TAKEN FROM THE RING IN HYDE PARK.

There is nothing else in nature or in art, nor even in art and nature united, that may compare with the Ring in Hyde Park on a fine Sunday at four o’clock, P.m., “in the pleasant month of May.” There is no other sight in the world “so lively, andible, and full of vent.” There is nothing else so brilliant in equipage, so bright in female beauty, so fertile in materials for the picturesque, so pre-eminent in birth and fashion, so prodigal in the evidences of national wealth, so productive of intellectual associations, so pregnant and overflowing with that spirit of society which is after all the only true “beauteous and sublime” of human life.

The Longchamps of Paris, the Corso of Naples, the Prado of Madrid, and in short all the other public promenades of continental capitals, are poor and paltry by comparison. And as to our own of a similar kind,, the Regent’s Park, St. James’s, and the Green,, the first is but a receptacle for wandering cockneys, wasted West Indians, and captive wild beasts; the second is only a pretty play-ground for “the youth of both sexes,” after school hours,, with the temptation of drowning themselves always at hand;, and the last is but a green retreat for a few favoured cows, and (in virtue of its basin) a refuge for the West-end destitute of all denominations, who do not think themselves worth powder and shot, and cannot screw up their courage to the parapet of Westminster Bridge.

The only efficient summary we have ever met with of the scene in question is included in the passionate exclamation (as we once heard it reported by poor Coleridge, who was present on the occasion) of a young English lady, at the first sight of Mont Blanc.

“Oh! It is beautiful! It is magnificent!! It is sublime!!! It is very pretty!!!!”

To describe that scene, (not Mont Blanc but the Ring in Hyde Park), to describe it in all its varied and vivid details, to paint on paper a moving panorama of it, after the pleasant fashion of Mr. Burford, “from authentic drawings taken on the spot,” and to illustrate the view by a series of portraits sketched from life, are the somewhat bold and amhitious objects we have now in view. And if our readers will but lend us as large a portion of their imaginative faculties as they are wont and willing to do for the ingenious artist just named in respect of his little circular creations in Leicester Square, we shall not despair of performing our office to their amusement and satisfaction. And this whether they have been partakers and parties in the scene to be set forth, or not: for if our picture should fall short of realising the recollections of the first, we flatter ourselves it will not fail to overstep the anticipations of the second. We cannot hope to make it so good a thing as the reality; but we must not doubt of making it better than any thing else.

But first let us pay a due tribute of applause, (in this no more than echoing the popular feeling on the point in question), to that excellent taste and discretion which have recently put into a new and perfect frame-work the great national picture we are about to copy.

There is nothing like despotic and irresponsible power, in effecting national improvements that are necessarily to cost great sums of money. Where would the pyramids of Egypt have been if “the people” had had any voice in the matter? If ancient Rome had rejoiced in a “limited monarchy,” the eternal city would at this moment have been a morass. Could the sublime cathedrals of the Middle Ages have grown out of any thing less despotic than the decree of a National Church? Would Mr. Hume and the honourable member for Oldham have consented to the erection of our glorious St. Paul’s? Being optimists, we do not absolutely despair of seeing England powerful and happy, even under a Reformed Parliament. But our great consolation under the new millennium is, that it did not arrive twenty years ago. If it had, where would Regent Street have been, or Waterloo Place, or Carlton Gardens, or the York Column, or Trafalgar Square, or the Club Houses, or the New Strand, or (“though last not least in our dear love”) the lovely screen and gateways, the noble Triumphal Arch, the Achilles, and the other improvements and completions appertaining to the beautiful national scene we are about to describe?, “Where?” we demand, and echo answers “where?” In short, every thing would have remained in statu quo ante bellum; and London would have been the laughing stock of Europe, instead of its envy and admiration; the disgrace of England, instead of her boast and glory.

We will enter Hyde Park by the gateway of the beautiful screen we have just glanced at, turning hack as we go, to admire the rich completeness given to the noble spot adjacent, by the massive Triumphal Arch leading into St. James’s Park, its gorgeous gateway, the neighbouring buildings about the top of Grosvenor Place, and the lovely opening across the Green Park, terminated by its misty background, in which the stately towers of the West Minster stand supreme in their antique beauty.

It is Sunday; and we are accompanied on our entrance by streams of well dressed pedestrians, throngs of well mounted cavaliers, and strings of well appointed equipages, all tending to the same point of popular attraction, , the northern portion of that irregular shaped Ring which it is now our business to describe, with all its extraneous chasing, and all those temporary adjuncts which it wears so profusely on this its weekly jour-de-fête.

