d, and their comfortable conviction of his happiness
in the next.

But, next to our very particular friends, hackney-coachmen, cabmen and
cads, whom we admire in proportion to the extent of their cool impudence
and perfect self-possession, there is no class of people who amuse us
more than London apprentices. They are no longer an organised body,
bound down by solemn compact to terrify his Majesty's subjects whenever
it pleases them to take offence in their heads and staves in their hands.
They are only bound, now, by indentures, and, as to their valour, it is
easily restrained by the wholesome dread of the New Police, and a
perspective view of a damp station-house, terminating in a police-office
and a reprimand. They are still, however, a peculiar class, and not the
less pleasant for being inoffensive. Can any one fail to have noticed
them in the streets on Sunday? And were there ever such harmless efforts
at the grand and magnificent as the young fellows display! We walked
down the Strand, a Sunday or two ago, behind a little group; and they
furnished food for our amusement the whole way. They had come out of
some part of the city; it was between three and four o'clock in the
afternoon; and they were on their way to the Park. There were four of
them, all arm-in-arm, with white kid gloves like so many bridegrooms,
light trousers of unprecedented patterns, and coats for which the English
language has yet no name--a kind of cross between a great-coat and a
surtout, with the collar of the one, the skirts of the other, and pockets
peculiar to themselves.

Each of the gentlemen carried a thick stick, with a large tassel at the
top, which he occasionally twirled gracefully round; and the whole four,
by way of looking easy and unconcerned, were walking with a paralytic
swagger irresistibly ludicrous. One of the party had a watch about the
size and shape of a reasonable Ribstone pippin, jammed into his
waistcoat-pocket, which he carefully compared with the clocks at St.
Clement's and the New Church, the illuminated clock at Exeter 'Change,
the clock of St. Martin's Church, and the clock of the Horse Guards.
When they at last arrived in St. James's Park, the member of the party
who had the best-made boots on, hired a second chair expressly for his
feet, and flung himself on this two-pennyworth of sylvan luxury with an
air which levelled all distinctions between Brookes's and Snooks's,
Crockford's and Bagnigge Wells.