the slaughter inflicted upon that city of dog devourers by the warriors of the West.

He ought to have a tolerable stock of miscellaneous information (though of course it need not be very great); a sufficient amount of assurance, not without that little dash of vanity that makes men work hard to please even fools; a certain tact and readiness; a Baker-street manner, and a Regent-street swagger (for it does not do for him to be too much of a gentleman); some proficiency in manly exercises and field sports, for the regiment carries a Miss Molly in its establishment besides, who, when dressed in the height of taste (Anglicè, fooled to the top of his bent), much resembles Madame Vestris, as she appears in command of her 'Invincibles,' and, indeed, in point of mind is an indifferent imitation of the character that commonly is enveloped in a petticoat; but nothing effeminate will do for "flash man;" he may be a dandy,

but he must be a man, and rather a smart one, for he commonly commands the light company, whose duty it may be, on active service and under circumstances of peculiar exposure, to protect the rear of the regiment from the chastisement inflicted by a too impetuous enemy that hangs obstinately on its skirts. The grenadier captain being selected either as the senior of his rank, or for appearance and stature, is a patriarchal brevetmajor, or a good-humoured giant, and, in either case, embodies the thunder of the regiment, of which the "flash man" is the lightning.

Of course the reader will understand that this sketch applies merely to the general run of flash men, and by no means to the present writer. Nothing, I should hope, appertaining to Baker-street or Regentstreet could, at that time at least, be detected in me, whose lady mother, the Lady Caroline Cobb, resident in Cavendish-square,

an intimate friend of the Marchioness of Mesopotamia's, and an habitual frequenter of Almack's, was deeply impressed with that great cosmical truth, "manners make the man”—a traditionary maxim which had been handed down in our family (by the mother side) from father to child since the creation (of the Earldom of Crabstock, to which noble family she belonged).

She, in my early youth, took at least as good care of my manners as of my morals, which latter branch of cultivation she considered as belonging to the domain of the church, and the catechism thereof, to which she piously left it; but she took great pains to make me a gentleman, especially by pointing out to me the various solecisms constantly in course of committal by my father, who was not so highly descended as she was, and was much exposed to contamination, in matters pertaining to his personal demeanour, from the force of daily example,

when employed in the earning of sufficient means to support us in affluence and comforthe being engaged in extending the glory of England by mercantile adventure, in which I was fool enough, at the instance of Lady Caroline, to decline joining him, and am in consequence, or at least was recently, a houseless vagrant, earning an unpretending livelihood at a moderate rate per line and doing all my own work, a lamentable contrast to those, my brilliant and fortunate (elder) brother-authors, whose means enable them to keep what they modestly call an “amanuensis" to do their pen-and-ink work (brains thrown in).

I indeed, in those days, had no reason to complain of him; he allowed me 3007. a-year, which is as much as even an officer of light dragoons commonly has. With so liberal an allowance, I could not have looked him in the face if I had any debts, so I contracted none; but if I had, I have no

doubt he would have paid anything in reason, for he let me have a latch-key when I was at home on leave, stood claret all the time, had a bad cold in his head whenever Lady Caroline fancied she smelt cigars in the house, and, in short, was everything that a son could desire. But I cannot describe the advantage that it is to a man to have a lady mother. I need not describe to the reader, whose accustomed penetration will have long since taken note of the interesting fact, how fully conscious those fortunate youths are of their exalted lot. I never in my life saw one of them that was not six times more impressed with the grandeur and glory of the peerage (espe cially the three highest ranks, the thrones, dominations, princes) than the mere sons of the male nobility. Those connected with the order, through the better half, seem, with a touching devotion, to take after the mother, gleaming with a placid self-satisfaction that