On first passing through the Screen which separates Hyde Park from the point of junction between the western extreme of Piccadilly on the one hand, and the great western road on the other, we find ourselves in an angular area, of irregular shape, and branching off, on the left, into two long and spacious carriage roads, running parallel with each other to an extent that (in our misty metropolitan atmosphere) the eye can scarcely take in. To-day these two roads are enlivened at intervals, “few and far between,” the one on the left by various unpretending equipages, rolling steadily along in both directions, as if willing to avoid the vulgar noise, bustle, and dust of the public road on the one hand, and the aristocratic gaiety and splendour of the crowded Ring on the other. Their inmates are “steady and respectable” people, going to dine (at a “reasonable” hour) at Kensington Gravel Pits or their purlieus, or coming thence to their friends in town for a similar purpose.

The other still broader and more stately road, running parallel with that just referred to, finds its spacious solitude enlivened by a few quietly disposed equestrians alone: for carriages are interdicted there, save those of royalty itself, and of one favoured exception, His Grace the High Falconer of England :, this being, so far as we can understand, the only merit, emolument, or distinction its present possessor derives from that stately relict of fendalism. Unless indeed (which is more than “prohable to thinking”) his grace owes to this so envied piece of apparent emptiness the more solid advantages and immunities of a buxom wife and a boundless fortune. Certain it is, his Duchess does not fail frequently to avail herself of this imaginary approximation to royalty. Nor can we blame her for so doing. To pay a hundred thousand a year for a turnpike ticket entitling one to travel the eight furlongs of “royal road,” between Kensington and London, and then not to use the privilege, were a superfluous piece of magnificence.

It grieves us to the heart to be able to say, that we remember the time when the two “splendid deserts” we have just now adverted to were the sole scenes of public favour, and when the Ring of the present day was as harren of ornament as a wedding one, when it had not even a name to bless itself by, and its purlieus were at best but the Pré aux Clercs of pretty nursery maids and ambitious gouvernantes. Ah! then were the times for England, when War, Wellington and Waste Paper ruled the roast all over the world, and We and Rotten Row were in our glory, at least during the Oxford vacations: for we shall candidly confess that we never remember to have felt that Rotten Row or the Gardens had put on their full completeness until We formed a component part of their living ornaments!, Alas! in the Row, never more will

The left heel turn’d insidiously aside.
Provoke the caper which it seems to chide;

in the promenade, the embossed riding whip (now become a vulgarism) will never more invite female attention to the fair boot-top, and fairer buck-skin, and thus proclaim the equestrian order of the wearer;, the long, massive, down-pointing hunting spur will never more advisedly entangle itself in the frail flounce of the trim-waisted marchande de modes, and thus, by means of the necessary deprecations and apologies, precipitate and complete an acquaintance which the eyes initiated a fortnight before, and which can end only with the death of, the season! Alas! The glories of “The Gardens” are gone, Rotten Row is desolate, and the banks of the Serpentine (once weekly overspread, winter and summer alike, with the artificial flowers of the metropolitan parterre as profusely as a Persian carpet) are as green, as silent, and as solitary as those of the Susquehannah!

But a truce to this Janus-faced mode of making oneself uncomfortable. Let the old editions of that pleasant periodical, Hyde Park, be abandoned to the criticisms of the Retrospective Review. It is our business to describe the Edition of 1834, with its new and noble frontispiece (executed at the cost of the ladies of England) by Mr. Westmacott; its numerous pictorial embellishments, done from original designs by Messieurs of the Woods and Forests; its translations, transpositions, and new readings, as directed by that most innovating of all commentators, Fashion,, to whom “slashing Bentley” was but a “piddling Tibhalds;”, and finally, the beautiful and classical binding which clasps and embraces it on all sides, from the tasteful atélier of Mr. Decimus Burton.

From the angular area gained on entering the park from Piccadilly branches forth, on the left, those two roads we have just referred to; then another, more narrow, winding, and picturesque with trees, leads through pleasant green pastures to the distant solitudes of this unrivalled spot; and lastly, on the right runs the Ring itself, extending about half a mile towards Oxford Street, and then winding round to the left, making a circumbendibus of the whole open plain of the park, and joining on the opposite side the other road last mentioned: thus forming a continuous ring.

