[ 484 ] [MAY, 



UPS AND DOWNS OF LONDON. 



" The man that lays himself lowly in the mire, 

 Can never fear a fall ; he to whom pleasure 

 Has ever been a stranger, feels not pain : 

 If you would taste of misery, go, be happy 

 'Tis that which sharpens up your appetite ; 

 And joy's the stock that hears the keenest woe, 

 If shame or folly shall graft woe upon it." 



WHEN Lima was in the hands of the Spaniards, and used by the court 

 o? Madrid as a sort of stall for the fattening of any beast of burden to 

 that court,, for which enough of provender could not be found in the 

 mother country, the description given of it by the intelligent emir of 

 t\e natives was, " the heaven of women, the purgatory of men, and the 

 hell of jackasses." What London may be to women, or to jackasses, 

 since the ci-devant member for Galway took them (the jackasses only), 

 under the mantle of his love, it might not be very easy to say ; but to 

 men it may be any, or, in succession, all, of the three reported states of 

 Peru. 



When on 3 is in prosperity, has plenty to do and to spend, it is difficult 

 to conceive that the cup of pleasure could be more full and sweet than 

 it is in London. The endless succession of novelty, changing and 

 brightening at every step, keeps the mind and the senses in a state of 

 constant and sharpened activity, and saves one from the lassitude and 

 negative pain of that semi-death to which one is doomed in the 

 country. Well might Dame Quickly, a lady who knew the world or, 

 if she did not, Shakspear did for her, and that was perhaps better 

 well might she predict the end of the joyous and enjoying FalstafF, when 

 " a' babbled o' green fields ;" for, truly, as compared with London, they 

 offer no enjoyment for man ; and the only rational thing that he has to 

 do with a green field is to eat the mutton that is fattened upon it. Groves, 

 and glades, and lakes, and waterfalls, and mountains, and rocks, and 

 abbeys (when they are in ruins), with a glimpse of the sea between two 

 headlands, having skiffs in the zephyr, or gallant ships in the tempest, 

 are all very pretty things to be said, or sung, or more especially painted ; 

 that is, if the saying, or the song, or the picture will repay you for the 

 labour and privation of getting at it ; but really they have no companion- 

 ship, no pleasure, no life in them, to him who has tasted the glorious 

 chalice of metropolitan enjoyment. There is no companionship for man 

 in woods, wilds, or waters. They smile not to your smile ; they answer 

 not to your inquiry ; and, if you tell them the tale of your joy or your 

 woe, they do not sympathize, but mock, or repeat your words, in the same 

 cold tone of indifference or derision as the dull echo of a charnel-house. 

 What should an active and rational man care for them ? Wood ! why 

 the very first idea that it suggests is that of a gallows. Water ! bah ! 

 Give me the sparkler and the bee's- wing. No liquids for me but those that 

 " ascend me into the brain," that " lap me in Elysium," till all the bril- 

 liancy of a London dining-room, and all the beaming visages around 

 me, be tripled and quadrupled. Empty me every rill and runnel, and 

 let them mingle in champaign ; then the sound of their gurgling would 

 be celestial. Pump me the brine out of the sea ; then let its yeasty 

 ridges roll port and claret ; and a fig for shipwreck. The music of 



