ry appetite
supplied with its proper food. The obliging customer, and the obliged
tradesman--things which live by bowing, and things which exist but
for homage--do not affect me with disgust; from habit I perceive
nothing but urbanity, where other men, more refined, discover
meanness: I love the very smoke of London, because it has been the
medium most familiar to my vision. I see grand principles of honor at
work in the dirty ring which encompasses two combatants with fists,
and principles of no less eternal justice in the detection of a
pickpocket. The salutary astonishment with which an execution is
surveyed, convinces me more forcibly than a hundred volumes of
abstract polity, that the universal instinct of man in all ages has
leaned to order and good government.

Thus an art of extracting morality from the commonest incidents of a
town life is attained by the same well-natured alchemy with which the
Foresters of Arden, in a beautiful country,

"Found tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything."

Where has spleen her food but in London! Humor, Interest, Curiosity,
suck at her measureless breasts without a possibility of being
satiated. Nursed amid her noise, her crowds, her beloved smoke, what
have I been doing all my life, if I have not lent out my heart with
usury to such scenes!

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,

A LONDONER.

ON BURIAL SOCIETIES;

AND

THE CHARACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER.

* * * * *

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE REFLECTOR."

Mr. Reflector,--I was amused the other day with having the following
notice thrust into my hand by a man who gives out bills at the corner
of Fleet Market. Whether he saw any prognostics about me, that made
him judge such notice seasonable, I cannot say; I might perhaps carry
in a countenance (naturally not very florid) traces of a fever which
had not long left me. Those fellows have a good instinctive way of
guessing at the sort of people that are likeliest to pay attention to
their papers.

"BURIAL SOCIETY.

"A favorable opportunity now offers to any person, of either sex, who
would wish to be buried in a genteel manner, by paying one shilling
entrance, and twopence per week for the benefit of the stock. Members
to be free in six months. The money to be paid at Mr. Middleton's, at
the sign of the _First_ and the _Last_, Stonecutter's Street, Fleet
Market. The deceased to be fur