It is this Ring which is the chief object of our present attention, and is jewelled portion in particular, that portion which lies between Grosvenor and Buckingham Gates. At this time (suppose it a fine Sunday in May or June, at four o’clock, P.m.) the streams of well attired pedestrians, gallant horsemen, and glittering equipages which enter at the different gates and roads leading hitherward, are all of them tending to and concentrating themselves into one channel, consisting of the gravelled drive between the two gates above named, and the grass-grown mall which runs parallel to it on the western side,, where they now form a dense mass, moving it is true, but not progressing, and each divided into two distinct streams, running in opposite directions, and at intervals intercepting or blending with each other.

Let us join the throng; but as momentary observers of the moving scene, rather than part and parcel of it; for which purpose we will pass across the area which forms the hall of entrance from the Piccadilly gate, and having penetrated the light and almost invisible fence which separates the walk from the drive, place ourselves at that point which we shall choose to designate as “Poet’s Corner”, no other or less imaginative title being able duly to express the associations connected with the scene before us,, than which nothing in the Arabian Nights was ever more pregnant with a pleasant mixture of reality and romance.

We will, the more conveniently to perform our office, lean our (for this once) unnoticed person listlessly against and half over the smooth-rubbed rail which interposes its scarcely perceptible barrier between the plebeian promenaders and the patrician equestrians; and while trifling with our plain wand of ebony, and seeming to see nothing but the foot-prints on the road to which it points, penetrate with our furtive glance every noticeable equipage that passes; note down in our mental tablets the “whereabout” of every well known “leader” of the unmarried ton (alas! a very limited circle now! for petit-maitre-ship has fairly yielded the pas to politics, and mere dandyism has degenerated into indifference), and not even disdain to cast our occasional regards towards the pedestrian department of the scene,, since mingled with its aspect we may chance to meet with individual exceptions to that unnoticeable character which it presents as a whole.

Observe that green chariot just making the turn of the unbroken line of equipages. Though it is now advancing towards us with a dozen carriages between, it is to be distinguished from the throng by the elevation of its driver and footman above the ordinary level of the line. As it comes nearer we can observe the particular points which give to it that perfectly distingué appearance which it bears above all others in the throng. They consist of the white wheels lightly picked out with green and crimson, the high-stepping action, blood-like shape, and brilliant manèges of its dark hay horses , the perfect style of its driver, the height (six feet two) of its slim, spider-limbed, powdered footman, perked up at least three feet above the roof of the carriage, and occupying his eminence with that peculiar air of accidental superiority, half petit-maitre, half plough-boy, which we take to be the ideal of footman-like perfection;, and finally, the exceedingly light, airy, and (if we may so speak) intellectual character of the whole set out. The arms and supporters blazoned on the centre pannel, and the small coronet beneath the window, indicate the nobility of station; and if ever the nobility of nature was blazoned on the “compliment extern” of humanity, it is so on the lovely face within; as lovely to-day as ever, though it has been loveliest among the lovely for a longer time than we dare call to our own recollection, much less to that of the fair creature before us. If the Countess of Bl-ss-g-n (for it is she whom we are asking the reader to admire, howbeit at second-hand, and through the doubly refracting medium of plate-glass and a blonde veil) is not now so radiant with the bloom of mere youth, as when she first put to shame Sir Thomas’s chef-d’œuvre in the form of her own portrait, what she has lost in the graces of mere complexion, she has more than gained in those of intellectual expression. Nor can the observer have a better opportunity than the present of admiring that expression; unless indeed he is fortunate enough to be admitted to that intellectual converse in which its owner shines beyond almost any other female of the day, and with an earnestness, a simplicity, and an abandon as rare in such cases as they are delightful.

The lady, her companion, is the Countess de St. M, t, her sister, whose finely-cut features and perfectly oval face, bear a striking general resemblance to those of Lady B. without being at all like them. The reader must be good enough to reconcile this seeming contradiction in the best way he can; since the Ring in the park is by no means a fitting place in which to philosophise, unless it be on the text of the preacher, touching the all-embracing character of human vanity.

