IV. 



COCKNEYISM IN THE COUNTRY. 



September, 1849. 



WHEN a farmer, who visits the metropolis once a year, stares 

 into the shop windows in Broadway, and stops now and then 

 with an indefinite curiosity at the corners of the streets, the citizens 

 smile, with the satisfaction of superior knowledge, at the awkward 

 airs of the countryman in town. 



But how shall we describe the conduct of the true cockneys in 

 the country ? How shall we find words to express our horror and 

 pity at the cockneyisms with which they deform the landscape? 

 How shall we paint, without the aid of Hogarth and Cruikshanks, 

 the ridiculous insults which they often try to put upon nature and 

 truth in their cottages and country-seats ? 



The countryman in town is at least modest. He has, perhaps, 

 a mysterious though mistaken respect for men who live in such 

 prodigiously fine houses, who drive in coaches with liveried servants, 

 and pay thousands for the transfer of little scraps of paper, which 

 they call stocks. 



But the true cit is brazen and impertinent in the country. 

 Conscious that his clothes are designed, his hat fabricated, his til- 

 bury built, by the only artists of their several professions on this 

 side of the Atlantic, he pities and despises all who do not bear the 

 outward stamp of the same coinage. He comes in the country to 

 rusticate, (that is, to recruit his purse and his digestion,) very much 

 as he turns his horse out to grass ; as a means of gaining strength 

 sufficient to go back again to the only arena in which it is worth 



