G08 Notes of the Month on [Dec. 



tenderness of look, as he rides along the streets, particularly in the full 

 season of Bond-street beauty, or has had the indulgence of meeting him 

 as he brushes away the dew, through the Green Park, where the nursery 

 maids have brushed away the dew just before ; or who has been 

 honoured by permeating the green-room boards of the King's Theatre, 

 when the premieres clanseuses are stretching their sandals preparatory to 

 doing execution in the front of the curtain ; can doubt that his lordship's 

 heart actually overflows with the love of human kind. Yet in his lord- 

 ship's administration of that mysterious and mighty office, which 

 regulates the draining of the dry ditches round London, and the knock- 

 ing down of the old houses that are spontaneously tumbling as fast as 

 they can, — that high superintendance of mud and mortar, which, in the 

 sacred technology of state, assumes the name of Woods and Forest — 

 he seems to have the spirit of a Hj'^der Ali, or a Thomas Kouli 

 Khan. 



To say nothing of mounts of stone erected on every ten yards of 

 every road for ten miles round the metropolis, which demolish stage 

 coachmen daily, slay a regular allowance of retired citizens per week, are 

 already sensibly thinning the Board of Aldermen, have produced the 

 much heavier evil of turning Mr. Alderman Waithman into a speech- 

 maker again ; and make it a matter of life and death for a common coun- 

 cilman of any weight of metal to drive out to his villa, after a " dinner 

 with the Ward ;" his lordship has commenced his administration with 

 digging two of the most devouring man-and-woman-traps since the days 

 of the Minotaur. 



" On Wednesday afternoon the body of a man was chscovered by 

 some passengers floating in the basin in the Green Park, which has 

 newly been enclosed by a wooden paling. The alarm was instantly 

 given, and drags being procured, the body was brought on shore. 

 From the appearance of the deceased, he must have been some days in 

 the water ; he is about fifty years of age. He was rather genteely 

 dressed in a black coat and trowsers, striped black silk waistcoat, and 

 Wellington boots." 



How this unlucky Avanderer of the dark came by his fate, of course 

 nobody thinks of asking, for it appeared tliat he had nothing in his 

 pockets, a disqualification for public interest, dead or alive. But we 

 shall gratify that part of the public who wish to evade the creditor and 

 the sexton together, by the information that the Basin in the Green Park 

 is still as accessible as ever, and possesses the very finest capabilities for 

 speedy extinction in cases of accident or otherwise. 



The water is seven feet deep in the shallowest part. But let not the 

 experimentalist think that the affair is ended by his simply being popt 

 twelve inches below the height of man. Every step he makes in his 

 new element carries him a foot deeper down a slope which conducts 

 him to a central cavity half a dozen feet deeper still, where nothing 

 could fish him up short of a grapling iron and cable. 



As to any hope of scrambling his way out when he has once tumbled 

 in, there is no more than of Lord Goderich's being prime minister again ; 

 or of Mr. Banks's washing his much bedaubed rejjutation. The walls 

 are of stone, smooth as Lady Blessington's skin, and perpendicular as 

 the profile of the Duchess Dowager of Rutland, or little fly-a-way Lady 

 Cowper's 07ie ostrich feather. The best climber in Astley's would slip 

 from it as if he were clinging to ice ; and the stoutest swimmer from 