Observe, as a contrast to the above, that somewhat lofty, but lumbering and nondescript vehicle, half phaeton, half britzka, with a spacious box in front, and a double set of seats behind, drawn by a splendid pair of hays, which are driven by a man in plain clothes, and whose appearance by no means seems to correspond with the aristocratic air of the whole set out, especially as indicated by the two attendants who occupy the hinder seat, and by the splendid character of the horses. Beside the driver sits a lady of a certain age, and in the scat behind, two young ones, all three muffled up to the chins in cloaks, shawls, and boas, so that you can scarcely distinguish a feature of any one of them. Perhaps you take the whole company for the upper servants of some great house, going down to the country seat to prepare for the reception of their lord and lady, who are to follow by and by. You have not examined with due care the face and expression of the driver who directs the vehicle with such consummate skill among the entangled throng; or you could not, notwithstanding its cloudy, clod-hopping, and altogether uncouth appearance, have mistaken its owner for anything but a lord. It is the Apicins of his day, the Earl of S, f, n, to whom that Charlemagne of cooks, Monsieur Ude, will owe (under heaven) his immortality, and who will in turn be immortalised as the Mecœnas of Monsienr Ude. The recent retirement of this nobleman from the turf, to which he had for so many years been one of the most honourable and liberal ornaments, and his comparative cessation from dispensing the hospitalities of a table which he administered with a delicacy of tact and a refinement of combination never before equalled in this country, are already felt as a national loss. The lady by his side is his Countess, and those in the seat behind are his daughters, the ladies M-x.

But see!, what is this vision of the age of chivalry, that comes careering towards us ou horsehack, in the form of a stately cavalier, than whom nothing has been witnessed in modern times more noble in air, more splendid in person, more distingué in dress, more consummate in equestrian skill, more radiant in intellectual expression, and altogether more worthy and fitting to represent one of those knights of the olden time, who warred for truth and beauty beneath the banners of the brilliant Cœur-de-Lion? As we attach no slight value and importance to personal appearance, especially in the younger branches of our aristocracy, we are sorry we cannot claim as our own this noblest specimen that our metropolis can boast of “the human form divine.” It is Count d’O-y, brother of the Duchess de G-e, and son of General Count d’O-y. Those who have the pleasure of being personally intimate with this accomplished foreigner, will confirm our testimony that no man has ever been more popular in the upper circles, or has better deserved to be so. His inexhaustible good spirits and good nature, his lively wit, his generous disposition and varied acquirements, make him the favourite companion of his own sex; while his unrivalled personal pretensions, render him, to say the least, “the observed of all observers” of the other sex. Indeed, since the loss of poor William Locke, there has been nobody to even dispute the palm of female admiration with Count d’O-y. What is still more remarkable, he is the sole arbiter elegantiarum in respect of male attire, a superiority that we confess ourselves not so able to forgive him as we can all his others. For a Frenchman to set the fashions of English male attire, is a concession to the supremacy of the Grande Nation that we for one can never willingly grant. We must therefore venture to hint, that if Count d’O-y has a defect which redeems him from the unenviable condition of being “a faultless monster,” it appertains to his taste in dress. In all other “compliments extern;”, in his personal appearance and bearing, his manner and address, in his equipage, his horses, his , in short, in everything but the fashion of his attire, he is perfect. But his dress is too individualised in its character. Its principles are excellent, but the practice of them is warped by private feeling. He pays too much attention to the “becoming,” and thus

To person gives up what was meant for mankind.

I am sorry to be obliged to hint this fault in one otherwise so consummate in all those pretensions and appliances “that may make up a man” (of fashion); but the importance of the subject will not permit me to be silent.

Count d’O-y sometimes sets a fashion on the same principle as that on which the big boys at a great school conduct the game of “follow my leader” with the little ones: he goes where nobody can follow him without breaking their necks! This is not generous. Moreover, it may be laid down as an axiom in respect of costume, that he who

“Dares do all that may become a man,”

has no just notions of the dignity of a man of fashion. In fact, if once the becoming were to be tolerated, even in male attire, much more in female, “the estate of the world (of fashion) would be undone” and Fashion herself might as well abdicate at once, and throw herself into the arms of Nature in the Otaheitan Islands.

Thus much we have thought due to the claims of that fourth estate of the realm, the World of Fashion, on whose fiat the very existence of our main theme wholly depends. We now return to that theme itself, with the promise not again to wander from it.

Be pleased to mark that exceedingly staid, quiet, and perfectly gentlemanlike, but somewhat prim and precise looking man, who wends this way on horsehack, his steed and its trappings as staid, quiet, and gentlemanlike as himself. All is exquisitely neat and point-de-vice about them both, but nothing is in the slightest degree “noticeable,” except to an eye profoundly practised in such matters. The individual in question is of a most uncertain age; not “elderly,” yet anything but “young;” and evidently wholly incapable of satisfying himself as to which of these two categories he is entitled to take rank in. There is, however, a settled smile on his fine-cut and amiable countenance, which shows that he has grown pretty nearly indifferent on the point. He feels that he has had his day, and as a man of sense, he cannot hope to have it twice over.

