~339~~mutual friend, Bob Transit (see plate), in closing my account of which I have only to say, we were not disappointed in our search after variety, and came away high in spirits, and perfectly satisfied with the good-humour and social intercourse of our eccentric associates. [Illustration: 339] The sad, the sober, and the sentimental were all gone to roost, before our merry trio sallied forth from the Castle Tavern, ripe for any sport or spree. Of all the bucks in this buckish age, your London buck is the only true fellow of spirit; with him life never begins too early, or finishes too late; how many of the west-end _roues_ ride twenty miles out, in a cold morning, to meet the hounds, and after a hard day's run mount their hack and ride twenty miles home to have the pleasure of enjoying their own fire-side, or of relating the hair-breadth perils and escapes they have encountered, to their less active associates at Long's or Stevens's, the Cider Cellar, or the Coal-hole! The general introduction of gas throws too clear a light upon many dark transactions and midnight frolics to allow the repetition of the scenes of former times: here and there to be sure an odd nook, or a dark cranny, is yet left unenlightened; but the leading streets of the metropolis are, for the most part, too well illuminated to allow the _spreeish_ or the _sprightly_ to carry on their jokes in security, or bolt away with safety when a charley thinks proper to set his _child a crying_.{3} We had crossed the road, in the direction of Chancery-lane, expecting to have met with a hackney _rattler_, but not one was to be found upon the stand, when Bob espied the broad _tilt_ of a _jarvey perched_ upon his _shop-board_, and impelling along, with no little labour of the whip, a pair of _anatomies_, whose external appearance showed they 3 Springing his rattle.