Already the little town is a-stir; servants are hastening to and fro; ominous-looking baskets and hampers are seen to pass and repass; strange quadrupeds are led by as saddle-horses, their gay headstalls and splendid saddle-cloths scarce diverting the eye from “groggy” fore-legs and drawn-up quarters; curiously dressed young gentlemen, queer combinations of Jockeyism with an Arcadian simplicity, stand in groups about; and, now and then, a carriage rolls by, and disappears up some steep street in search of its company. Ah! there go the Tollingtons! and in a conveniency, too, they’d scarcely like to be seen with in Hyde Park. What a droll old rattle-trap! and what a pair of wretched hacks to draw it! After all, one cannot help avowing that these people, seated there in that most miserable equipage, where poverty exhibits its most ludicrous of aspects, even there, they preserve as decisive an air of class and rank as--as--yes, I have found the exact equivalent--as almost every foreigner seated in a handsome carriage does of the opposite. Prejudice, bigotry, narrow-mindedness, or any thing else of the same kind it may be; but, after a great part of a life spent abroad, my testimony is, that for one person of either sex, whose appearance unmistakeably pronounces condition, met, abroad--I care not where--at least one hundred are to be seen in England. So much for the nation of shopkeepers! Ah! a tandem, by Jove! and rather well got up. Of course it could be no other than Burton--“the ruling passion strong in ‘debt!’” Well, he may have forgotten his creditors, but he has not forgotten how to hold the ribbons. What’s this heavy old coach with a cabriolet over the rumble?--the Russian minister, Kataffsky! Lord bless us! from all the strong braces and bars of wood and iron, one would say that it was built to stand a journey to Siberia. Who knows, but it may travel that road yet!... Pretty woman the Princess, but with all the characteristic knavery of her race in the eyes. Paulwas right when he refused to license Jews in Russia, because he knew his subjects would cheat _them!_ “_Bon jour, Marquis_.” Monsieur de Tavanne, very absurd but a chivalrous Frenchman of the old school. They say that, meeting the late Duc d’Orléans at Lady Grenville’s, he took a very abrupt leave, expressing as his reason that he did not know her Ladyship received “_des gens comme cela_.” A Vienna _Coupé_, with a Vienna Coachman, and a Vienna Countess inside, are very distinctive in their way. The Grafin von Lowenhaufen, one of those pretty _intriguantes_ of modern political warfare who frequent watering-places and act as the tirailleurs for Metternich and Guizot. Talleyrand avowed the great advantage of such assistance, which he said was impossible for an English minister, for “les Anglaises” always fell in love and blabbed!