That is Dandy L-d, the most distinguished exquisite of his day,, that day having departed from the face of our planet some twenty years ago. If this shade of defunct dandyism still haunts the scene of his former glories, let him at least be forgiven , though for our parts we hold him in honour, as a rare instance of human resolution. Bonaparte, when he abdicated, wanted to come and hide himself in England; and Brummell, under similar circumstances, fled to conceal himself in France. But Dandy L-d still lingers fondly among the scenes and objects of his triumphs, albeit every one of them is so changed that he himself can scarcely recognise them, and himself more changed than all the rest! If those who know him only under his present aspect, doubt the change that “time and the hour” have operated upon him, let them turn to an equestrian portrait of him from the pencil of Dighton, the HB of the “sinking generation,” under-written “A scene from Rotten Row.” Never shall we forget the pride of heart that came upon us on the occasion of this portrait first making its appearance at the well-known shop in St. James’s Street. On entering the private apartment of our honoured parent two or three days after the above event, we were somewhat surprised at hearing ourselves greeted as follows :,

“Well, Sir! a pretty fool you’ve made of yourself at last!”

” In what, Sir?”

“In what, Sir! Why ar’nt you stuck up in the print shops? Are not your silly coxcombries held forth to the gaze and ridicule of the town, and to my disgrace! I knew it would be so.”

“I have not the honour of understanding you, Sir.”

“Indeed! then be pleased to go and look at the window of the caricature shop in St. James’s Street.”

We went on the instant, and with a beating heart, not (shall we confess it?), not without a faint hope, that in point of fact we might possibly have attained to the distinguished honour predicated of us by our mistaken parent. Alas! he was mistaken in both senses of the term. The effigy which had been reported to him as representing no other than the sole hope and heir of his house and honours, was that of, Dandy L-d.

One more relic of the by-gone time, and we have done with retrospection. Observe that singular specimen of humanity which is directing the course of a plain Stanhope, drawn by a somewhat dilapidated steed, not without a sporting look about him, but “so quiet that a lady might drive him” , (the steed we mean, though the description applies equally to the horse and its master). He is muffled up to the ears in a huge Witney coat, with large rose-wood buttons; a thick shawl loosely encircles his neck, and forms a deep nestling-place for his unseen chin; and a low-crowned and broad-flapped hat ensconces half the rest of his face. But by what remains visible of it, you can perceive that it bears a striking resemblance to that of Bill Baldwin’s famous bull-dog Billy, now that he is retired from public life to the otium cum dignitale of his master’s warm and cosy dung-hill. That is the once famous Sir John L, d, once the prince of horse jockeys, and the pride of Newmarket; more lately Groom of the Stables to his most equestrian majesty George the Fourth. Those who remember him as the model and leader of the four-in-hand club, and have witnessed the perfect skill with which he used to wind his team of gallant greys through the seemingly inextricable mazes which half a score such used to create daily on this very spot where he is now content to tool along his humble Stanhope at “a market trot,” will do well to reflect on the perishable nature of human greatness.

Turn we now to the things and beings of this world;, the Lads, the Lloyds, and the Lumley St. Georges of a quarter of a century ago being destined, like extinct volcanos, never again to “flare up” in the world of fashion.

We hope the reader of these pages needs not to be instructed, that the English exquisite of the present day piques himself on being distinguished by nothing that can in the minutest degree distinguish him from anybody else. He is the very quaker of his “order,” and quietism in all things is his only aim and attainment. His dress must be of the most “quiet” cut, colour, and conformation; his cab is the perfection of “quiet” no-pretence; his horse is quietness itself; his manner is “quiet”; his amusements are “quiet.” In short, he is quietism personified. Behold the two most un-conspicuous models of this “order,” the Viscounts C*********h and R **** h, both of them clever and accomplished young men, and both of them destined for better (and perchance worse) things than those at which they have hitherto aimed. To describe them were as difficult as superfluous, since it could be done only by negatives, and has moreover been done by those already. They are to be distinguished only by a certain air of distinction, which nothing but the actual attainment of distinction can give. There is nothing in the smallest degree uncommon about them, either in person, manner, or attire; and yet nobody can mistake them for common persons.

The above two personages belong to, and represent a class; whereas most of the conspicuous men of the day are classes by themselves; they stand alone, “none but themselves can be their parallel.” Such are George W** *l, Tommy D**c***e, the S***h***s, Lord A * v* * l * y, &c. &c. Our present position at once enables and entitles us to glance at the external characteristics of each and all of these, for the benefit of those who have never had the advantage of being enrolled among the “Slaves of the Ring.”

