The manners and customs of the Islington colony, which may, I suppose, be taken for the suburban and Bloomsbury people generally--except that Russell and Bedford Squares were very, very much grander--may be read in Albert Smith’s ‘Adventures of Mr. Ledbury,’ his ‘Natural History of the Gent,’ ‘The Pottleton Legacy,’ and other contemporary works. Very good reading they are, if approached in the right spirit, which is a humble and an inquiring spirit. Many remarkable things may be learned from these books. For instance, would you know how the middle-class evening party was conducted? Here are a few details. The gentlemen, of whose long and wavy hair I have already spoken, wore, for evening dress, a high black stock, the many folds of which covered the shirt, and were enriched by a massive pin; the white shirt-cuffs were neatly turned over their wrists, their dress-coats were buttoned, their trousers were tight, and they wore straps and pumps. The ladies either wore curls neatly arranged on each side--you may still see some old ladies who have clung to the pretty fashion of their youth--or they wore their hair dropped in a loop down the cheek and behind the ear, and then fastened in some kind of band with ribbons at the back of the head. The machinery of the frocks reminds one of the wedding morning in ‘Pickwick,’ when all the girls were crying out to be ‘done up,’ for they had hooks and eyes, and the girls were helpless by themselves. Pink was the favourite colour--and a very pretty colour too; and there was plenty of scope for the milliner’s art in lace and artificial flowers. The elder ladies were magnificent in turbans, and the younger ones wore across the forehead a band of velvet or silk decorated with a gold buckle, or something in pearls and diamonds. This fashion lingered long. I remember--it must have been about the year 1850--a certain elderly maiden lady who always wore every day and all day a black ribbon across her brows; this alone gave her a severe and keep-your-distance kind of expression; but, in addition, the ribbon contained in the middle, if I remember aright, a steel buckle--though a lady, one thinks, would hardly wear a steel buckle on her forehead. Sometimes there was a wreath of flowers worn like a coronet, and sometimes, but I think hardly in Islington, a tiara of jewels. In middle-class circles, the fashion of evening dress was marred by a fashion, common to both sexes, of wearing cleaned gloves. Now kid gloves could only be cleaned by one process, so that the result was an effect of turps which could not be subdued by any amount of patchouli or eau-de-Cologne. There were, as yet, no cards for the dances, and when a waltz was played, everybody was afraid to begin. Quadrilles of various kinds were danced, and the country dance yet lingered at this end of the town. The polka came later. Dancing was stopped whenever any young lady could be persuaded to sing, and happy was the young