RICHARD RUSH (1780–1859)
Extracts from A Residence at the Court of London (1833)

CHAPTER IV.

[…] December 24.—Go through several parts of the town: Bond Street, Albermarle Street, Berkeley Square, Piccadilly, St. James’s Street and Park, Pall Mall, St. James’s Square, the Strand, and a few others. Well-dressed persons, men and women, throng them. In the dresses of both, black predominates. It is nearly universal. This proceeds from the general mourning for the Princess Charlotte, late heiress apparent to the throne, who died in November. The roll of chariots, and carriages of all kinds, from two until past four, was incessant. In all directions they were in motion. It was like a show—the horses, the coachmen with triangular hats and tassels, the footmen with cockades and canes—it seemed as if nothing could exceed it all. Yet I was told that the sight in Hyde Park, any day in May or June, was more striking; and that if it happened to be on the same day with the Epsom or Ascot races, which keep the roads alive for ten miles with London carriages, a stranger misses none from the Park. Sometimes with this glitter of private equipages, you saw a stationary line of hacks, the worn-down horses eating out of nose-bags; and sometimes, at a slow, tugging walk, immense waggons, filled with coals, in black sacks, drawn by black horses, large and shaggy, and fat as those in the Portsmouth waggon. I am disappointed in the general exterior of the dwelling-houses. I had anticipated something better at the west end of the town; more symmetry; buildings more by themselves, denoting the residences of the richest people in the richest city in Europe. But I do not yet see these. I see haberdashers’ shops, poulterers’ shops, the leaden stalls of fishmongers, and the slaughtering blocks of butchers, in the near vicinity of a nobleman’s mansion and a king’s palace. This may be necessary, or convenient, for the supplies of a capital too large to admit of one or more concentrated markets; but the imagination at a distance pictures something different. Perhaps it is to give a hint of English liberty; if so, I will be the last to find fault. Being the day before Christmas, there was more display in the shops than usual. I did not get back until candle-light. The whole scene began to be illuminated. Altogether, what a scene it was! the shops in the Strand and elsewhere, where every conceivable article lay before you; and all made in England, which struck me the more, coming from a country where few things are made, however foreign commerce may send them to us; then, the open squares and gardens; the parks with spacious walks; the palisades of iron, or enclosures of solid wall, wherever enclosures were requisite; the people; the countless number of equipages, and fine horses; the gigantic draft horses;—what an aspect the whole exhibited! what industry, what luxury, what infinite particulars, what an aggregate! The men were taller and straighter than the peasantry I had seen. The lineaments of a race descend like their language. The people I met, constantly reminded me of those of my own country—I caught the same expression—often it glided by in complete identity—my ear took in accents to which it was native—but I knew no one. It was like coming to another planet, familiar with voices and faces—yet encircled by strangers.

December 31. The fog was so thick that the shops in Bond Street had lights at noon. I could not see people in the street from my windows. I am tempted to ask, how the English became great with so little day-light? It seems not to come fully out until nine in the morning, and immediately after four it is gone.

King Charles’s saying of the English climate is often brought up; that it interrupts outdoor labour fewer days in the year than any other. Did he remember the fogs, and how very short the day is, for labour, during a portion of the year?

CHAPTER V.

LONDON EAST OF TEMPLE BAR.—LONDON NORTH OF OXFORD STREET.

January 7, 1818. Went through Temple Bar into the city, in contradistinction to the West-end of London, always called town. Passed along Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill, St. Paul’s, Cheapside, the Poultry, Cornhill, and other streets in the direction of the Tower. Saw the Bank, Royal Exchange, Lord Mayor’s house, Guildhall, India House, the Excise buildings. If I looked with any feeling of wonder on the throngs at the West-end, more cause is there for it here. The shops stand, side by side, for entire miles. The accumulation of things is amazing. It would seem impossible that there can be purchasers for them all, until you consider what multitudes there are to buy; then, you are disposed to ask how the buyers can be supplied. In the middle of the streets, coal-waggons and others as large, carts, trucks, vehicles of every sort, loaded in every way, are passing. They are in two close lines, reaching farther than the eye can see, going reverse ways. The horses come so near to the foot-pavement, which is crowded with people, that their hoofs, and the great wheels of the waggons, are only a few inches from them. In this manner the whole procession is in movement, with its complicated noise. It confounds the senses to be among it all. You would anticipate constant accidents; yet they seldom happen. The fear of the law preserves order; moreover, the universal sense of danger, if order were violated, prevents its violation. I am assured that these streets present the same appearance every day in the year, except Sundays, when solitude reigns. I must notice as before the dress of the people. A large proportion were of the working classes; yet all were whole in their clothing; you could hardly see exceptions. All looked healthy; the more to be remarked in parts of the city where they live in perpetual crowds by day, and sleep in confined places. The Custom House, and black forest of ships below London Bridge, I saw by a glimpse: that was enough to show that the Thames was choked up with vessels and boats of every description, much after the manner that I beheld Cheapside and Fleet Street to be choked with vehicles that move on land.