George W-l has the merit of having being the most conspicuous “young man” of his day for the last twenty years!, an extent of personal distinction never before accorded in that most ephemeral of all human systems of government, the realm of fashion. Look at him as he sits there on horseback, gazing briskly about him, his right hand supported at arm’s length by the sturdy riding cane of ebony whose extremity rests on his knee. Observe his fierce, fighting-cock air; his coal-black gipsy curls; his aristocratic (not to call it arrogant) expression of countenance , never laid aside, whether he is smiling on a fair dame, or frowning on a fawning dun; his trim and well-built person, elevated at least two inches above its natural height by the force of family consequence. His style of dress, though bold and original, is in perfect keeping and good-taste. The broad, loose-lying collars, contrasting with the trim contraction of the waist, give a breadth to the shoulders, and an expansion to the chest, on which he evidently piques himself. We have heard of “a pocket Venus:” George W-l would pass (and may) for a pocket Hercules. He has, however, one fault (and who has so few?): there is, about his personal bearing, an air of swagger and bravado not in keeping with that character of a man of spirit and a gentleman, which he has always maintained.

How different from his friend W-l in all things external (and we profess to look no deeper) is that “pet of the petticoats,” Tommy D-e; unless it be in his being above imitating any body, and every body being incapable of copying him. Mark the perfectly self-complacent air with which he sits in his quiet pannel-bodied Tilbury, his chiselled features beaming with a perpetual smile, ready set for the recognition of any good thing that may fall from his own lips, or those of his sparkling companions; for to call one up (a smile we mean) on each of the thousand and one occasions that daily occur in his enviable round of boon companionship, would be too much trouble to ask of so pious a disciple of the poco-curante school of wits and good-fellowe to which honest Tommy belongs.

D-e’s dress is, if you examine it closely, the perfection of careless no-pretence. And yet to look at him with a cursory glance you would mistake him for a mere dandy. He is nothing of the sort,, but a man of quick and lively wit, sound sense, and excellent discretion. That he is so, witness the singular fact that he, the idol of exclusiveism and the model of aristocratic fastidiousness, should have been able twice to worm himself into the representation of the scot and lot ragamuffins of Hertford, and now of the not more refined radicals of Finsbury. These are signal achievements. They are as if Mr. Cobbett should persuade his grace of Newcastle to return him for one of his boroughs.

Remark that most “military-looking” of personages,, using the phrase, however, in the militia-man’s and maid servant’s sense of it. He is so be-wigged, be-whiskered, and be-wadded, that you cannot gain a fair glance at any particular portion of his person; but the tout ensemble answers pretty exactly to the lyric description of that “gay deceiver”

” The captain bold from Halifax,”

whose pretensions proved so fatal to the peace and reputation of “poor Miss Bailey.” He is mounted (with the air of a riding master) on an enormous grey horse, that steps along proudly under its stately burden, as if it were as amply convinced of the consequence of its rider as he is himself. That is the Hon. Col. Lincoln St*nh**e.

You would scarcely suppose the above to be the brother of that very odd and essentially un-military looking person who is driving, in a nondescript phaeton, as shabby in its externals as his own coat, a fair creature fit to have graced the sun-lit chariot of Phaeton himself. The one brother, Lincoln, is all for externals. In the Elizabethan era he would have been a soldado of fortune, a swash-buckler, and a roaring boy; in the Georgian era he is content to be the very model and ideal of “a bold dragoon.” His brother Leicester is all for intellect. In the days of the maiden queen he would have been the rival and companion of the Raleighs, the Sidneys, and the De Brookes; he would have sailed round the world, patronised Spenser, and, if he had not perished in the Dutch wars, would, in all prohability have fallen in love with his virgin mistress, boldly declared his passion, and lost his head for his pains. As it is, he establishes printing presses where nobody can read; helps to re-elevate the Greek nation by promoting the son of one of its chiefs to be his cab-boy; patronises polite letters by setting on foot a subscription for Mr. Silk Buckingham; and evinces his self devotion to the sex by marrying a handsome wife who is young enough to be his granddaughter. It is impossible to observe any thing more characteristic than the face and person of this eccentric gentleman. His figure is long and gaunt as that of the knight of la Mancha, attenuated and drawn out to a thread-paper, by the subtlety of his schemes and contemplations for the glory of his name and the good of mankind. And

“His face is as a book where men may read strange matters.”

