. [ 400 ] [APRIL, 



LETTER UPON AFFAIRS IN GENERAL, FROM A GENTLEMAN IN 

 LONDON TO A GENTLEMAN IN THE COUNTRY. 



'< There was a maid at Islington, as I've heard many tell, 



And she would come to London town her apples and pears to sell. 



Why would she so ? Because she knew it was the best market. Old Song. 



*' THERE'S a divinity," the poet says, " doth hedge a King !" the same 

 privilege, or pre-eminence, beyond ill and danger, would seem to attach to 

 a Capital ! We hear, and read, on every side, of ruin and distress in 

 England who is there that in LONDON can detect the shadow of a 

 symptom of it ? We hear of distress, and of poverty. *' Where," a 

 foreigner might well ask, " are its evidences ? Are they in your theatres, 

 ten or twelve in number, that are open, and crowded, night after night, 

 the " clowns" of which ride in their carnages, while the singing girls buy 

 huge estates ? Are they in your new palace buildings, and in your new 

 church buildings ; in your new streets, new squares, new parks, and ter- 

 races ; in your new toys and exhibitions, devising every day, for all ranks 

 to spend their time and money at ? If we are undone, we are like the 

 Copper-Captain in the play " the merriest undone people in Christen- 

 dom." It is the very heart of the " season" now ! and the furnished 

 lodgings, at six guineas a week, are all " let," and the furnished houses 

 at twenty guineas ; and the marchandes des modes are putting on their 

 best looks, and unpapering their best frills ; and the lacqueys nod to each 

 other as they whirl behind the carriages through Bond-street, and want 

 kicking twice a day; and Mr. Ebers is joyful; and the hotel-keepers are 

 as blithe as my landlady at Falmouth used to be ten years ago " and 

 would be," she said, " while the war lasted, and the wind set in shore ;" 

 and all, in short, is joy, and ebulliency. Distress ! look at the new street 

 which joins the Regent's-park to St. James's; and the new town, which 

 now joins the Regent-street to Hampstead. Does this look much like 

 distress ? Look at the shops alas ! but of the retail the mere selling 

 (not producing) dealers in drapery, jewellery, lutes, pianofortes, Leghorn 

 hats, satin shoes, Italian paste, Martinique noyau in coats, and cloaks, 

 and silk, and velvet, and fruits, and ice, and lace, and feathers, and 

 flowers, and scents, and wigs, and pickles, and plate-glass, and furs, and 

 millinery ! these shops of Cheapside, Ludgate-hill, and Fleet-street, in 

 the east; of Piccadilly, Bond-street, and Regent-street in the west; of 

 Oxford-street in the north ; and Covent-garden, Charing-cross, and the 

 Bazaars in the centre decorated merely to open for trade at a higher 

 cost than would formerly have been held a decent capital to begin trade 

 with what is there in these that suggests the notion of distress ? We have 

 no account yet of those hourly multiplying contributors to luxury and 

 delight, whose wares, being purchased less especially than the fore-men- 

 tioned upon display ; do not so entirely demand to be exposed for sale 

 within walls of looking-glass the upholsterers, coach-makers, horse- 

 jockeys, and wine-merchants the publishers, whose very catalogues 

 alone (assembled) might form a library the painters, whose increasing 

 works cry. out every day for new show-rooms and institutions, to display 

 them in the dancing-masters, driving cabriolets, and keeping footmen in 

 livery the music-masters, taking a guinea a lesson for teaching tlio 

 piano the doctors, and still more the branch doctors, the i: aurists," and 

 " oculists'" and, more than all, the prodigies of modern success, flu- 

 "surgeon dentists" who flourish (to the superseding of vulgar " too! Si- 



