“His Lordship now resides in the Regent's Park, and may almost nightly be seen at a public-house in the neighbourhood, where he takes his grog and smokes his pipe, amusing the company around him with anecdotes of his former days; we may, perhaps, fall in with him some night in our travels, and you will find him a very amusing and sometimes very sensible sort of fellow, till he gets his grog on board, when he can be as boisterous and blustering as a coal-heaver or a bully. His present fortune is impaired by his former imprudence, but he still mingles with the sporting world, and a short time back had his pocket picked, at a _milling_ match, of a valuable gold repeater. He has favoured the world with several literary productions, among which are Memoirs of his own Life, embellished with a view of the author, suspended from (to use the phrase of a late celebrated auctioneer) a _hanging wood_; and a very elaborate treatise on the Art of Rat-catching. In the advertisement of the latter work, the author engages it will enable the reader to “clear any house of these noxious vermin, however much infested, excepting only a certain great House in the neighbourhood of St. Stephen's, Westminster.”{1} 1 It appears by the newspapers, that the foundation of a certain great house in Pall Mall is rotten, and giving-way. The cause is not stated; but as it cannot arise from being top-heavy, we may presume that the rats have been at work there. Query, would not an early application of the Major's recipe have remedied the evil, and prevented the necessity of a removal of a very heavy body, which of course, must be attended with a very heavy expense? 'Tis a pity an old friend should have been overlooked on such an occasion. ~29~~“Do you,” said Tom, pointing to a person on the other side of the way, “see that young man, walking with a half-smothered air of indifference, affecting to whistle as he walks, and twirling his stick? He is a _once-a-week man_, or, in other words, a _Sunday promenader_--Harry Hairbrain was born of a good family, and, at the decease of his father, became possessed of ten thousand pounds, which he sported with more zeal than discretion, so much so, that having been introduced to the gaming table by a pretended friend, and fluctuated between poverty and affluence for four years, he found himself considerably in debt, and was compelled to seek refuge in an obscure lodging, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Kilburn, in order to avoid the _traps_; for, as he observes, he has been among the _Greeks and pigeons_, who have completely _rook'd_ him, and now want to crow over him: he has been at hide and seek for the last two months, and, depending on the death of a rich old maiden aunt who has no other heir, he eventually hopes to '_diddle 'em_.'”