the style of a cavern, after the Gil Blas fashion, in which
a party of banditti were to carry on their carousal. The banditti were,
of course, amateurs--the Cravens, Tom Sheridan, and others of that
set--who sang, danced, gambled, and did all sorts of strange things. The
Prince was delighted; but even princes cannot have all pleasures to
themselves. Some of the crowd by degrees squeezed or coaxed their way
into the cavern, others followed, the pressure became irresistible;
until at last the banditti, contrary to all the laws of melodrame, were
expelled from their own cavern, and the invaders sat down to their
supper. Lords Besborough, Ossulston, and Bedford were the directors of
the night; and the foreign ministers declared that nothing in Europe,
within their experience, equalled this Bond Street affair. Whether the
directors had the horses taken from their carriages, and were carried
home in an ovation, I cannot tell; but Texier, not at all disposed to
think lightly of himself at any time, talks of the night with tears in
his eyes, and declares it the triumph of his existence.

* * * * *

George Rose has had a narrow escape of being drowned. All the wits, of
course, appeal to the proverb, and deny the possibility of his
concluding his career by water. Still, his escape was extraordinary. He
had taken a boat at Palace Yard to cross to Lambeth. As he was standing
up in the boat, immediately on his getting in, the waterman awkwardly
and hastily shoved off, and George, accustomed as he was to take care of
himself, lost his balance, and plumped head foremost into the water. The
tide was running strong, and between the weight of his clothes, and the
suddenness of the shock, he was utterly helpless. The parliamentary
laughers say, that the true wonder of the case is, that he has been ever
able to keep his head above water for the last dozen years; others, that
it has been so long his practice to swim with the stream, that no one
can be surprised at his slipping eagerly along. The fact, however, is,
that a few minutes more must have sent him to the bottom. Luckily a
bargeman made a grasp at him as he was going down, and held him till he
could be lifted into his boat. He was carried to the landing-place in a
state of great exhaustion. George has been, of course, obnoxious to the
Opposition from his services, and from his real activity and
intelligence in office. He is good-natured, however, and