ly as that to which
we have alluded could not possibly occur.

The gent of the Regent Street style, of whom poor Wright used to sing to
an Adelphi audience, was evidently a very badly-dressed and
ill-bred-fellow in spite of the fact that his vest was of the last cut,
that his tile was faultless, that his boots were ditto, and that none
could more gracefully

"puff a cigar."

The gents of to-day are the same. I was amused by hearing of a party of
them, connected with one of the city houses, who went into the country
one Easter Monday to enjoy themselves; they did enjoy themselves, as all
young fellows should, thoroughly, but from their enjoyment they were
recalled to a sense of dignity, by a characteristic remark of one of
them, as he saw passers by, "Hush, hush!" he exclaimed, "They will think
we are retail." A writer in the _Builder_ remarking the degeneracy of
regular cocknies attributes it to the want of good air, the expensive
nature of a good education, the sedentary employment of many of them.
And no doubt these reasons are the true ones, and of considerable force.
Well might Coleridge anticipate for his son as prosperous career as
compared with his own.

"I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloister dim,
And saw naught lovely but the sky and stars;
But _thou_, my babe, shall wander in the breeze,
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountains; beneath the clouds
Which image in their arch both lakes and shores,
And mountain crags, so shall thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds unchangeable,
Of that eternal language which thy God utters."

This is true, and hence, let us judge leniently of the lad living within
the sound of Bow Bells. Nature is the best and truest teacher a man can
have--and it is little of nature that the cockney sees, or hears, and
feels. He goes to Richmond, but, instead of studying the finest panorama
in the world, he stupifies himself with doubtful port; he visits the
Crystal Palace, but it is for the sake of the lobster-salad; he runs down
to Greenwich, not to revel in that park, beautiful still in spite of the
attacks of London on its purity, but to eat white-bait; he takes, it may
be, the rail or the steamboat to Gravesend, but merely that he may dance
with milliners at Tivoli. The only idea of a garden to a London gent, is
a place where there is dancing, and drinking, and smoking going on.