The Sun.
London, England, 1831-06-02 00:00:00

A CITIZEN SIXTY YEARS AGO.

The following is an amusing and well drawn
)ortrait of a citizen sixty years ago : it appears
in a novel called Atherton, written with no in-

considerable humour and spirit :
v;:.Bryant himself was •a neat, quiet, orderly
sort of a man, regular as clock-wolk, and steady as
rime, the rely pink of punctuality, and the essence
of exactness. He had been in business nearly forty
years, in the same shop, conducted precisely in the
same style as in the days of his predecessors: he
lacked not store of clothes or change of wigs, but hi,
clothes and wigs, and three-cornered hats, were so
like each other, that they seemed as it were part of
himself. His wig was brown, so were his coat and
waistcoat, which were nearly of equal length. He
wore short black breeches with paste buckles,
speckled worsted hose, and very large shoes with
very large silver buckles. He was most intensely
and entirely a citizen. He loved the city with an
undivided attachment ; he loved the sound of its
bek, and the noise of its carts and coaches ; he
loved the colour of its mud and the canopy of its
smoke ; he loved is November fogs, and enjoyed
the music of its street musicians and its itinerant
merchants : he loved all the institutions civil and

religious ; he thought there was wisdom in them
there was wisdom in nothing else ; he loved the
church and he loved the steeple; and the parson who
did the duty, and the parson who did not do the
duty ; and he loved the dell:, and the sexton, and
the parish beadle, with his broad gold laced hat and
cane of striking authority; and he loved the watch-
men and their drowsy drawl of past umph reciock ;'
he loved the charity schools, and admired beyond
all the sculpture of Phidias, or the marble mi-
racles of the Parthenon, the two full-length
statues about three feet each in length, and two feet
six inches in breadth, representing a charity boy
and a charity girl, standing over the door of the
parish school ; he loved the city companies, their
halls, their balls, though he never danced at them,
their dinners, for he never missed them ; and above
all other companies he loved the stationers, and its
handsome barge, and its glorious monopoly of al-
manacks ; he loved the Lord Mayor and the Man-
sion-house—it was not quite so black then as it is
now—and he loved the great lumbering state coach
and the little gingerbread Sheriffs' coaches, and
loved the Aldermen, and Deputies, and common-
councilmen, and liverymen. Oat of London he knew
nothing ; he believed that the Thames ran into the
sea, because he bad read. at school that all rivers run
into the sea, but what the sea mot be did not know
and did not care ; he believed that there were re-
gions beyond Highgate, and that the earth was ha-
bitable farther westward than Hyde Park corner ;
but he had never explore] beyond those remote dis-
tricts. What was Hammersmith to him or he to
Hammersmith ? He knew of nothing, thought of
nothing, and could conceive of nothing more ho-
nourable, more dignified, or more desirable, than a
good business properly attended to. lie was proud
of the close and personal attention that he paid to
his shop—somewhat censoriously proud ; he might
be called a mercantile prude, or shop-keeping pedant;
and when a near neighbour, who had a country
house at Kentish-town, to which he went down every
Saturday, and from whence he returned every Mon-
day or Tuesday, came, by a variety of unavoidable
or unavoided misfortunes, to make his appearance
in the Gazelle, with a Whereas' prefixed to his
name, Mr. Bryant rather uncandidly chuckled and
said, I don't wonder at it. I thought it would
end in that. That comes from leaving things to boys.
" Much as Mr. Bryant venerated the city and all
the city institutions, yet he was by no means ambi-
tious of its honours. His motives of abstinence
were of a mixed nature. He had fears that the
dignity of Common-councilman, which he had oc-
casionally been invited to aspire to, might interfere
with his domestic comforts and put Mrs. Dickinson
(his housekeeper) out of her way ; and he had some
slight apprehensions that he might not be successful
if he should make the attempt ; and then, as in the
course of his life he had seen many promoted to that
honour, whom he had once known as m
children and
apprentices, and whom he still regarded as boys,
though some of them %vete upwards of thirty years
old, he affected to make light of a dignity that had
become so cheap.

AGRICULTURAL REPORT FOR MAY,

much
fbatrbleeyprreesmenaitnmedontothb.e
Piano!
into the ground in the middle
somewhat forward, and the sowing
tatoe planting has been soin.
as also sheep-shearing, on the
of turnips has commence( .
may say, thus endcch the last ope-
rationconclusion of wbieh we
of us who have tbcreby got clear of a pro-
lation to many ,
Upon backward lands,
icted and expensive line of uperdtions. But as a draw-
back, the most important view is not very cheering, not only
of the spring season, and with no slight self gratu-
from the lateness of .he season, kit from the imperlect
culture of the lands, and the enormous load of weed vege-
tation, accumulating and fostering in their bowels; a
profitable stock lying perdue for the benefit of years and
years to come.
' The month of April, bating a few days, has been suffi-
ciently lauded. The commencement of the-present month
we fear, balanced the account of profit and loss too heavily
on the adverse side. Deluges of rains, u ith the wind on
the unfavourable side of the compass, succeeded by sharp
frosts, ice. and snow. The fruit trees, laden with the
most promising show of blossom and bud, were the first
and greatest sufferers. Much of the wall-fruit is irre-
coverably cut off, and in the great orchard counties, where
upon a 'arm, the fruit, had the season proved genial, might
have realise(' 5001. or 60W., two or three frosty nights have
in prospectu caused a defalcation to the amount of two
thirds. All the corn and the pulse crops and the artificial
grasses have shared, more or less, in the. calamity. The
wheat, happily the most hardy, as most important, has
stood the shock, with least injury ; but some of the poor,
heavy land wheats appear yellow and rough, and that
which is worse, to look forward, a nidus is provided for
the incubation and prolific increase of the blight insect.
The wheats, nevertheless, on all good dry lands, are strong
and luxuriant, and with a genial blooming season will, no
doubt, produce a profitable crop. Oats have resisted the
atmospheric attack, as most hardy, with the least injury.
Barley has suffered much, and beans, peas, most of all ;
and, it is said, there is a considerable breadth which it will
be advantageous to plough up. It is not possible that the
hops, the most sensitive of all our crops, can have escaped.
Monthly Magazine fo'r June.

A swarm of bees, passing over Bridgewater
on Thursday, alighted on the sign of the Globe Hotel.
This sign is a large hollow globe, made of tin. The busy
insects found a small hole in it, which they entered, and
have actually taken posse lion of the inside of the sphere.