It combines all intellectual opposites: the pride of the aristocrat with the humility of the man of the people; the enthusiasm of the poet with the cunning of the trading politician; the intense thought of the metaphysician with the vacuity of Matthews’ old Scotch women; the far-reaching glance of the leader of a sect with the flat credulity and empty imbecility of a follower of Owen or St. Simon.

Behold the Lord of A-l-y, the Falstaff of the fashionable world, for to such distinctive and distinguished honour is he entitled no less by the capaciousness of his person, the fineness of his wit, and the fullness and facetiousness of his humour, than by his knowledge of life and society, his negligence of his own interest, and his early devotion to “the true prince.” There is nothing to remark about his person, but its noble expansion,, worthy symbol of those gastronomic pursuits in which he is so consummate a practitioner; and with his intellectual man we must not here concern ourselves.

Yonder handsome aristocratic face, graceful person, and perfectly quiet gentlemanly air, appertain to the Marquis of W-r, son and heir to the Duke of B -t. He was once the mirror of exquisites, the hope of handsome actresses, the ornament of the coulisses, and the oracle of the green room.

“Years have now brought the philosophic mind;”

and Lord W-r is only conspicuous and enviable as the favourite of all his friends. But we are bound to notice him here, in virtue of what he was. A leader in the race of fashion cannot put off his honours merely by changing his tailor. He may abdicate the throne, but history will claim him nevertheless, or perhaps so much the more.

Observe that singularly inconspicuous young man, who is riding a slight, full blood horse. In his physiognomy there is something that is familiar to every one who looks un him, though he is unknown to almost any one except his personal intimates. His perfectly simple attire; his plain, honest, open, and by no means unintelligent face; his small unnoticeable person, and the utter absence of all conventional superiority or pretence in his outward bearing, are quite incapable of accounting for the feeling of curiosity that you can scarcely help entertaining, when looking at him, as to who and what he is. The reason of the interest you feel in him is to be found in that peculiar form and expression of his face, which points him out as, the son of his father. That is the Marquis of D-o, eldest son and heir to the most illustrious Captain of the age.

Near him is another youthful scion of a conspicuous house, who is, however, not content to let his distinctions rest upon the merits of other people, but is determined to achieve them for himself. At present they are limited to a fine person, a fashionable tailor, a somewhat florid taste in attire (especially in the articles of brocade waistcoats and jewelled shirt-buttons), a stylish cab, a slapping horse, and a smart tiger. That is Mr. Sp-g, step-son of the other great man of our day, of him, on the turned-up tip of whose illustrious nose the destinies of the English nation are at this moment balanced, and where they appear to hold about as precarious a position as that of the little boy whom the street jugglers clap upon the top of a coach-wheel, and elevate to a like unenviable eminence, to the surprise and admiration of all beholders, no less than to the imminent peril of the patient’s neck, in both instances. It should seem, from a recent attempt of young Mr. Sp-g to represent in Parliament the precious constituency of the borough of Hertford, under the radical auspices of his friend Tommy D-e, that he has “a soul above (shirt) buttons.”

But, for amhition and dandyism united, commend us to that dark, oriental-looking personage, whose long coal-black curls, and velvet cravat, serve to set off to the best disadvantage the hilious hue of his fine but repulsive countenance. If it were not for the finical air and kangaroo attitude with which his kid-gloved hands hold the white reins of the dark cab in the profound recesses of which he sits retired, like a Persian satrap in his palanquin, you might mistake him for the captain of a Calabrian handitti in disguise. Could you persuade him to emerge from his place of half-concealment, this supposition might be strengthened; the probabilities being that you would find his lower man attired in green velvet trowsers, scarlet morocco boots, and other corresponding et cetera, of an equally novel and novel-like description. If you are not acquainted with the erratic nature of the human intellect, you will be surprised to learn that the singular-looking personage now before you is (seriously) the greatest genius of the day. It is no other than “the younger d’ls-i,” such being the style and title which it pleases him to assume; Christian or conventional cognomens being too common-place to suit with the originality of his ideas. Lions are pretty well exploded in society now-a-days; but this gentleman would remain a “lion” all his life, even if he were to pass the rest of it in one of Mr. Owen’s parallelograms. Before his late sojourn in the East, he was merely an amusingly singular person; but since his return, he has become a singularly amusing one; his only fault being that, in his recognised capacity of a “lion,” he is not content with less than the lion’s share of the feast, which generally amounts to the whole. I wish this were a place to expatiate a little on his intellectual pretensions, which are well worth examination and study. But even he himself could not expect to find listeners to philosophy in the Ring in Hyde Park.

