This is no ideal sketch. There _used_ to be many old people of this
description; their numbers may have diminished, and may decrease still
more. Whether the course female education has taken of late
days--whether the pursuit of giddy frivolities, and empty nothings, has
tended to unfit women for that quiet domestic life, in which they show
far more beautifully than in the most crowded assembly, is a question we
should feel little gratification in discussing: we hope not.

Let us turn now, to another portion of the London population, whose
recreations present about as strong a contrast as can well be
conceived--we mean the Sunday pleasurers; and let us beg our readers to
imagine themselves stationed by our side in some well-known rural
'Tea-gardens.'

The heat is intense this afternoon, and the people, of whom there are
additional parties arriving every moment, look as warm as the tables
which have been recently painted, and have the appearance of being
red-hot. What a dust and noise! Men and women--boys and
girls--sweethearts and married people--babies in arms, and children in
chaises--pipes and shrimps--cigars and periwinkles--tea and tobacco.
Gentlemen, in alarming waistcoats, and steel watch-guards, promenading
about, three abreast, with surprising dignity (or as the gentleman in the
next box facetiously observes, 'cutting it uncommon fat!')--ladies, with
great, long, white pocket-handkerchiefs like small table-cloths, in their
hands, chasing one another on the grass in the most playful and
interesting manner, with the view of attracting the attention of the
aforesaid gentlemen--husbands in perspective ordering bottles of
ginger-beer for the objects of their affections, with a lavish disregard
of expense; and the said objects washing down huge quantities of
'shrimps' and 'winkles,' with an equal disregard of their own bodily
health and subsequent comfort--boys, with great silk hats just balanced
on the top of their heads, smoking cigars, and trying to look as if they
liked them--gentlemen in pink shirts and blue waistcoats, occasionally
upsetting either themselves, or somebody else, with their own canes.

Some of the finery of these people provokes a smile, but they are all
clean, and happy, and disposed to be good-natured and sociable. Those
two motherly-looking women in the smart pelisses, who are chatting so
confidentially, inserting a 'ma'am' at every fourth word, scraped an
acquaintance about a quarte