~342~~for them over the audience part of the English Opera House. The
ruby glow of the old boy's countenance shone like an omen of the merry
humour of his mind. "What, out for a spree, boys, or just bailed from
the watch-house, which is it? the alpha or omega, for they generally
follow one another?" "Then you are in time for the _equivoque_, Crony,"
said Echo; "so enlist him, Transit;" and without more ceremony, Crony
was marched off, __vi et armis, to the _Finish_, a coffee-house in
James-street, Covent Garden, where the _peep-o'-day boys_ and _family
men_ meet to conclude the night's debauch _(see plate)_; "_Video meliora
proboque, Deteriora sequoi_;" you will exclaim, and 'tis granted; but
"_Lusus animo debent aliquando dari,
Ad cogitandum melior ut red eat sibi_,"
says Phodrus, and be the poet's apology mine, for I am neither afraid
or ashamed to confess myself an admirer of life in all its variegated
lights and shadows, deriving my amusement from the great source of
knowledge, the study of that eccentric volume--man. The new police act
has, in some measure, abated the extent of these nuisances, the low
coffee-shops of the metropolis, which were, for the greater part, little
better than a rendezvous for thieves of every description, depots both
for the ~343~~plunder and the plunderer; where, if an unthinking or
profligate victim once entered, he seldom came out without experiencing
treatment which operated like a severe lesson, that would leave its
moral upon his mind as long as he continued an inhabitant of the
terrestrial world.
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