          I went into two shops. One a silversmith’s, that of Rundell and Bridge, on Ludgate Hill. Outside it is plain; you might pass by without noticing it; but on entering, the articles of silver were piled in heaps, even on the floor. Going further into the building the masses increased. In a room up-stairs, there was part of a dinner-service in course of manufacture. The cost of an entire service varied from thirty to fifty thousand pounds sterling, according to the number of pieces, and workmanship; sometimes it was much higher. A candelabra for the middle of a table, had just been finished for a customer, at fourteen hundred pounds. A dress sword for another customer was shown; the cost was four thousand guineas. Other specimens of luxury might be mentioned, including ambassadors’ snuff-boxes of gold and diamonds. The proprietors were extremely civil; for I gave trouble only from curiosity. If you purchase but a pin for a few shillings, they return thanks; if you do not incline to take it away yourself, they readily send it home, no matter how far off. The other shop was Shepherd’s, for cut-glass, near Charing Cross. There too I had civility from the proprietor. In place of speaking of his wares, I will relate what he said of the Emperor Alexander. His Imperial Majesty, it seems, when on his visit to England with the Allied Sovereigns, honoured his shop with a call. Pleased with his articles beyond any of the kind he had seen in Europe, he gave an order for a magnificent list for one of his palaces. The pieces arrived in St. Petersburgh. Immediately, a ukase issued, prohibiting the future importation of cut glass into Russia. Whether the Emperor most desired to encourage the home manufacture of so beautiful a ware, or enhance the gratification of his Imperial taste by keeping it exclusive, were questions that I had no right to propound.

Of all the sights, the one in the middle of the streets, bespoke to me most of causes and effects. Being afterwards in Paris, I saw more of architectural beauty, at first; more of brilliancy. The Boulevards, the Palais Royal, the Rue Rivoli, which looked into the Tuileries through golden-tipped palisades, and a few other places, were not to be matched by any thing I saw in London. But their compass was small, and soon exhausted. The space between Northumberland House and Bishopsgate disclosed more of transportation, more of the operations that proclaim circulation of capital, more of all that laid at the roots of commerce at home and throughout the world, more of all that went to the prolific sources of riches and power, than I was able to discover in going about Paris, again and again, in every direction. I am aware how much larger London is than Paris; but the bustle of business seemed to abound in the English metropolis, in a proportion tenfold greater than its superior size.

January 19.—I have taken a house. It is situated in Marylebone parish, north of Oxford Road, as I hear the latter called by some, probably from its having been an open road within their recollection. Now, it is a street fully built up, and among the longest and widest in London. North of this street lies a part of the town different from any I have hitherto seen. The streets cross each other at right angles. All are of good width: some a hundred feet and more. Many of them, as Harley Street, Wimpole Street, Baker Street, Devonshire Place, Portland Place, and others, present long ranges of houses built with uniformity, which gives them a metropolitan aspect. Through some, you look, as through a vista, into the verdant scenery of the Regent’s Park. This commences almost at the point where the buildings, which are lofty, end; so that you seem to step at once into the country. An air of gloom hangs over these streets, from the dark brick of which most of the houses are built, or which coal smoke gives them; the case, I may add, with nearly every part of London. This part is quite secluded, if so I may speak of a town district of more than hundred thousand inhabitants. You hear little noise beyond the rumble of equipages, beginning at two o’clock, abating in the evening, and returning at midnight. Its quietness, and the number of ready-furnished houses to be hired in it, are probably the inducements for its being much chosen by the foreign ambassadors for their residence. I found that the Russian, Austrian, and French Ambassadors, had here fixed their domiciles. Every house has its area enclosed with iron palisades. The front door-steps are all of brown stone, with iron railings topped with spikes; so that the eye traced in all directions lines of this bristling iron-work. If you add, that on the broad pavements of flag, you perhaps saw nobody before noon, unless a straggling servant in morning livery, or a butcher’s boy with tray in hand issuing here and there from an area, you have the main external characteristics of this region when first I beheld it. There is another town district, a mile or two east, made-up of well-built streets about Russell Square, that had an aspect somewhat similar. It contained, I was told, another one hundred thousand inhabitants, London dissected showing these various circles. “The entire metropolis,” says Gibbon, in his memoirs, is “an astonishing and perpetual spectacle to the curious eye; each taste, each sense, may be gratified by the variety of objects which will occur in the long circuit of a morning walk.”

