lighted to perfection, where you may read all the
journals, and amuse your leisure with the manly game of dominoes.
Compare this with the dingy, dirty, beer and tobacco-scented
coffee-rooms of London, where they think you a "sweep" (that is the
expression I believe) if you don't make yourself nearly drunk on their
poisonous fluids, and where the inside sheet of the _Times_ is always
"in hand." It is a constant wonder to me what unfortunate foreigners do
to fill up their afternoons in our smoky Babylon.

You dine as you like, economically or splendidly, without the terrors of
indigestion before you; and after a cup of coffee (almost an
unattainable luxury in London), you have your choice of Grand or Comic
Opera, Classical Drama, or Vaudeville, the only objection to which is,
that after once seeing careful and refined acting, you will rather lose
your taste for the "genuine effects" of the British stage, and may
possibly, on your return home, set down the favourite performers as
awkward sticks or impudent buffoons. As you go to bed, without the fever
that arises from a heavy dinner with beer, Port, and Sherry, you may
reflect that you have not been bored for a single instant of the day,
and contrast with your own case the unutterable misery of the stranger
without friends or a club, who is condemned to pass his time in London.

CHARLES MARTINGALE, ESQ., having read the above, says it's all humbug.
He lodges in Piccadilly (very cheap, only L120 a year, including a
servant's room,) goes to the Bag for breakfast, where he meets his
friends; reads the _Morning Post_, has a game at Pyramid pool, some
Sherry and Seltzer water, and goes back to dress for the Park, where he
sees his friends again. Then there is sure to be a dinner party, and a
ball or two afterwards, which he tops off with Vauxhall, and perhaps a
look in at the Haymarket as he goes home. Or else he does the domestic,
and takes a friend in a Brougham to Richmond or Greenwich for dinner.
What more can a fellow want to amuse himself? Let him go to Races, or
the Horticultural, or the Opera, or the Play, if he likes; and one thing
he wants to say is, that _he_ thinks CURLIWIG no end of fun in a farce;
and, as to buffoonery, fellows may just as easily do that on paper.

MARTINGALE, what do you mean, Sir? Well, it's very unfair to run down
native talent. And--one other thing--he'd a doosid dead sooner have a
tankard of club beer than the miserable thin stuff they call