The Sun.
London, England, 1835-02-11 00:00:00

A LONDON STREET PORTRAIT.

Our hero was one of those equivocal animal spirits
of the streets, who cqme whistling along, you not
knowing whether thief or errand boy, sometimes with
a bundle and sometimes not, in corduroys, a jacket,
and a cap or bit of hat, with hair sticking through a
hole in it. His vivacity gets him into serapes in the
street, and he is not ultra-studious of civility in his an-
swers. If the man he runs against is not very big, he
gives him abuse for abuse at once; if otherwise;he gets at
a convenient distance, and then halloos out," Eh, stupid!"
or " Can't you see before you ?" or " Go, and get your
face washed." The last is a favourite saying of his,
out of an instinct referable to his visage. He sings
" Hokee Pokee," and a " Shiny Night," varied occa-
sionally with an uproariOus, " Rise, gentle Moon,'7 or
" Coming through the Rye." On winter evenings,
you may hear him indulging himself as he goes along,
in a singular undulation of yowl sort of gargle—
as if a wolf were. practising the rudiments of a shake.
This he delights to do more particularly in a crowded
thoroughfare, as though determined that his noise
should triumph over every other, and show how
jolly he is, and how independent of the ties to good
behaviour. If the street is .a quiet one, and he has
a stick in his hand (perhaps a hoop-stick), he accom-
panies the howl with a run upon the gamut of the iron
rails. He is the nightingale of mud and cold. If he
gets on in life, he will be a pot-boy. At present, as we
said before, we hardly know what lie is; but his mother
thinks herself lucky if he is not transported. Well, one
of these elves of the pave—perplexers of Lord Mayors
and irritators of the police—was standing one evening be-
fore a pastry cook's shop window, flattening his nosy
against the glass, and watching the movements of a school
boy who was in the happy agony of selecting the best
bun. He had stood there ten minutes before the boy came
in, and had made himself acquainted with all the eat-
ables lying before him, and wondered at the slowness
and apparent indifference, of jaws masticating tarts. His
interest, great before, is now intense. He follows the
new comer's eye and his hand hither and thither. His
own arm feels like the other's arm. He shifts the ex-
pression of his mouth and the shrug of his body, at every
perilous approximation which the chooser makes to a se-
cond rate bun. He is like a bowler feliowing the nice
inflexions of the bias ; for he wishes him nothing but
success ; the occasion is too great for envy : he feels
all the generous sympathy of a knight of old, when he
saw another within an arc of winning some glorious
prize, and his arm doubtful of the blow. At length
the awful decision is made, and the bun laid hands on.
" Hall ! you fool," exclaims the watcher,
,bursting
with all the despair and indignation of knowing boy-
hood, " you have left the biggest !"—Leigh Hunt's
London Journal.

CHARLES SEYMOUR, THE PROUD

DUKE OF SOMERSET.

The princes whom he served, and their ministers,
seem to have been fully aware of his taste for pompous
show and dignified ceremony, and studious to
gratify it, for he was most invariably appointed
to act a public part in every grand public so-
lemo;ty which occurred during his life ; and the
laciness of his temper and habits, the most
'exact high breeding, and a fine person and counte-
nance, combined to qualify him peculiarly for such
offices. Of his excessive haughtiness in private
life, a multitude of instances, for the• most part un-
worthy of being here repeated, have been preserved.
We are told that his second Duchess, who will be pre-
sently mentioned, having once familiarly tapped him on
the shoulder with her fan, he started, and cried with
great indipaiion—., Madam, my first wife was a Percy,
and she never took such a liberty." He exacted, too, the
most profound respect from his children. It was one
of the offices of his two oungest daughters to watch
him in turn while he slept after dinner, but they were to
stand without intermission. Indulging one afternoon
in a longer portion of repose than usual, the fair sentinel
became fatigued, and took a chair, when the Duke, sud-
denly awakening; severely reprimandedher, and told her
that he would make her remember her disobedience.
He left 20,0001. less to her than to her sister, and this
has been, it is to be hoped falsely, ascribed to his re-
sentment of that offence. His communication with his
servants is said to have been conducted by signs, in
perfect silence. His lady died in 1722, and the duke,
after a widowhood of three years, married, in his grand
climacteric, Charlotte, second daughter of Daniel
Finch, Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham. From
that 'period he lived almost wholly in the country,
residing chiefly at his mansion of Petworth, in Sus-
sex, now the seat of his great grandson, the Earl
of Egremont. In his retirement, his objects and
his pursuits seem gradually to have narrowed
and dwindled into a constant series of efforts
to prolong a life which, especially to one of
his character, had teemed with so many blessings.
Among the papers of Sir Hans Sloane, preserved in
the British Museum, are numerous letters from the
Duke and Duchess, and their attendants, to that ce-
lebrated physician, chiefly on the state of his Grace's
health, marked by an anxiety so intense and so ex-
travagant, as to be at once ridiculous and deplora-
ble. Many of them are to press the Doctor for
remedies for a deafness that vexed him, the cause
of which he seems at last himself shrewdly to have
guessed ; for, in the year 1737, when he was
seventy-five, the Duchess thus concludes a long
letter to Sir Hans :—" My Lord desires his most
humble service to you. He continues with thickness
of hearing, which puts him in the spleen, fearing it
proceeds from, old age. He has been very seldom out
of the house, and keeps his ears stopt with black wool,
dipt in oil of vipers ; mixed sometimes with palsy
drops, sometimes with spirit of castor, and sometimes
dipt only in oil of bitter almonds, but does not
find advantage from either."—Lodge's Portraits and
Memoirs.

