A DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH. General Views of the Author relative to Subject and Style-- Time and Place--Perspective Glimpse of the great City--The Approach--Cockney Salutations--The Toll House--Western Entrance to Cockney Land--Hyde Park--Sunday Noon-- Sketches of Character, Costume, and Scenery--The Ride and Drive--Kensington Gardens--Belles and Beaux--Stars and Fallen Stars--Singularities of 1824--Tales of Ton--On Dits and Anecdotes--Sunday Evening--High Life and Low Life, the Contrast--Cockney Goths--Notes, Biographical, Amorous, and Exquisite. [Illustration: page165] Its wealth and fashion, wit and folly, Pleasures, whims, and melancholy: Of all the charming belles and beaux Who line the parks, in double rows; Of princes, peers, their equipage, The splendour of the present age; Of west-end fops, and crusty cits, Who drive their gigs, or sport their tits; With all the groups we mean to dash on Who form the busy world of fashion: Proceeding onwards to the city, With sketches, humorous and witty. The man of business, and the Change, Will come within our satire's range: Nor rank, nor order, nor condition, Imperial, lowly, or patrician, Shall, when they see this volume, cry-- "The satirist has pass'd us by," But with good humour view our page Depict the manners of the age. Our style shall, like our subject, be Distinguished by variety; Familiar, brief we could say too-- (It shall be whimsical and new), But reader that we leave to you. 'Twas morn, the genial sun of May O'er nature spread a cheerful ray, When Cockney Land, clothed in her best, We saw, approaching from the west, And 'mid her steeples straight and tall Espied the dome of famed St. Paul, Surrounded with a cloud of smoke From many a kitchen chimney broke; A nuisance since consumed below By bill of Michael Angelo.{1} The coach o'er stones was heard to rattle, 1 M. A. Taylor's act for compelling all large factories, which have steam and other apparatus, to consume their own smoke. ~166~~