FLOATING REMEMBRANCES, BY THE OLD SAILOR, But here are men who fought in gallant actions, But buried in the heap of such transactions Their names are rarely found, nor often sought. Byron. LONDON: WHITTAKER AND CO. SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO. NOTTINGHAM: DEARDEN. 1854. TE FLOATING REMEMBRANCES. CHAPTER I. THERE'S many a cockney in the Metropolis whose knowledge of the geography of his country is solely derived from seeing the mail coaches start from the General Post Office, and then the extent of his information merely amounts to this, that most of them travel different roads. I have often stood of an evening and witnessed the assembling of the royal carriages with feelings that it is impossible to describe ;-there they were, the carriers of news, literature, commerce, business, joy, peace, pleasure, love, disaster, distress, misery, pain; in short all that could sweeten or embitter the cup of human life, and often bearing the announcements of death to the bereaved, and not unfrequently conveying the warrant of execution for the living. The clock strikes eight and away they go, each towards its destination, with its varied freight of happiness or wretchedness. But what is London when compared with Paris in this particular. In the former we read upon the Coach doors the names of places, which taking the Metropolis as the central point radiate from it to every part of the island, but they go no further; whilst in Paris may be seen, "to Petersburg "-" to Moscow' |