1:831.^ The London-Bridge Lion. 295 



sportsmen of the field. We can keep at a prudent distance from the 

 sphere of a Joe Manton ; but from a Joe Miller there is no retreat— no 

 sanctuary. It would bring us down at the Antipodes. Deafness— utter 

 deafness — is the only coat-of-mail that can for a single instant resist the 

 attack of the talker. 



But, if the mere spectator, the mere abstract and unoccupied looker-on 

 at some " grand sight" — a review or a race-course — be thus dangerous 

 to the unhappy innocent, who may come within hearing of his exclama- 

 tions, what must be the peril of an encounter with one who has been 

 actually a party concerned in the " sight'' — who has absolutely carried a 

 flambeau at the funeral of a king, ridden with the new sheriff to West- 

 minster-hall, or held Paganini's fiddle for him behind the scenes! Of 

 course the torture must be multiplied a million-fold ; — and this brings 

 me to an incident which I cannot resist the pleasure of relating. 



I must begin by asking a question ; — was the reader ever on a Pad- 

 dington-stage ? If so, lie may know something about the attributes 

 of a spot called the New-road ; and may be aware that it is an avenue 

 dignified at either end with a resort of no common renown — the one 

 having acquired the elevating appellation of " the Angel," and the other 

 being most emjihatically and euphoniously denominated " the Yorkshire 

 Stingo ;" — the two being placed at as great a distance from each other, 

 as their designations would seem to denote. Between these two opposite 

 points, I found myself the other day — seated on a Paddington-coach — 

 vainly endeavouring to get a glimpse of the houses, on either side, through 

 the clouds of dust that enveloped the vehicle. I could only just see my 

 neighbour, and, occasionally, as the breeze blew, a person seated next to 

 him, who, unchoked by the dust, was delivering an oration with such 

 earnestness and emphasis, that the fate of a world seemed to hang upon 

 every second syllable. One might have imagined that he had that morn- 

 ing arrived from the North-pole, and that his long-frozen description of 

 it was undergoing a rapid thaw — that he had just met the rJillenium 

 walking out of Mr. Irving's chapel — that the Cholera was on the next 

 coach — or that he had found out a new method of paying off the National 

 Debt. Any events less momentous than these, seemed to me to be un- 

 worthy of his energy. But, eloquent as the exordium evidently was, it 

 had not the faculty so common to eloquence, of " riveting" those who 

 heard it to their seats ; on the contrary, its effects were of a " moving" 

 character. I perceived a person, on the off-side, next to the speaker, sud- 

 denly stop the stage, and get down, as I fancied afterwards, with some 

 «ymptoms of impatience on his countenance. However, on we went for 

 five-minutes, and stiU the lips of the speaker kept moving, as if they had 

 been a part of the machinery of the coach and were acted upon by the 

 •wheels, only that they moved incalculably faster. He was now only owe 

 removed from me, but the noise prevented my catching the subject of 

 his declamation. I could merely see that he was a fine Quaker-hke look- 

 ing personage, of about fifty, and that tlie solitary listener between him 

 and myself was growing fidgetty. My suspicion of this fact was con- 

 firmed, when my fellow-passenger abruptly requested me to let him pass, 

 and descended from the coach without troubling it to stop, evidently 

 leaving the interrupted speaker to conclude one of his sentences at a 

 semicolon as well as he could. He was now, then, like that indefatigable 

 divine who " preached himself d<»\vn to the bare sexton." I was the 

 last rose of his suuaucr — a solitary plank between him and silence — the 



