As I was dressing to dine out on the following day, I stopped tying my cravat to send for a physician, and here, if you please, we will make a jump over twelve days, and come to a bright morning when I was let out for a walk in Regent-street.
It is extraordinary how little the English change! Regent-street, after four or five years, is exactly what Regent-street _was_. The men have the same tight cravats, coats too small, overbrushed whiskers, and look of being excessively wash’d. The carriages and horses exactly the same. The cheap shops have the same placard of “SELLING OFF” in their broad windows. The blind beggars tell the same story, and are led by the same dogs; but what is stranger than all this sameness, is that the _ladies_ look the same! The fashions have perhaps changed—in the milliners’ shops! But the _Englishing_ that is done to French bonnets after they are bought, or the English way in which they are worn, overpowers the novelty, and gives the fair occupants of the splendid carriages of London the very same look they had ten years ago.
Still there are some slight differences observable in the street, and among others, I observe that the economical private carriage called a “Brougham” is very common. These are low cabs, holding two or four persons, with a driver, and perhaps a footman in livery on the outside seat, and one horse seems to do the work as well as two. This fashion would be well, introduced into New York—that is to say, if our city is ever to be well enough paved to make a drive any thing but a dire necessity. The paving of London is really most admirable. Vast city as it is, the streets are smooth as a floor all over it, and to ride is indeed a luxury. The break-neck, hat-jamming and dislocating jolts of Broadway must seem to English judgment an inexcusable stain on our public spirit. And, _apropos_ of paving—the wooden pavement seems to be entirely out of favor. Regent-street is laid in wooden blocks, and in wet weather (and it rains here some part of every day,) it is so slippery that an omnibus which has been stopped in going _up_ the street is with difficulty started again. The horses almost always come to their knees, though the ascent is very slight, and the falls of cart and carriage-horses are occurring continually. Nothing seems to “do” like the McAdam pavement, and wherever you find it in London, you find it in as perfect order as the floor of a bowling-alley. I see that all heavy vehicles are compelled to have very broad wheels, and they rather improve the road than spoil it. A law to the same effect should be passed in New York, if it ever has a pavement worth preserving.