Of the part I have been describing in its external aspect, I must notice the complexion within. A great number of the houses were to let, and I went through them. From the basement to the attics, every thing had an air of comfort. The supply of furniture was full. The staircases were of white stone. The windows and beds in servants’ rooms had curtains. No floor was without carpeting. In many instances libraries made part of the furniture to be rented with the houses—a beautiful part. The rents varied from four hundred to a thousand guineas a year. In some of the squares of the West-end, I learned, that the rent of a furnished house was sixty and sometimes eighty guineas a week. Houses of the first class, with the sumptuous furniture to suit, are not to be hired at all. These, belonging to the nobility or other opulent proprietors, are left in the care of servants when the owners are away. The house I took was in Baker Street, at a rent of four hundred and fifty guineas a year. The policy of my Government being to give to its public servants small salaries, the latter act but in unison with this policy, in having their establishments small. It is not for those honoured by being selected to serve the Republic abroad, to complain. Nor, with the English, do I believe, that the consideration attaching to foreign ministers, is dependent upon the salaries they receive. However large these may be, and sometimes are, in the persons of the representatives of the Imperial and Royal governments of Europe, they are still so much below the wealth of the home circles in London, as to be no distinction, supposing distinction to be sought on that ground. The surpassing incomes in the home circles, and habit of expenditure, with the ample accommodations by which the many who possess them live surrounded, incline their possessors to regard such official strangers as objects, rather than agents, of hospitality. It may be otherwise in capitals on the Continent; but this is the general relationship which the diplomatic corps holds to society in London.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE ENGLISH IN THE AUTUMN.—INAUGURATION OF THE LORD MAYOR.—DEATH OF THE QUEEN.

1818. WHILST the negotiation was going on, its business absorbed attention. Of personal occurrences during its pendency I have little to say. We dined with some of the cabinet ministers and diplomatic corps. On one occasion, a portion of the ambassadors and ministers gratified me by dining at my house, to meet Mr. Gallatin. Some of them had taken a lively interest in the progress of our negotiation. A French philosopher has said, that every day of his life formed a page of his works. I cannot claim this merit, if merit it be. It was not my habit to note down, as a daily routine, the incidents passing around me. I gave myself to the practice according to my feelings and opportunities. During the negotiation, and for the remnant of the year, I scarcely indulged in it at all. Soon after the close of our joint labours, Mr. Gallatin returned to Paris, leaving me to regret the loss of a colleague so enlightened.

In the west-end of London during the autumn, little is seen but uninhabited houses. It brings to mind the city in the Arabian Nights, where everything was dead. The roll of the carriage, the assemblage in the parks, the whole panorama of life, in circles where amusement is the business of life, stops. Pass Temple Bar, and winter and spring, summer and autumn, present the same crowds. Nothing thins them. But the depopulation of the west-end is nearly complete. The adjournment of Parliament is the first signal for desertion. You see post-chaises and travelling carriages, with their light and liveried postilions, issuing from the squares and sweeping round the corners. For awhile, this movement is constant. The gay emigrants find their country-seats all ready for their reception. Thiebault tells us, that the King of Prussia had libraries at several of his palaces, containing the same books, arranged in the same order; so that when going from one to another the train of his studies might not be broken. So the English on arriving at their seats, even if they have several, which is not unfrequently the case, find every thing they want; unlike the châteaux in the provinces of France, which are said to be ill-furnished and bare, compared with the fine hotels of Paris.

The next great egress is on the approach of the 1st of September. That day is an era in England. Partridge-shooting begins. All who have not left town with the first flight, now follow. Ministers of state, even lord-chancellors, can hardly be kept from going a-field. When our conference of the 29th of August was finished, my colleague and I, without reflection, named the 1st of September for the next meeting. “Spare us,” said one of the British plenipotentiaries; “it is the first day of partridge-shooting!”

