THE
NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
CALENDAR OF THE LONDON SEASONS.
January.—Philosophers are moral, and poets are picturesque about the country. Sheridan Knowles, as the climax to the merits of his charming Julia, makes her declare to her lover, "Who weds with me must lead a country life." From the first shop in Piccadilly to the last on Ludgate-hill, "the farther-looking hope" that hovers over the counter is a dream of some rural retirement. I never heard a naval or military man speak of the future but as to be passed in some dwelling which held out the delights of growing their own vegetables and killing their own mutton. It has never been my fortune to meet with any individual who deliberately planned an existence to be passed actually in London. "The vision and the faculty divine" of imagining how your fortune is to be spent when acquired, always goes off the stones. It is an unpleasant thing to differ in opinion with the rest of one's species—it is making a sort of North Pole of one's own, and then setting out in search of it. Still I own that I indulge not in these rural anticipations; I look upon London as the very type of injured innocence and unappreciated excellence. I never wish to go farther than a hackney-coach can take me; I desire nothing better than pavement beneath my feet. When I wish
"Oh that some home like this for me would smile !"
I am looking at a good house with a street before and a street behind, and these streets very decidedly in London. I am a cockney, heart and soul, in every thing but "that bitter boon my birth." I trust, however, in this enlightened age, I shall not be reproached for the fault of my parents; at least I can say to our Metropolis,
"With thee were the dreams of my earliest love,
Every thought of my reason was thine."
I only know one gentleman with whom town is as it is with myself—at once a principle and a passion; but, alas! there is little integrity in this world; he not only avowed a predilection for Paris, but once said something about liking a villa at Harrow. I felt at once he was not capable of my intense, unalterable, and undivided attachment. I never in my life looked over with any interest any map but the map of London. It has always been
"The only place I coveted
In all the world so wide."
At the same time I beg leave to state that I have a taste for the poetical, and an eye for the picturesque; but I contend that both are to be found in their perfection in London. Indeed, I hold that people in town
April—VOL. XV. NO. CLX.
