" UP, BOYS, AND AT 'EM." 329 



while to go and abuse the soi-disant Major or Colonel 

 as a rogue and a swindler : you could not have the 

 satisfaction of calling a blush to his face, and all you 

 could get would be a bullying from him and his : and 

 as to exposure, could you expose him to nineteen 

 parts of the population within the Bills of Mortality, 

 provided you leave him the remaining twentieth, he 

 would find gulls enough among them to serve his 

 turn. These fellows do get abused, exposed, threaten- 

 ed, warned off, turned out, and a hundred other 

 things : their plot does often get smoked ; and some- 

 times the place gets too hot to hold them. What 

 then! they go somewhere else, and coelum animum 

 non mutant; so they up and at 'em again, and Mr. 

 Green does come at last. These facts have flashed 

 across our minds as we walked up the Mews, and we 

 are quite prepared to draw our conclusions (were they 

 not already drawn) from the cut of the attendants 

 and the stable altogether. If they were the stables of 

 a lady or gentleman, we should be received by a 

 respectable man as coachman, groom, or at least 

 helper, or perhaps by all three. Their proper and 

 civil demeanor would show they were what their ap- 

 pearance bespoke : they, or he, would without hesita- 

 tion state their employer's name, how long they had 

 had the horses, from whom they had been bought, 

 how they had been used, why they were sold, and at 

 once state their prices. If one or more were approved 

 of, they would offer to lead them out, and would 

 probably be authorised (if the horses did belong to a 

 lady) to refer you to some gentleman who would 

 give you any further information. Then the stable, 

 if that of a lady or gentleman, it will have a used 

 look about it, clean and well done, but everything 



