I am sadly in arrears, but 't is comfort to think that such meats as I have to serve up are as good cold as hot.

At any rate, it is just impossible to do any better, and I shall comfort myself, as often before, with the triplet which I heard in childhood from a sage (if only sages wear wigs!):-- "As said the great Prince Fernando, What _can_ a man do, More than he can do ?" LETTER VIII.
RECOLLECTIONS OF LONDON .-- THE ENGLISH GENTLEMAN .-- LONDON CLIMATE .-- OUT OF SEASON .-- LUXURY AND MISERY .-- A DIFFICULT PROBLEM .-- TERRORS OF POVERTY .-- JOANNA BAILLIE AND MADAME ROLAND .-- HAMPSTEAD .-- MISS BERRY .-- FEMALE ARTISTS .-- MARGARET GILLIES .-- THE PEOPLE'S JOURNAL .-- THE TIMES .-- THE HOWITTS .-- SOUTH WOOD SMITH .-- HOUSES FOR THE POOR .-- SKELETON OF JEREMY BENTHAM .-- COOPER THE POET .-- THOM.
Paris, December, 1846.
I sit down here in Paris to narrate some recollections of London.
The distance in space and time is not great, yet I seem in wholly a different world.

Here in the region of wax-lights, mirrors, bright wood fires, shrugs, vivacious ejaculations, wreathed smiles, and adroit courtesies, it is hard to remember John Bull, with his coal-smoke, hands in pockets, except when extended for ungracious demand of the perpetual half-crown, or to pay for the all but perpetual mug of beer.

John, seen on that side, is certainly the most churlish of clowns, and the most clownish of churls.

But then there are so many other sides! When a gentleman, he is so truly the gentleman, when a man, so truly the man of honor! His graces, when he has any, grow up from his inmost heart.
Not that he is free from humbug; on the contrary, he is prone to the most solemn humbug, generally of the philanthrophic or otherwise moral kind.