2-791-533 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The "Lion" of a party. God shield us! A lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing - Shakespeare, 1844. 'A subtle Italian, no less a man than the Count Pecchio, has called London "the grave of great reputations." In simple, prosaic phrase, this our glorious metropolis is a vast cemetery for "Lions !" They are whelped every season, and, frail and evanescent as buttercups, they every season die; that is, they do not die body and bones, but have a most fatal cutaneous and depilatory disorder - a mortality that goes skin-deep, and little more - a disease that strips them of their hide, and tail, and mane; yea, that makes the very "lions" that but a few months since shook whole coteries with the thunder of their voices, roar as "gently as any sucking- doves"'. From "Pictorial Times", 1844.