delightful they were! Shades of Valancour, awful ghost of Manfroni, how
I shudder at your appearance! Sweet image of Thaddeus of Warsaw, how
often has this almost infantile hand tried to depict you in a Polish cap
and richly embroidered tights! And as for Corinthian Tom in light blue
pantaloons and Hessians, and Jerry Hawthorn from the country, can all
the fashion, can all the splendor of real life which these eyes have
subsequently beheld, can all the wit I have heard or read in later
times, compare with your fashion, with your brilliancy, with your
delightful grace, and sparkling vivacious rattle?

Who knows? They MAY have kept those very books at the library still--at
the well-remembered library on the Pantiles, where they sell that
delightful, useful Tunbridge ware. I will go and see. I went my way
to the Pantiles, the queer little old-world Pantiles, where, a hundred
years since, so much good company came to take its pleasure. Is it
possible, that in the past century, gentlefolks of the first rank (as
I read lately in a lecture on George II. in the Cornhill Magazine)
assembled here and entertained each other with gaming, dancing,
fiddling, and tea? There are fiddlers, harpers, and trumpeters
performing at this moment in a weak little old balcony, but where is the
fine company? Where are the earls, duchesses, bishops, and magnificent
embroidered gamesters? A half-dozen of children and their nurses are
listening to the musicians; an old lady or two in a poke bonnet passes,
and for the rest, I see but an uninteresting population of native
tradesmen. As for the library, its window is full of pictures of burly
theologians, and their works, sermons, apologues, and so forth. Can I
go in and ask the young ladies at the counters for "Manfroni, or the
One-Handed Monk," and "Life in London, or the Adventures of Corinthian
Tom, Jeremiah Hawthorn, Esq., and their friend Bob Logic?"--absurd.
I turn away abashed from the casement--from the Pantiles--no longer