1830.] The ChA-Room. 43 



saintship, with his coat so shabbily turned, that it would have been a 

 kindness to strip him of it altogether. 



Rat. Why, what a burst of eloquence ! But I can add something 

 better still to your <{ in landem impudentice." I know an instance, in 

 which it has given a certain friend of mine four thousand pounds a year ! 

 After that we need talk no more of its miracles/ However, "give me 

 the dagger," as Shakspeare says ; give me the caricatures. 



(He places the caricatures before the chair.) 



I have the honour to call your attention to this extraordinary series. 

 They form a regular gradation of burlesques on individuals, and if not 

 speedily extinguished, threaten to make them laughed at in all directions 

 by day, and frightened out of their senses at night. 



The Chairman. Poh, Poh, Rat ; always talking nonsense, without 

 Flourish's palliative of talking it new. Ha, ha, ha ! Look here. The 

 Swell the Cad the Guard. Excellent. The vulgar tongue a little 

 distinguishable in their titles ; but the designs incomparable. Look 

 there. The Swell rvot drives when hever he likes. See the portly figure, 

 retaining, at sixty-six, the look of the dasher that used to make St. 

 James's pavement shake with his four-in-hand. The attitude how 

 stately, yet how characteristic. The costume complete. The green- 

 lined, umbrella hat; the knowing surtout, with a rose in its button- 

 hole ; the hands thrust into the pockets ; the face a fine compound of 

 joviality, conscious power, and easy scorn. The design is worthy of 

 Raphael. 



But what comes next, Rat ? 



Rat. An attempt to sketch the face and figure of one of the 

 cleverest fellows alive. It is entitled " The Cad to the Man wot drives 

 the Sovereign." 



The Chairman (surveying the print). Better and better still. The 

 self-satisfied look ; the lips puckered into the smirk of a pickpocket 

 in the moment of having made a seizure ; the hat tossed on the top of 

 the head, as if it had been in the habit of being plucked off for 

 every halfpenny wrung from the passengers by clamour or cringing. 

 The rat-trap in one hand, and the other ready for operations on the 

 world. The whole is capital. 



Ha ! what have we here ? " The Guard wot looks after the Sovereign," 

 a petticoat ; but no longer of the fair, fat, and forty school. This is 

 the soft, sleek, and sixty. The hat, a supereminent slouch ; the royal 

 mail uniform, covering a multitude of beauties ; the plump cheek ; the 

 practised eye ; the person as rich as the plum-pudding, on which it is 

 modelled. Who, upon earth, is she, Rat ? 



Rat. I am positively in the dark unless it be the Lady Mayoress. 



Jonathan Wild. Or Lady Holland. But, no she is broken hearted. 

 Since the widows have taken to writing their husband's lives, she fears 

 that all the laurels of that style will be cropped before she has the oppor- 

 tunity. 



Flourish. It must be Miss Wickham. But no instead of carry- 

 ing a carbine, her implement, not much less hazardous, would be a 

 coach-whip. Her bag would probably be loaded with pheasants and 

 partridges, instead of papers ; and as to the inviting eye, she never cast 

 a tender look on any thing, in her life, but on a horse or a pack of stag^ 

 hounds. 



Mummy. She has her merits, however. From Bucellas to Burgundy, 



G2 



