; although even yet, though the
time will come, I can neither withdraw my vizor, nor disclose my
'family cognomen.'

[Illustration: page271]

It was true, and joy it was 'twas true, that we were at rowings,
sailings, feastings, and dancings together, but how comes it we were
not at the great racings together? that neither you, nor your ministers,
they who,

"----correspondent to command,
Perform thy spiriting gently----"

were at the grand muster of the North, the Doncaster meeting? Bernard, I
tell thee all the world was there; from royalty and loyalty down to the
dustman and democracy. Then such "sayings and doings," a million
of hooks could hardly have had an eye to all. You have read of the
confusion of tongues, of "Babel broke loose," of the crusaders'
contributory encampment peopled by dozens of nations; you have seen the
inside of a patent theatre on the first night of a Christmas
pantomime, or mingled in an Opera-house masquerade; have listened to a
Covent-garden squabble, a Billingsgate commotion, or a watch-house
row; but in the whole course of your life, varied as ~272~~it has been,
active as it has proved, you never have, never could have experienced
any thing at all to eclipse or even to equal the "hey, fellow, well
met" congregatory musters, and the "beautiful and elegant confusions"
of Doncaster town in the race week of (September) eighteen hundred and
twenty-five!

I am not, however, about to inflict upon you a "list of the horses,"
nor "the names, weights, and colours of the riders;" but I cannot
help thinking that the English Spy will not have quite completed his
admirable gallery of portraits, and his unique museum of curiosities
for the benefit and delight of posterity, if he omit placing in their
already splendid precincts two or three heads and sketches, which the
genius of notoriety is ready to contribute as her own, and which to
pass over would be as grievous to miss, as Mrs. Waylett's breeches,{2}
characters at the Haymarket Theatre, or a solution of Euclid by one of
Dr. Birkbeck's "operatives."

Allow me, then, who am not indeed "without vanity," once more to "stand
by your side," or rather for you, and to attempt, albeit I have not your
magic pencil, another taste of my quality, by dashing off _con amore_
the lions of the North.

2 There frequently occur circumstances in a younker's life
which lie never, in all his after career, forgets. I
remember