good in the case of mail coachmen and guards, still general postmen
wear red coats, and THEY are not to our knowledge better received
than other men; nor are firemen either, who wear (or used to wear)
not only red coats, but very resplendent and massive badges
besides-much larger than epaulettes. Neither do the twopenny post-
office boys, if the result of our inquiries be correct, find any
peculiar favour in woman's eyes, although they wear very bright red
jackets, and have the additional advantage of constantly appearing
in public on horseback, which last circumstance may be naturally
supposed to be greatly in their favour.

We have sometimes thought that this phenomenon may take its rise in
the conventional behaviour of captains and colonels and other
gentlemen in red coats on the stage, where they are invariably
represented as fine swaggering fellows, talking of nothing but
charming girls, their king and country, their honour, and their
debts, and crowing over the inferior classes of the community, whom
they occasionally treat with a little gentlemanly swindling, no
less to the improvement and pleasure of the audience, than to the
satisfaction and approval of the choice spirits who consort with
them. But we will not devote these pages to our speculations upon
the subject, inasmuch as our business at the present moment is not
so much with the young ladies who are bewitched by her Majesty's
livery as with the young gentlemen whose heads are turned by it.
For 'heads' we had written 'brains;' but upon consideration, we
think the former the more appropriate word of the two.

These young gentlemen may be divided into two classes-young
gentlemen who are actually in the army, and young gentlemen who,
having an intense and enthusiastic admiration for all things