next time Lord Naas has to hunt for Mr. Keogh, he may be spared the scandal of airing himself eleven times, in vain, upon the mosaics of the Reform Club; and the next time the nation is looking out for a Premier, it need not, for lack of an address, select Lord Aberdeen instead of Mr. Punch. The voluble actuary of the assurance office, the drab-breeched and white-haired banker, the smart stockbroker and the smarting stockjobber, the parchment-visaged chamber-counsel, and the bold-eyed champion at the Old Bailey, the dowager of Mayfair, the guardsman of the club, the virtuous and self-denying author in his Andrew Marvel chambers, the post-office clerk, and all the men of letters (ha! ha!) of St. Martin's-le-Grand, the sour bachelor of the Albany, and the gentle Benedick of St. John's Wood, and the other myriads who help to make London, from Her Gracious Majesty down to—no, Punch is merciful—are all designated here. In short, inapplicable as is the word to the biggest as well as the best book of our acquaintance, the Post Office Directory not only contains all that we want to know, but precise information as to at least a couple of millions of people whom—except as readers, in which capacity they exist already—we sincerely hope that we never shall know.
The following extract gives a good idea of the author's style:—
"Smith John, Hairdresser, 24, Skinner Street, Clerkenwell.
Smith John, Hide and Skin Salesman, Bermondsey Skin Market.
Smith John, Lamp Glass Warehouse, 25, Stonecutter Street.
Smith John, Leatherseller, 31, Hanover Place, Clapham Road.
Smith John, Livery Stables and Van Proprietor, 20, Little Portland Street.
Smith John, Lodging House, 41, Devonshire Street, Queen Square.
Smith John, Luke's Head, P. H. 25, Mercer Street, Long Acre.
Smith John, Oilman, 8, Ward's Place, Hoxton Old Town."
Reform in the City.
Already, reform has been felt in Guildhall. At the Lord Mayor's state dinner, the eighty waiters employed to change plates and pour out for the Corporation had, every one of them, a whole half-pint of beer! This allowance was pre-arranged by way of test, and for future guidance. One Alderman is worth, at least, four waiters. Hence, at all future banquets, every Alderman will have allowed him a whole quart of beer, and beer of the bitterest into the bargain.