Any contemporary of that coin who takes it up and reads the inscription
round the laurelled head, "Georgius IV. Britanniarum Rex. Fid. Def.
1823," if he will but look steadily enough at the round, and utter the
proper incantation, I dare say may conjure back his life there. Look
well, my elderly friend, and tell me what you see? First, I see a
Sultan, with hair, beautiful hair, and a crown of laurels round his
head, and his name is Georgius Rex. Fid. Def., and so on. Now the Sultan
has disappeared; and what is that I see? A boy,--a boy in a jacket. He
is at a desk; he has great books before him, Latin and Greek books and
dictionaries. Yes, but behind the great books, which he pretends to
read, is a little one, with pictures, which he is really reading. It
is--yes, I can read now--it is the "Heart of Mid Lothian," by the author
of "Waverley"--or, no, it is "Life in London, or the Adventures of
Corinthian Tom, Jeremiah Hawthorn, and their friend Bob Logic," by
Pierce Egan; and it has pictures--oh! such funny pictures! As he reads,
there comes behind the boy, a man, a dervish, in a black gown, like a
woman, and a black square cap, and he has a book in each hand, and he
seizes the boy who is reading the picture-book, and lays his head upon
one of his books, and smacks it with the other. The boy makes faces, and
so that picture disappears.

Now the boy has grown bigger. HE has got on a black gown and cap,
something like the dervish. He is at a table, with ever so many bottles
on it, and fruit, and tobacco; and other young dervishes come in. They
seem as if they were singing. To them enters an old moollah, he takes
down their names, and orders them all to go to bed. What is this? a
carriage, with four beautiful horses all galloping--a man in red is
blowing a trumpet. Many young men are on the carriage--one of them is
driving the horses. Surely they won't drive into that?--ah! they have