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in the neighbourhood. You may safely elbow your 

 way through them : the frequenters of the place 

 rarely have enough in their pockets to make it a 

 haunt for common thieves ; and if such an inter- 

 loper dared show himself, he would infallibly be 

 horsewhipped within an inch of his life, for the 

 "credit of the trade." Your danger is far greater 

 than losing pocket-money or handkerchief I 

 wonder that Hogarth never sketched a horse-auc- 

 tion, but perhaps they were unknown in his days : 

 the characters would be worthy of his pencil : — some 

 collected in a corner, some mounted on the top of 

 a coach on sale, and others lounging near the 

 stand ; huddled together in detached bodies of half 

 a score, are seen fellows, such as you might take 

 at random from the next row of hackney coaches. 

 Their dress is as varied as the colour of their car- 

 riages, yet with a dash of esprit de corps^ imme- 

 diately perceptible to the practised eye. One 

 is equipped in a post-boy's coat, reaching to his 

 ancles, with some half-a-dozen pearl buttons scat- 

 tered at unequal intervals down the lapels ; a 

 whity-brown castor, jauntingly covering one side of 

 the head, with an orange handkerchief transferred 

 from the neck to supply the band, completes the 

 jockey out of place. Another in a long, loose 

 fustian jacket, out at elbows, buttonless and colour- 



