( 408 ) 

 A REVERIE IN REGENT-STREET. 



"That sigh 



\Ve sometimes give to forms that pass us by 

 In the world's crowd, too lovely to remain : 

 Creatures of light we never see again." 



MOORE LALLA ROOKH. 



ONE gloriously fine day in " the season" I was lounging about 

 the west end of the town, wondering what could induce people to 

 smoke and dust themselves amidst the mephitic vapours of a town, 

 when they might be revelling in the pure breezes of the country. 

 For myself, 1 was unhappily chained to London by business of im- 

 portance ; otherwise the glades of Devon, the mountains of Cum- 

 berland, or the downs of sweet Sussex, would assuredly have been 

 my sojourn at the time of which- I am writing. I strolled into St. 

 James's Park, where the bit of green and the patches of vegetation 

 were refreshing to the eye, and amused myself for half an hour by 

 looking at the pretty nursery-maids who went there to be looked at. 

 I quitted the park through the gate by the Duke of York's column, 

 and remembered the squib which was let off by one of the radical 

 prints at the time the statue was "by merit raised to that bad emi- 

 nence ;" which squib was, 1 suspect, manufactured and ignited by 

 Leigh Hunt. Here it is 



" See, see the good duke perched as high as a steeple, 

 His face to the guards, his back to the people. 

 Well, his creds must confess 'twas consistently done, 

 They petitioned for bread, and were answered with stone." 



By the way, the said statue is, very properly no doubt, elevated 

 far above all human criticism on its sculpture. The artist, with a 

 noble contempt for the opinions of mere men, has submitted his 

 achievement to the judgment of the angels. 'Tis pity the same plan 

 was not adopted with regard to Canning's effigy, the green monster 

 in Palace Yard, the beauties of which are undoubtedly beyond the 

 genius of mortals to discover. 



I continued my lounge through the Opera colonnade, the Hay- 

 marker, and the Quadrant. On arriving in Regent-street I saun- 

 tered still slower, the more conveniently to speculate upon the varied 

 and lively scene. Carriages of all sizes and shape?, coroneted and 

 uncoroneted, from the ponderous family tub, large enough to ac- 

 commodate eight people and a week's provisions, to the slight and 

 elegant landau ' y phaetons, pony-chairs, and dark-coloured myste- 

 rious-looking cabs, were dashing and whirling about, to the delight 

 of their drivers and the terror of all pedestrians not suicidically dis- 

 posed. There was seen a lumbering, antique, worn-out old hackney 

 coach, with a ducal coronet and huge heraldic emblazonments on its* 

 ample pannels, sneaking along among the dashing modern, equipage* 