The families that flock into the country, generally remain until after the festivities of Christmas, which close with Twelfth-night. Some stay much longer. Cabinet ministers and the diplomatic corps, are among the few persons left in the metropolis, and these in diminished number. The latter are often of the invited guests, when the English thus exchange the hospitalities of the town for those, more prolonged and magnificent, at their country abodes. Field sports are added to them; hunting of all kinds, the fox, the hare, the stag; shooting, with I know not what else, including archery, of the days of the Plantagenets. This last, like the chace, is sometimes graced by the competitions of female agility. But foreign ambassadors and ministers do not always find it convenient to profit of these invitations. If not every day engaged in negotiations, one seldom goes by with those representing countries in large intercourse with England, unmarked by calls upon their time. Like men of business everywhere, they must be at the place of their business to do, or to watch it. But if for the most part cut off from these rural recreations, there is one way in which they partake of the results; I mean in abundance of game for their tables. Amongst the persons to whom mine was indebted throughout the autumn, I must not forget one of the British plenipotentiaries. Let me add, that if not of the same mind with us on all official discussions, they both made us sensible in all ways of their personal courtesy.

The enthusiastic fondness of the English for the country, is the effect of their laws. Primogeniture is at the root of it. Scarcely any persons who hold a leading place in the circles of their society live in London. They have houses in London, in which they stay while Parliament sits, and occasionally visit at other seasons; but their homes are in the country. Their turreted mansions are there, with all that denotes perpetuity—heir-looms, family memorials, tombs. This spreads the ambition among other classes, and the taste for rural life, however diversified or graduated the scale, becomes widely diffused. Those who live on their estates through successive generations, not speaking of those who have titles but thousands besides, acquire, if they have the proper qualities of character, an influence throughout their neighbourhood. It is not an influence always enlisted on the side of power and privilege. On the contrary, there are numerous instances in which it has for ages been strenuously used for the furtherance of popular rights. These are the feelings and objects that cause the desertion of the west-end of the town when Parliament rises. The permanent interests and affections of the most opulent classes, centre almost universally in the country. Heads of families go there to resume their stand in the midst of these feelings; and all, to partake of the pastimes of the country life, where they flourish in pomp and joy.

In other parts of London, in the vast limits between Temple Bar and the Tower, the crowds, I have said, continue the same. Even here, however, the passion for the country peeps out. Every evening when business is over, the citizens may be seen going to their cottages that skirt the wide environs towards Highgate, Hornsey, Hackney, Stratford, Clapham, Camberwell, Greenwich, and in all directions. I heard a physician call the Parks the “lungs of London.” These little retreats, many of them hidden amidst foliage, and showing the neatness that seems stamped upon every thing rural in England, in like manner serve the citizens as places in which to breathe, after the pent-up air of confined streets and counting-rooms. To the latter they return on the following morning to plan operations that affect the markets and wealth of the civilized world.

On the 9th of November I dined at Guildhall. It was the day of the inauguration of the Lord Mayor. Mr. Alderman Atkins had been the successful candidate for the mayoralty. There was the grand procession upon the Thames, and through the streets. I need not give a description of it; for it has been as often described as St. Paul’s Cathedral or Westminster Abbey. The dinner was in the large Gothic Hall. There sat down about nine hundred persons. The giants and knights clad in steel, the band of music slowly moving round the hall, the Aldermen in their costumes, the Sheriffs with their gold chains, the Judges in their robes, the Lady Mayoress in her hoop, with long rows of prosperous-looking citizens, presented a novel mixture of modern things, with symbols of the ancient banquet. The lights, the decorations of the hall, and all that covered the tables, gave a high impression of municipal plenty and munificence. The Premier, Lord Liverpool, with Lord Bathurst, Lord Sidmouth, and Mr. Vansittart, as cabinet ministers, were guests. There were many other official characters.

One of the knights wore the helmet which the City of London gave to Henry the Seventh. Its weight was fourteen pounds. The other knight wore the entire armour of Henry the Fifth. It was that of a small man. Lord Sidmouth, who sat near me, remarked, that all the armour of that day and earlier, indicated the stature to be smaller than at present. I thought of what Sir John Sinclair said, at Ormly Lodge. The reasons assigned were, improved agriculture, better personal habits from the greater diffusion of comforts among the people through the increase of wealth and science; also, the disappearance of certain diseases, as leprosy and scurvy, and the advancement of medical knowledge, Mr. Vansittart said, that the remains of Roman armour had shown the Romans to be a smaller race of men than the moderns.

