CHAPTER VI.

"You are now

In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow,

At once is deaf and loud."

SHELLEY.

"Renown'd metropolis."

MILTON.

SPRING and summer passed away without my receiving any tidings from Winterburn or Mary, and I had recklessly given myself up to gaiety and dissipation. The annual winter leave came out, and having received a windfall in the shape of a legacy from an old aunt, the identical lady whose heart I had won by petting her dog, and whose purse I had diminished by

her present of a sovereign, I determined to pass my holidays between London and Northamptonshire. This project was facilitated by the absence of my father and mother, who had left England on a visit to an estate he had lately come into possession of in the north of Scotland.

Having ordered a bed and sitting-room at a fashionable hotel in Jermyn Street, and engaged. a Tilbury and tiger, (for John Hargreaves and the buggy would have had too rural an appearance for the metropolis) I proceeded to the British, and as I did not reach it until late, preferred dining there to going to a coffeehouse. The bill, which I had the curiosity to call for, showed that I was living at the rate of nearly eight hundred a-year for hotel expenses

alone.

Upon the day after my arrival, one of Tilbury's neatest vehicles, which take their name from the inventor, was to be at the door at eleven o'clock, and at that hour I stepped into it, dressed, as I then thought, in the highest degree of fashion.

As the costume of that day may not be uninteresting to a reader of the present, I beg to give it. Tight leather fawn-coloured pantaloons, Hessian boots, wrinkled and polished like an old maid's visage of sixty, white neckcloth, with a waterfall tie, and gold pin, buff waistcoat, and lightish brown frock coat, faced and collared with velvet.

No sooner had I taken my place at my groom's side, than I proceeded to Mat Milton's and Elmore's, at that period two of the leading dealers, but the "figures" for hunters were too high, so I contented myself with buying a charger from the former, for the small sum of one hundred guineas. I had now nearly two hundred and twenty guineas to expend in horseflesh, and I fondly flattered myself, that with that sum, I should procure two first rate hunters for a youth, only weighing nine stone ten pounds.

From the above mentioned yards, I wended my way to, at least, a dozen others, but could see nothing at all likely to suit. One horse was too low in form, too high in price; another,

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although warranted good in dirt, was anything but "dirt cheap;" while a third was up to any weight, except that of my purse.

Disgusted with my day's adventure, and dissatisfied with my hotel dinner, I ordered a hackney coach, cabs were not in existence, and proceeded to a coffee-house under the Piazza. While my meal was preparing, which as I had given no specific order, I considered would consist of the Apician luxuries of the housemock-turtle soup, as little like the real occidental amphibious luxury, as grey mullet is to red, or conger eel to lampreys-marrow-bones, not quite as marrowless as Hamlet's sainted sire, although generally supposed to be the joint produce of the ox and a more stubborn animal; tough beefsteaks, and bees-wing port, sweet, new, and clammy, as Hybla's honey, I took up a newspaper, and read the following advertisement:

"To be sold, the property of a gentleman. going abroad, two superior hunters, well-known with the Warwickshire hounds-' Marmion,' brown gelding, six years old by Claymore, dam

by Wanderer-Price one hundred and thirty guineas. 'Shamrock,' bay ditto, seven years old, by Irish Blacklock out of Kate Kearney,' nearly thorough bred. Price one hundred and twenty guineas. For particulars enquire of Ralph Dowdeswell, Hart Street, Covent Garden. No dealer need apply."

Why," I inwardly exclaimed, "they seem the very horses for me. I'll see them the first thing in the morning; and perhaps if I purchase both, they will let me have them for two hundred and twenty guineas."

While soliloquising and musing upon this subject, I was interrupted by the approach of the landlord, head waiter, and a species of waiterette, bearing sundry large tin-covered dishes. As it was my first appearance at Covent Garden, (Piazza), I fancied there must be some mistake, there seemed enough for halfa-dozen people.

Before I could, however, say a word, the landlord, who acted as fugleman, gave the signal, and the covers were removed, disclosing to my eyes a huge tureen of soup, filled with