350 Lttudes Carbonarium, or ' [OcT. 



Although in this age of all but universal hypocrisy and make believe, 

 every man has at least two fashions of one countenance ; it is in dress 

 principally that most men are most unlike themselves. But the Coal- 

 heaver always sticks close to the attire of his station ; he alone wears the 

 consistent and befitting garb of his forefathers; he alone has not discarded 

 " the napless vesture of humility," to follow the always expensive, and 

 often absurd fashions of his superiors. All ungalled of him is each cour- 

 tier's heel or great man's kibe. Yet, is not even his every day clothing 

 unseemly, or his aspect unprepossessing. He casts as broad and proper a 

 shadow in the sun as any other man. Black he is, indeed, but comely, 

 like the daughters of Jerusalem. To begin with the hat which he has 

 honoured with a preference what are your operas or your fire-shovels 

 beside it ? they must instantly (on a fair comparison) sink many degrees 

 below zero in the scale of contempt. In a word, I would make bold to 

 assert that it unites in perfection the two grand requisites of a head 

 covering, beauty and comfort. Gentlemen may smile at this if they will, 

 and take exceptions to my taste ; but, I ask, does the modern round hat, 

 whatever the insignificant variations of its form, possess either quality ? 

 No, not a jot of it. One would think, by our pertinacious adherence to 

 the headach-giving, circular conformation, that we wished to shew our 

 anger at the Almighty for not shaping our caputs like cylinders. In fine, 

 though the parson's and the quaker's hat has each its several merits, com- 

 mend me to the fan-tailed shallow. The flap part attached to the cap 

 seems, at first sight, as to use, supernecessary, although so ornamental 

 withal. It no doubt (as its name, indeed, indicates) had its origin in gal- 

 lantry, and was invented in the Age of Fans, for the purpose of cooling 

 their mistresses' bosoms, heated as they would necessarily be at fair 

 time, by their gravel-grinding walks, under a fervid sun, to the elegant 

 revels of West-end, of Greenwich, or of Tothill-fields. Breeches, rejected 

 by common consent of young and old alike, cling to the legs of the Coal- 

 heaver with an abiding fondness, as to the last place of refuge ; and, on 

 gala-days, a dandy might die of envy to mark the splendour of those 

 nether integuments which he has not soul enough to dare to wear of 

 brilliant eye-arresting blue, or glowing scarlet plush, glittering in the sun's 

 rays, giving and taking glory ! But enough of the dress of these select 

 " True-born Englishmen for right glad I am to state that there are 

 but two Scotch Coalheavers on the whole river, and no Irish : I beg 

 leave to return to the more important consideration of their manners. 



Most people you meet in your walks in the common thoroughfare of 

 London, glide, shuffle, or crawl onward, as if they conscientiously thought 

 they had no manner of right to tread the earth but on sufferance. Not so 

 our Coal heaver. Mark how erect he walks ! how firm a keel he presents 

 to the vainly breasting human tide that comes rolling on with a shew of 

 opposition to his onward course ! It is he, and he only, who preserves, in 

 his gait and in his air, the self-sustained and conscious dignity of the first- 

 created man. Surrounded by an inferior creation, he gives the wall to 

 none. That pliancy of temper, which is wont to make itself known by 

 the waiving a point or renouncing a principle for others' advantage, in him 

 has no place : he either knows it not, or else considers it a poor, mean- 

 spirited, creeping baseness, altogether unworthy of his imitation, arid best 

 befitted with ineffable contempt. He neither dreads the contact of the 

 baker the Scylla of the metropolitan peripatetic ; nor yet shuns the dire 



