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ROMANCE AND REALITY.

down like a dark giant disdainfully on the slight race beneath; the slender and elegant arches through which the chariot wheels rolled as if in triumph; the opening of the Green Park, ended by the noble old Abbey, hallowed by all of historic association; the crowded street, where varieties approximated and extremes met; the substantial coach, with its more substantial coachman, seeming as if they bore the whole weight of the family honours; the chariots, one, perhaps, with its crimson blind waving and giving a glimpse of the light plume, or yet lighter blonde, close beside another whose olive-green outside and one horse told that the dark-vested gentleman, seated in the very middle, as if just ready to get out, is bound on matters of life and death, i. e. is an apothecary. Then the heavy stages—the omnibus, which so closely resembles a caravan of wild beasts–and, last descent of misery and degradation, the hackney-coaches, to which one can only apply what Rochefoucault says of marriages—"they may be convenient, but never agreeable."

Of the pedestrians—as in telling a gentleman faults in the mistress he married that morning—the least said, the soonest mended.