n prowling the streets of the
metropolis at midnight, in quest of adventure; at least, so my
companions insisted, and I had embarked too deeply in the night's
debauch to moralize upon its consequences. How many a sober-looking face
demure when morning dawns would blush to meet the accusing spirit of the
night, dressed out in all the fantasies of whim and eccentricity with
which the rosy god of midnight revelry clothes his laughter-loving
bacchanals--

"While sleep attendant at her drowsy fane,
Parent of ease, envelopes all your train!"

The lamentations of old Crony brought to mind the ~347~~complaints
of honest Jack Falstaff against his associates. "There is no truth in
villanous man!" said our monitor. "I remember when a gentleman might
have reeled round the environs of Covent Garden, in and out of every
establishment, from the Bedford to Mother Butlers, without having his
pleasures broken in upon by the irruptions of Bow-street mohawks, or his
person endangered by any association he chose to mix with; but we are
returning to the times of the _Roundheads_ and the _Puritans; cant,_
vile hypocritical _cant_, has bitten the ear of authority, and the great
officers of the state are infected with the Jesuitical mania.

'Man is a ship that sails with adverse winds,
And has no haven till he land at death.
Then, when he thinks his hands fast grasp the bank,
Conies a rude billow betwixt him and safety,
And beats him back into the deep again.'"

"I subscribe to none of their fooleries," said I; "for I am of the true
orthodox--love my king, my girl, my friend, and my bottle: a truce with
all their raven croakings; they would overload mortality, and press our
shoulders with too great a weight of dismal miseries. But come, my boys,
we who have free souls, let us to the banquet, while yet Sol's fiery
charioteer lies sleeping at his eastern palace in the lap of Thetis--let
us chant carols of mirth to old Jove or bully Mars; and, like chaste
votaries, perform our orgies at the shrine of Venus, ere yet Aurora
tears aside the curtain that conceals our revels." In this way we
rallied our cameleon-selves, until we again found shelter from the dews
of night in Carpenter's coffee-house; a small, but well-conducted place,
standing at the east end of the market, which opens between two and
three o'clock in the morning, for the accommodation of those who are
hourly arr