CHARACTER OF THE LATE MR. JUSTICE
TAUNTON IN THE LAW MAGAZINE.--.A choice specimen of
fine writing, in which clearness of thought and precision of
language are combined in no ordinary degree. " The truth
is that his feelings, almost always just, struggling with a rich
accumulation of materials in legal acquirements and classical
illustration, and an inertness of physical temperament, would,
in a mind less robust, have produced only strange and devious
excesses, and cast up its treasures in volcanic confusion ; but
it had strength with him, when excited, harmoniously to impel
all the riches of his intellect, with appropriate solemnity and
steadiness of movement, in the right direction to persuade, to
convince, or to appal. It was the true power of genius, bend-
ing alike the strengths and weaknesses of its possessor to its
ends. Not starting wildly into fantastical variations from his
character, but working out from the stubborn peculiarities of
that character, the illustrations of its own might, and ennobling
them as expressive of lofty and generous thoughts in the mind
of the hearer."
The weather here has been extremely boisterous
during the past week. For several days the wind has blown
a pertect hurricane, and we fear the shipping along our coast
must have sustained great damage.—Boston Herald.
MELANCHOLY EVENT.—On Saturday morning
at 12 o'clock a galley with four men belonging to Shoreham
left the harbour for the purpose of boarding some vessels at
sea. At the distance of half a mile front the pier, a heavy
sea struck the boat and upset it. Three of the men so far
recovered themselves as to be able to cling to the boat, and
were driven on shore in a state of great exhaustion ; but the
fourth, an elderly man named Jacob Beach, struggled for some
time with the mighty element, but in vain ; his strength failed
him, and the deep prepared him for a premature grave. The
body has since been washed ashore at Blackrock. Deceased
was for many years mate of one of the packets that sailed be-
tween Brighton and Dieppe.—Brighton Guardian.
BURGLARS PHYSICKED.—A few weeks ago the
premises of Captain Harvey, in Cottage-lane, Stepney, wero
broken into, and the safe plundered of a quantity of provisions.
The family expecting the thieves again, caused a suet pudding
to be made, in which they mixed 60 grains of calomel, and
directed the police to keep a sharp look-out. The pudding
was placed in a larder, in the midst of a quantity of new pro-
visions, on Tuesday night last, and next morning, at an early
hour, the policeman of the beat, hearing a noise proceed from
the back of Captain Harvey's garden, hastened to the spot,
and saw two bundles, containing provisions, on the top of the
palings, and two boys looking over. He was, however, afraid
to capture the thieves alone, and called up a brother police-
man, named Harrison' 64 K, who resides in Cottage-lane,
who immediately rose from his bed, got over the palings, arid
found the door of the store-room broken open, and the two
bundles lying under the palings. The greatest portion of the
suet pudding had disappeared ; and on the same day Harrison,
hearing that two boys named Croxford and Chatterway, who
had been employed about the grounds, were seriously indis-
posed, took them into custody, and ascertained that the hand-
kerchiefs in which the stolen meat was wrapped belonged to
them. Captain Harvey refused to prosecute, believing that
the calomel would sufficiently punish the offenders, nor was he
mistaken. The dose put them into a state of salivation ;
every tooth in their heads was loosened, and the boys have not
yet recovered from the effects of the medicine.