The hand of the clock is on the stroke of four, and, although no carriage is within sight, the collector is at his post, change and ticket in hand; within a few seconds a phaeton, with "harnessed meteors" flashes through the gate. The words "ticket," "all right," have passed more quickly than I can write them. That is the carriage of some gentleman who possesses a villa at Richmond, and whose avocations call him to town twice a week. "That's a regular gentleman," says the pike; "quite a timekeeper, no need of a watch the day he passes, and he always stands a turkey at Christmas." Next comes a hearse with numerous mourning-coaches, returning from all the pride and pomp of a funeral pageant. What a contrast now to the last time the procession passed the gate! Then the tears of a widowed wife, the sobs of a bereaved daughter, might be heard; now all is vulgar mirth and uproarious merriment; the trappings of woe, the plumes, the "inky cloaks," the customary suits of solemn black, are a perfect mockery of grief. Turn we to a brighter theme. An advanced guard of a crack Lancer regiment announces the approach of the Royal cortége. The acclamations that rend the sky herald the approach of the "observed of all observers," the luxurious George IV., then in the height of his popularity. Such was the turnpike gate in bygone days. Few sights were more amusing than the "White Horse Cellar," Piccadilly, in the old times of coaching. What a confusion--what a Babel of tongues! The tumult, the noise, was worthy the pen of a Boz, or the pencil of Cruikshank. People hurrying hither and thither, some who had come too soon, others too late. There were carriages, hackney-coaches, vans, carts, and barrows; porters jostling, touters swearing, cads elbowing, coachmen wrangling, passengers grumbling, men pushing, women scolding. Trunks, portmanteaus, hat-boxes, band-boxes, strewed the pavement; orange merchants, cigar merchants, umbrella merchants, dog merchants, sponge merchants, proclaiming the superiority of their various wares; pocket-knives with ten blades, a cork-screw, button-hook, punch, picker, lancet, gimlet, gun-screw, and a saw; trouser-straps, four pairs a shilling; silver watch-guards--"cheap, cheap, very cheap;" patent pens and (n)ever-pointed pencils, twelve a shilling; bandana handkerchiefs, that had never seen foreign parts, to be given away for an old hat; London sparrows, as the coachmakers would say, "yellow bodies," were passed off as canaries, though "their wood notes wild" had never been heard out of the sound of Bow Bells; ill-shaven curs, "shaven and shorn," and looking like the priest in the child's story, "all forlorn," painted, powdered, and decked with blue ribbons, assumed the form of French poodles who "did everything but speak;" members of the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge were hawking literature at the lowest rate imaginable--"H'annuals at the small charge of