The dress, the manners, and the talk of circus men are peculiar, but in none of these particulars are they at all ‘horsey,’ as all Sleary’s company are described, unless they are equestrians, and even these are less so than grooms and jockeys. They may be recognized by their dress alone as readily as foreigners who have just arrived in England, and who do not belong to those social classes that affect the latest Parisian fashions, and in which national distinctions have disappeared. Watch the men who enter a circus by the side-doors about eleven o’clock in the forenoon, or walk on two or three successive mornings, between ten and twelve, from Westminster Bridge to Waterloo Road, and you may recognize the acrobats and rope-dancers of the circuses and music-halls by their dress; you may meet one wearing a sealskin coat, unbuttoned, and displaying beneath a crimson velvet vest, crossed by a heavy gold chain. He is a ‘tip-topper,’ of course; one of those who used to get their fifty or sixty pounds a week at the Alhambra, or who has had nuggets thrown to him at San Francisco and Melbourne. Perhaps the next you will meet will be a man of lower grade, wearing a brown coat, with velvet collar, over a sealskin vest, with a brassy-looking chain festooned across it. Another wears a drab over-coat, with broad collar and cuffs of Astrakhan lamb-skin; an Alpine hat, with a tail-feather of a peacock stuck in the band, is worn jauntily on his head; a pin, headed with a gilt horse-shoe or horse’s head or hoof, adorns his fancy neck-tie; and an Alaska diamond glistens on the fourth finger of an ungloved hand. Further on you meet a man whose form is enveloped in a capacious blue cloak, and whose head is surmounted by the tallest felt hat, with the broadest brim, you have ever seen. But you are not done with these strange people yet. You have nearly reached the end of York Road when there issues from the office of Roberts or Maynard, the equestrian and musical agents, a man wearing a low-crowned hat and a grey coat, braided with black; or, it may be, a black velvet coat, buttoned across his chest, whatever the weather may be, and ornamented with a gold chain festooned from the breast-pocket to one of the button-holes.