Besides the more &vonrable claims of the Cockney upon the
curiosity and homage of Corydon, he had, in the legends told at
fiurmers' fire-sides of his less estimable qualities, a dangerous
interest in the eyes of his rustic beholder. All white-headed men,
who in their youth had made one pilgrimage to London, would
tell fearful histories of the wiliness of ring-droppers— of the
miraculous faculty of Cockaigne pick-pockets. Hence, Lubin
from Shropshire, who crawled from the waggon to Cheapside,
had a new source of interest as he surveyed the gold-laced
coats of the fine people about him : they might be thieves and
sharpers in their working suits, and they might be only
gentlemen !

And when the Coekney quitted London — ^yes, when he would
condescend to visit his mother's relations in the wilds of Leicester-
shire ! **My cousin fi^m London ! " Was he not a something —
abit of the great, mysterious city? "Was he not shown as the
very choicest and most certain sample of the great Babylon 7 Even
as the pedant showed the one brick as the sample of the house,
so was Whittington Simmons, from Lad Lane, exhibited as a
veritable fragment of marvellous London. And then what
humours of Cockaigne did the said Whittington Simmons put
forth, to his own present glory, and to his memory for twenty
years afterwards, at the rural fire-side I How the &rmer laughed !
And how deliciously Whittington, with a joke from the playhouse
or with the last flash phrase east of the Bar, how triumphantly
did he silence the unconquerable exciseman !



THS COCBJOBT. 267



Why dwell upon the glories of a departed age 1 Why, to
present mortification, tonch upon the raptures of the past?
What is now the Cockney in the eyes of Corydon — ^what London
to York ?

" 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view ! **

And there is no distance where there is a railroad. The Cockney
is no longer stared, wondered at, upon his native pavement ; but
unceremoniously jostled by MeHbosus Mugs, from the Potteries.
