better than you young lads who have seen nothing? The
deterioration of women is lamentable; and the conceit of the
young fellows more lamentable still, that they won't see this
fact, but persist in thinking their time as good as ours.

Bless me! when I was a lad, the stage was covered with angels,
who sang, acted, and danced. When I remember the Adelphi, and
the actresses there: when I think of Miss Chester, and Miss
Love, and Mrs Serle at Sadler's Wells, and her forty glorious
pupils -- of the Opera and Noblet, and the exquisite young
Taglioni, and Pauline Leroux, and a host more! One much-admired
being of those days I confess I never cared for, and that was the
chief male dancer -- a very important personage then, with a bare
neck, bare arms, a tunic, and a hat and feathers, who used to
divide the applause with the ladies, and who has now sunk down a
trap-door for ever. And this frank admission ought to show that
I am not your mere twaddling laudator temporis acti -- your old
fogey who can see no good except in his own time.

They say that claret is better nowadays, and cookery much
improved since the days of my monarch -- of George IV. Pastry
Cookery is certainly not so good. I have often eaten half-a-
crown's worth (including, I trust, ginger-beer) at our school
pastrycook's, and that is a proof that the pastry must have been
very good, for could I do as much now? I passed by the
pastrycook's shop lately, having occasion to visit my old school.
It looked a very dingy old baker's; misfortunes may have come
over him -- those penny tarts certainly did not look so nice as I
remember them: but he may have grown careless as he has grown
old (I should judge him to be now about ninety-six years of age),