never travelled in a public carriage before, (there is always such a lady in a coach,—Alas! was; for the coaches, where are they?), and the fat widow with the brandy-bottle, took their places inside—how the porter asked
them all for money, and got sixpence from the gentleman and five greasy halfpence from the fat widow—and how the carriage at length drove away—now, threading the dark lanes of Aldersgate, anon clattering by the Blue Cupola of Paul's, gingling rapidly by the strangers' entry of Fleet-Market, which, with Exeter 'Change, has now departed to the world of shadows—how they passed the White Bear in Piccadilly, and saw the dew rising up from the market-gardens of Knightsbridge—how Turnham-green, Brentford, Bagshot, were passed—need not be told here. But the writer of these pages, who hath pursued in former days, and in the same bright weather, the same remarkable journey, cannot but think of it with a sweet and tender regret. What is the road now, and its merry incidents of life? Is there no Chelsea or Greenwich for the old honest pimple-nosed coachmen? I wonder where are they, those good fellows? Is old Weller alive or dead? and the waiters, yea, and the inns at which they waited, and the cold-round-of-beefs inside, and the stunted ostler, with his blue nose and clinking pail, where is he, and where is his generation? To those great geniuses now in petticoats, who shall write novels for the beloved reader's children, these
