"Walking Stewart." Early in the year 1821, London lost one of its famous eccentrics, who rejoiced in the above distinction, which, it must be admitted, he had fairly earned. He was one of the lions of the great town, and his ubiquitous nature was thus ingeniously sketched:-- "Who that ever weathered his way over Westminster Bridge has not seen _Walking Stewart_ (his invariable cognomen) sitting in the recess on the brow of the bridge, spencered up to his throat and down to his hips with a sort of garment, planned, it would seem, to stand _powder_, as became the habit of a military man; his dingy, dusty inexpressibles (truly inexpressibles), his boots travel-stained, black up to his knees--and yet not black neither--but arrant walkers, both of them, or their complexions belied them; his aged, but strongly-marked, manly, air-ripened face, steady as truth; and his large, irregular, dusty hat, that seemed to be of one mind with the boots? We say, who does not thus remember _Walking Stewart_, sitting, and leaning on his stick, as though he had never walked in his life, but had taken his seat on the bridge at his birth, and had grown old in his sedentary habit? To be sure, this view of him is rather negatived by as strong a remembrance of him in the same spencer and accompaniments of hair-powder and dust, resting on a bench in the Park, with as perfectly an eternal air: nor will the memory let him keep a quiet, constant seat here for ever; recalling him, as she is wont, in his shuffling, slow perambulation of the Strand, or Charing Cross, or Cockspur Street. Where really was he? You saw him on Westminster Bridge, acting his own monument. You went into the Park--he was there! fixed as the gentleman at Charing Cross. You met him, however, at Charing Cross, creeping on like the hour-hand upon a dial, getting rid of his rounds and his time at once! Indeed, his ubiquity appeared enormous, and yet not so enormous as the profundity of his sitting habits. He was a profound sitter. Could the Pythagorean system be entertained, what other would now be tenanted by _Walking Stewart_? Truly, he seemed always going, like a lot at an auction, and yet always at a stand, like a hackney-coach! Oh, what a walk was his to christen a man by! A slow, lazy, scraping, creeping, gazing pace--a shuffle--a walk in its dotage--a walk at a stand-still--yet was he a pleasant man to meet. We remember his face distinctly, and allowing a little for its northern hardness, it was certainly as wise, as kindly, and as handsome a face as ever crowned the shoulders of a soldier, a scholar and a gentleman.