After the King, Prince Regent, and members of the Royal Family, had been given as toasts, the Lord Mayor did me the honour to propose my name, that he might make it the medium of cordial sentiments towards the United States. These the company received with applause. In returning thanks I reciprocated the friendly feelings he had expressed.

Before going to dinner we were in the council-room. Among the paintings was a very large one of the scene between Richard the Second and Wat Tyler. Another of that between Mary of Scots and Rizzio; one of the siege of Gibraltar, by Copley; and other pieces. But I looked with chief interest at the portraits of the naval commanders. Pausing at Nelson’s, Lord Sidmouth said, that in a visit he had from him three weeks before the battle of Trafalgar, he described the plan of it with bits of paper on a table, as it was afterwards fought. When we came to Duncan’s, he recited the lines, by Lord Wellesley, on the victory over the Dutch, off Camperdown. At Howe’s, Mr. Vansittart said, that just before his battle with the French fleet, the sailors expressed a wish for a little more grog. Howe replied, “Let ‘em wait till it’s over, and we’ll all get drunk together.” At Rodney’s, some conversation took place on the manoeuvre, which he first practised in his victory over De Grasse, of breaking the line. I asked, whether the success of that mode of attack did not essentially depend upon the inferiority of your enemy, especially in gunnery. It was admitted that it did, and that Lord Nelson always so considered it. The Marlborough, Rodney’s leading ship, received the successive broad-sides of twenty-three of the French ships of the line, at near distance, and had not more than half-a-dozen of her men killed. My motive to the inquiry, was a remark I once heard from Commodore Decatur of our service, that, in an event, which I trust may be remote, of English fleets and those of the United States meeting, the former would probably change their system of tactics in action. Speaking of naval science in England, Lord Sidmouth said, that it had greatly improved of late years; that Lord Exmouth told him that, when he was a young man, it was not uncommon for lieutenants to be ignorant of lunar observations, but that now no midshipman was promoted who could not take them. He intimated his belief, that naval science generally, was destined to far higher advances than it had yet reached.

After dinner we went into the ball-room, where a ball terminated the festivities.

I should not soon have done if I were to mention all the instances of which I chanced on this occasion to hear of riches among mechanics, artisans, and others, engaged in the common walks of business in this great city. I make a few selections. I heard of haberdashers who cleared thirty thousand pounds sterling a-year, by retail shop-keeping; of brewers, whose buildings and fixtures necessary to carry on business, cost four hundred and fifty thousand pounds; of silversmiths worth half a million; of a person in Exeter Change, who made a fortune of a hundred thousand pounds, chiefly by making and selling razors; of job-horse men, who held a hundred and forty thousand pounds in the Three per Cents; and of confectioners and woollen drapers who had funded sums still larger. Of the higher order of merchants, bankers, and capitalists of that stamp, many of whom were present, whose riches I heard of, I am unwilling to speak, lest I should seem to exaggerate. I have given enough. During the late war with France, it is said that there were once recruited in a single day in the country between Manchester and Birmingham, two thousand able-bodied working men for the British army. It is the country so remarkable for its collieries, iron mines, and blast furnaces. Its surface is desolate. A portion of it is sometimes called the fire country, from the flames that issue in rolling volumes from the lofty tops of the furnaces. Seen all around by the traveller at night, they present a sight that may be called awful. Sometimes you are told that human beings are at work in the bowels of the earth beneath you. A member of the diplomatic corps, on hearing of the above enlistment remarked, that could Bonaparte have known that fact, and seen the whole region of country from which the men came, seen the evidences of opulence and strength in its public works, its manufacturing establishments and towns, and abundant agriculture, notwithstanding the alleged or real pauperism of some of the districts, it would of itself have induced him to give over the project of invading England.

