How are they always getting leave from their regiments? If they are not wanted in this country, (as wanted they cannot be, for you see them sprawling over the railing in Rotten Row all day, and shaking their heels at every ball in town,)--if they are not wanted in this country, I say, why the deuce are they not sent off to India, or to Demerara, or to Sierra Leone, by Jove?--the farther the better; and I should wish a good unwholesome climate to try 'em, and make 'em hardy. Here is this Hicks, then--Captain Launcelot Hicks, if you please--whose life is nothing but breakfast, smoking, riding-school, billiards, mess, polking, billiards, and smoking again, and da capo--pulling down his moustaches, and going to take a tour after the immense labors of the season. "How do you do, Captain Hicks?" I say. "Where are you going?" "Oh, I am going to the Whine," says Hicks; "evewybody goes to the Whine." The WHINE indeed! I dare say he can no more spell properly than he can speak. "Who is on board--anybody?" I ask, with the air of a man of fashion. "To whom does that immense pile of luggage belong--under charge of the lady's-maid, the courier, and the British footman? A large white K is painted on all the boxes." "How the deuce should I know?" says Hicks, looking, as I fancy, both red and angry, and strutting off with his great cavalry lurch and swagger: whilst my friend the Serjeant looks at him lost in admiration, and surveys his shining little boots, his chains and breloques, his whiskers and ambrosial moustaches, his gloves and other dandifications, with a pleased wonder; as the ladies of the Sultan's harem surveyed the great Lady from Park Lane who paid them a visit; or the simple subjects of Montezuma looked at one of Cortes's heavy dragoons. "That must be a marquis at least," whispers Lankin, who consults me on points of society, and is pleased to have a great opinion of my experience. I burst out in a scornful laugh. "THAT!" I say; "he is a captain of dragoons, and his father an attorney in Bedford Row. The whiskers of a roturier, my good Lankin, grow as long as the beard of a Plantagenet. It don't require much noble blood to learn the polka. If you were younger, Lankin, we might go for a shilling a night, and dance every evening at M. Laurent's Casino, and skip about in a little time as well as that fellow. Only we despise the kind of thing you know,--only we're too grave, and too steady." "And too fat," whispers Lankin, with a laugh. "Speak for yourself, you maypole," says I. "If you can't dance yourself, people can dance round you--put a wreath of flowers upon your old poll, stick you up in a village green, and so make use of you." "I should gladly be turned into anything so pleasant," Lankin answers; "and so, at least, get a chance of seeing a pretty girl now and then. They don't show in Pump Court, or at the University Club, where I dine. You are a lucky fellow, Titmarsh, and go about in the world. As for me, I never--"