'There is the Lion's Head, down whose jaws the
Spectator's own letters were passed; and over a great
banker's in Fleet Street the effigy of the wallet, which
the founder of the firm bore when he came into London a
country boy. People this street, so ornamented with
crowds of swinging chairmen, with servants bawling to
clear the way, with Mr. Dean in his cassock, his lacquey
marching before him; or Mrs. Dinah in her sack,
tripping to chapel, her footboy carrying her ladyship's
great prayer-book; with itinerant tradesmen, singing
their hundred cries (I remember forty years ago, as a
boy in London city, a score of cheery, familiar cries
that are silent now).
'Fancy the beaux thronging to the chocolate-houses,
tapping their snuff-boxes as they issue thence, their
periwig appearing over the red curtains. Fancy
Saccharissa beckoning and smiling from the upper
windows, and a crowd of soldiers bawling and bustling at
the door--gentlemen of the Life Guards, clad in scarlet
with blue facings, and laced with gold at the seams;
gentlemen of the Horse Grenadiers, in their caps of
sky-blue cloth, with the garter embroidered on the front
in gold and silver; men of the Halberdiers, in their
long red coats, as bluff Harry left them, with their
ruffs and velvet flat-caps. Perhaps the King's Majesty
himself is going to St. James's as we pass.'
_The Four Georges._
[Illustration: {A man of the time of George I.}]
[Illustration: {A woman of the time of George I.}]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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