In like manner, let any one go to a lord mayor’s dinner; let him be told of the sums owned by those he will see around him and others he will hear of, not inherited from ancestors, but self-acquired by individual industry in all ways in which the hand and mind of man can be employed, and he will be backward at predicting the ruin of England from any of her present financial difficulties. Predictions of this nature have been repeated for ages, but have not come to pass. Rich subjects make a rich nation. As the former increase, so will the means of filling the coffers of the latter. Let contemporary nations lay it to their account, that England is more powerful now than ever she was, notwithstanding her debt and taxes. This knowledge should form an element in their foreign policy. Let them assure themselves, that instead of declining she is advancing; that her population increases fast; that she is constantly seeking new fields of enterprise in other parts of the globe, and adding to the improvements that already cover her island at home, new ones that promise to go beyond them in magnitude; in fine, that instead of being worn out, as at a distance is sometimes supposed, she is going a-head with the buoyant spirit and vigorous effort of youth. It is an observation of Madame de Staël, how ill England is understood on the Continent, in spite of the little distance that separates her from it. How much more likely that nations between whom and herself an ocean interposes, should fall into mistakes on the true nature of her power and prospects; should imagine their foundations to be crumbling, instead of steadily striking into more depth, and spreading into wider compass. Britain exists all over the world, in her colonies. These alone, give her the means of advancing her industry and opulence for ages to come. They are portions of her territory more valuable than if joined to her island. The sense of distance is destroyed by her command of ships; whilst that very distance serves as the feeder of her commerce and marine. Situated on every continent, lying in every latitude, these, her out-dominions, make her the centre of a trade already vast and perpetually augmenting — a home trade and a foreign trade—for it yields the riches of both, as she controls it all at her will. They take off her redundant population, yet make her more populous; and are destined, under the policy already commenced towards them, and which in time she will far more extensively pursue, to expand her an empire, commercial, manufacturing, and maritime, to dimensions to which it would not be easy to affix limits.

On the 17th of November, died the Queen. She expired at Kew Palace, after a long illness. The last time I saw her was at an entertainment at Carlton House. There, as at the royal marriage, she had been distinguished by her affability. Going away, gentlemen attendants, and servants with lights, preceded her sedan; whilst the company gave tokens of respectful deference. Now, she had paid the common debt of nature. The event was communicated to me in a note from Lord Bathurst, received the same evening; a form observed towards all foreign ambassadors and ministers.

The Queen enjoyed in a high degree the respect and affection of a very large portion of the inhabitants of Great Britain. For more than half a century, her conduct upon the throne had been to the nation, satisfactory. There were periods when it was said that she had interfered beyond her sphere in public affairs; but besides the obstacles to this under a constitutional government like that of England, however frequent may be the instances in arbitrary governments, there never appears to have been any sufficient evidence of the fact. Colonel Barré, the bold champion of the Colonies during the American war, eulogized her “unassuming virtues” in one of his opposition speeches. All agree, that in the relations of private life, her conduct was exemplary; and that the British court maintained in her time, a character of uniform decorum and chastened grandeur.

Her funeral was on the 2nd of December, at Windsor. The body had lain in state for the time usual. The procession moved from Kew. I went there with my sons. The multitude was so great, of carriages, persons on horseback, and foot passengers, that it might be said to form a compact mass from London to Kew, a distance of eight miles. It continued, as long as I looked, to press onward. At night, the road was lighted with torches borne by the military. These, gleaming upon the soldiers’ helmets, and partially disclosing, now the hearse, then the long solemn procession winding its slow way with its trappings of death, presented a spectacle for the pencil or the muse. The interment took place in the royal chapel of St. George. There, for centuries, had reposed the remains of kings and queens. And there, they had mouldered to dust. Around the vault, seen by dim lights in the Gothic interior, were assembled the Prince Regent, and other members of the royal family, with a few of the personages who composed the funeral train. Canning was of the number—Canning, with sensibilities always quick to whatever in human scenes might awaken moral reflection, or lift up the tone of the imagination.

On the 3rd of December the theatres were re-opened. I went to Drury-lane. The house was crowded, and everybody in black for the Queen. Orders for a court-mourning take in only a limited class; but the streets, as the theatres, are filled with persons of all classes, who put it on. Even children wear it, and servants. Such is the usage of the country. The play was “Brutus, or the fall of Tarquin,” a new tragedy, by Mr. Howard Payne, a young American. I felt anxious for an author who was my countryman, and had the gratification to witness his complete success. When the piece was announced for repetition, bursts of applause followed, and the waving of handkerchiefs.

On the 22nd of the month, accidents occurred all over London, from a remarkable fog. Carriages ran against each other, and persons were knocked down by them at the crossings. The whole gang of thieves seemed to be let loose. After perpetrating their deeds, they eluded detection by darting into the fog. It was of an opake, dingy yellow. Torches were used as guides to carriages at mid-day, but gave scarcely any light through the fog. I went out for a few minutes. It was dismal.