One more portrait, and we have done. Nor should we have ventured to introduce this in a place like the present, but that the distinguished original does not scruple to do the same. Nothing is either too grave or too light for his attention. He can settle the character of a nation, and hit the colour of a neckcloth, with equal tact and precision. He is equally ambitious and able to shine in the councils which originate the one, and the coteries which decree the other. As he is, upon the whole, the best writer, so he is (when he pleases) the best dresser of his day. Need we, after this, say that the person we are speaking of is Mr. E. L. B-r? You observe that he is on foot. It is not aristocratic to be on foot in the Park on Sunday; and therefore it is that he is on foot; for, all-aristocratic as he is, it is not for him to be bound by conventional rules. You observe that he is dressed in colours that are not the exact fashion of the hour; and to have a fashion of one’s own is not gentlemanly. But he, perfect gentleman as he is, would no more follow a fashion than he would lead one. He dresses as it pleases him to dress; and what pleases him is sure to be in perfect taste. For the rest, his dress is curiously and studiously adapted to the cast of his complexion and the colour of his hair. His coat is never of a determined colour, but of a mixed tint, that will blend favourably with his waistcoat on the one hand, and his whiskers on the other. His figure is slim, but of perfect symmetry, and the exact medium height;, which latter, as we venture to judge, does not quite reach the standard of his own ideal of what is fitting, since his invariable mode of wearing his hat indicates a desire to look an inch taller than he is. His face is one of the most intellectual that can be conceived, but one where, if we mistake not, the learned in face lore may read more than the owner of the book would fain have disclosed; though he knows full well that those who are able to read what is written there, are not the persons likely to make an ill use of the knowledge. When he looks in his mirror he must know what we mean.

When Rogers was asked his opinion of Walter Scott and Wordsworth relatively to each other, he is said to have replied, “Wordsworth is the greatest genius of the day, and Scott is the cleverest man that ever lived.” Dicta of this kind luckily never hold good for more than about ten years. It may now be said of the two last remarkable persons whose “compliment extern” we have just taken the liberty of setting before the reader, that the first is the greatest genius of the day, and the second is the cleverest man in the world.* The probable inference is (at least it is so in times like ours), that the one will never be anything better than conspicuous, while the other will give a character to the literature of his age, and an impulse and direction to the destinies of his country; for your geniuses, for the most part, do but mark and illustrate the age in which they live, and prophesy of that which is to come: it is ambition, talent, and industry united that work out those prophecies, and educe the future from the past.

Was there ever such a conclusion from such a commencement! The destinies of nations in the hands of a brace of Hyde Park exquisites!! And yet we, even we who write these ephemeral lines, have witnessed stranger things. Have we not seen a little lieutenant of engineers moving the moral and political world from its foundations, even without the aid of another world on which to fix his levers!, a horde of northern barbarians hoisting it hack half-way to its former position!! and a handful of Parisian calicols arresting for ever its retrograde movement, by overturning a few omnibuses in its path,and then precipitating it forwarder than ever in its onward course, by flinging a few paving stones at its head!!!

At present, as we have hinted above, it is halanced on the sky y-pointing promontory of a special pleader’s nose. What is to become of it next?

This is more than can at present be answered by Proteus Plume.

*We do not quite agree with the writer in his estimation of the two distinguished individuals whom he here describes. The younger d’l-i is undoubtedly a man of genius, and of powerful genius. He has an energetic and lofty imagination, teeming with beauties; yet these beauties are transient: they strike forcibly, but leave no lasting impression. In conversation he is inimitable; and he keeps up in his listeners a rich stream of excitement, wonder, and delight; but he will never write anything that will be read beyond the passing hour. Why is this? Because judgment is not the pilot of his genius. Let him beware of resembling one of those meteoric coruscations in the heavens, which blaze intensely for an instant, and then disappear for ever.
On the other hand, Mr. E. L. B-r is more than a clever man; he is a man of striking genius, surpassing, at the present day, almost all his contemporaries. His imagination is bold, vivid, clear, and beautifully refined; by his judgment he has subdued his genius to his will, and applied it to the benefit of his country Mr. Ð’, , r has a useful aim in all his writings; he will be judged by that posterity which the name of the younger d’ls-i will never reach, unless he makes a fitter use of the extraordinary gift with which nature has endowed him.

Quoted from: The Court magazine and belle assemblée and monthly critic and the Lady’s magazine and museum. (1835)