Burlesques | Page 6

thus:
The rogue of a Millwood has come back every day to the grocer's shop
in Chepe, wanting some sugar, or some nutmeg, or some figs, half a
dozen times in the week.
She and George de Barnwell have vowed to each other an eternal
attachment.
This flame acts violently upon George. His bosom swells with ambition.
His genius breaks out prodigiously. He talks about the Good, the
Beautiful, the Ideal, &c., in and out of all season, and is virtuous and
eloquent almost beyond belief--in fact like Devereux, or P. Clifford, or
E. Aram, Esquires.
Inspired by Millwood and love, George robs the till, and mingles in the
world which he is destined to ornament. He outdoes all the dandies, all
the wits, all the scholars, and all the voluptuaries of the age--an
indefinite period of time between Queen Anne and George II.--dines
with Curll at St. John's Gate, pinks Colonel Charteris in a duel behind
Montague House, is initiated into the intrigues of the Chevalier St.
George, whom he entertains at his sumptuous pavilion at Hampstead,
and likewise in disguise at the shop in Cheapside.

His uncle, the owner of the shop, a surly curmudgeon with very little
taste for the True and Beautiful, has retired from business to the
pastoral village in Cambridgeshire from which the noble Barnwells
came. George's cousin Annabel is, of course, consumed with a secret
passion for him.
Some trifling inaccuracies may be remarked in the ensuing brilliant
little chapter; but it must be remembered that the author wished to
present an age at a glance: and the dialogue is quite as fine and correct
as that in the "Last of the Barons," or in "Eugene Aram," or other works
of our author, in which Sentiment and History, or the True and
Beautiful, are united.
CHAPTER XXIV.
BUTTON'S IN PALL MALL.
Those who frequent the dismal and enormous Mansions of Silence
which society has raised to Ennui in that Omphalos of town, Pall Mall,
and which, because they knock you down with their dulness, are called
Clubs no doubt; those who yawn from a bay-window in St. James's
Street, at a half-score of other dandies gaping from another
bay-window over the way; those who consult a dreary evening paper
for news, or satisfy themselves with the jokes of the miserable Punch
by way of wit; the men about town of the present day, in a word, can
have but little idea of London some six or eight score years back. Thou
pudding-sided old dandy of St. James's Street, with thy lacquered boots,
thy dyed whiskers, and thy suffocating waistband, what art thou to thy
brilliant predecessor in the same quarter? The Brougham from which
thou descendest at the portal of the "Carlton" or the "Travellers'," is like
everybody else's; thy black coat has no more plaits, nor buttons, nor
fancy in it than thy neighbor's; thy hat was made on the very block on
which Lord Addlepate's was cast, who has just entered the Club before
thee. You and he yawn together out of the same omnibus-box every
night; you fancy yourselves men of pleasure; you fancy yourselves men
of fashion; you fancy yourselves men of taste; in fancy, in taste, in
opinion, in philosophy, the newspaper legislates for you; it is there you

get your jokes and your thoughts, and your facts and your
wisdom--poor Pall Mall dullards. Stupid slaves of the press, on that
ground which you at present occupy, there were men of wit and
pleasure and fashion, some five- and-twenty lustres ago.
We are at Button's--the well-known sign of the "Turk's Head." The
crowd of periwigged heads at the windows--the swearing chairmen
round the steps (the blazoned and coronalled panels of whose vehicles
denote the lofty rank of their owners),--the throng of embroidered
beaux entering or departing, and rendering the air fragrant with the
odors of pulvillio and pomander, proclaim the celebrated resort of
London's Wit and Fashion. It is the corner of Regent Street. Carlton
House has not yet been taken down.
A stately gentleman in crimson velvet and gold is sipping chocolate at
one of the tables, in earnest converse with a friend whose suit is
likewise embroidered, but stained by time, or wine mayhap, or wear. A
little deformed gentleman in iron-gray is reading the Morning
Chronicle newspaper by the fire, while a divine, with a broad brogue
and a shovel hat and cassock, is talking freely with a gentleman, whose
star and ribbon, as well as the unmistakable beauty of his Phidian
countenance, proclaims him to be a member of Britain's aristocracy.
Two ragged youths, the one tall, gaunt, clumsy and scrofulous, the
other with a wild, careless, beautiful look, evidently indicating Race,
are gazing in at the window, not merely at the crowd in the celebrated