How the times have changed! The new Post Office now not disadvantageously
occupies that spot where the scaffolding is in the picture, where the
tipsy trainband-man is lurching against the post, with his wig over one
eye, and the 'prentice-boy is trying to kiss the pretty girl in the
gallery. Passed away 'prentice-boy and pretty girl! Passed away tipsy
trainband-man with wig and bandolier! On the spot where Tom Idle (for whom
I have an unaffected pity) made his exit from this wicked world, and where
you see the hangman smoking his pipe as he reclines on the gibbet and
views the hills of Harrow or Hampstead beyond--a splendid marble arch, a
vast and modern city--clean, airy, painted drab, populous with
nursery-maids and children, the abodes of wealth and comfort--the elegant,
the prosperous, the polite Tyburnia rises, the most respectable district
in the habitable globe!

In that last plate of the London Apprentices, in which the apotheosis of
the Right Honourable Francis Goodchild is drawn, a ragged fellow is
represented in the corner of the simple kindly piece, offering for sale a
broadside, purporting to contain an account of the appearance of the ghost
of Tom Idle, executed at Tyburn. Could Tom's ghost have made its
appearance in 1847, and not in 1747, what changes would have been remarked
by that astonished escaped criminal! Over that road which the hangman used
to travel constantly, and the Oxford stage twice a week, go ten thousand
carriages every day: over yonder road, by which Dick Turpin fled to
Windsor, and Squire Western journeyed into town, when he came to take up
his quarters at the Hercules Pillars on the outskirts of London, what a
rush of civilization and order flows now! What armies of gentlemen with
umbrellas march to banks, and chambers, and counting-houses! What
regiments of nursery-maids and pretty infantry; what peaceful processions
of policemen, what light broughams and what gay carriages, what swarms of
busy apprentices and artificers, riding on omnibus-roofs, pass daily and
hourly! Tom Idle's times are quite changed: many of the institutions gone
into disuse which were admired in his day. There's more pity and kindness
and a better chance for poor Tom's successors now than at that simpler
period when Fielding hanged him and Hogarth drew him.

To the student of history, these admirable works must be invaluable, as
they give us the most complete and truthful picture of the manners, and
even the