“You should also go to No. 13, Standgate Street, a Baker, who has the finest collection of marine monsters in ten sea counties; sea-dragons, polypi, mer-people, most fantastic. You have only to name the old Gentleman in black (not the Devil), that lodged with him a week (he’ll remember) last July, and he will show courtesy. He is by far the foremost of the Savans. His wife is the funniest thwarting little animal! They are decidedly the Lions of green Hastings. Well, I have made an end of my say;--my epistolary time is gone by when I could have scribbled as long (I will not say as agreeable) as thine was to both of us. I am dwindled to notes and letterets. But in good earnest I shall be most happy to hail thy return to the waters of old Sir Hugh. There is nothing like inland murmurs, fresh ripples, and our native minnows. “He sang in meads how sweet the brooklets ran, To the rough ocean and red restless sands. I design to give up smoking; but I have not yet fixed upon the equivalent vice. I must have quid pro quo, or quo pro _quid_, as Tom Woodgate would correct me. My service to him. “C. L.” The letter came to hand too late for me to hunt the “Lions;” but on a subsequent visit to the same Cinque Port with my wife, though we verified the little Loretto, we could not find the Baker, or even his man, howbeit we tried at every shop that had the least sign of bakery or cakery in its window. The whole was a batch of _fancy_ bread; one of those fictions which the writer was apt to pass off upon his friends. The evening meetings at Colebrooke Cottage--where somebody, who _was_ somebody, or a literary friend, was sure to drop in--were the more grateful to me, as the London Magazine was now in a rapid decline; some of its crack contributors had left it off, and the gatherings of the clan to eat, drink, and be merry, were few and far between. There was indeed one Venison Feast whereat, I have heard, the scent lay more than breast high, and the sport was of as rich a quality; but it was my chance to be absent from the pack. At former dinners, however, I had been a guest, and a sketch of one of them may serve to introduce some of the principal characters of our “London in the Olden Time.”