In our own days there has been legislation for the benefit of tender ears; and there are now penalties, with police constables to enforce them, against "All persons blowing any horn or using any other noisy instrument, for the purpose of calling persons together, or of announcing any show or entertainment, or for the purpose of hawking, selling, distributing, or collecting any article, or of obtaining money or alms." These are the words of the Police Act of 1839; and they are stringent enough to have nearly banished from our streets all those uncommon noises which did something to relieve the monotony of the one endless roar of the tread of feet and the rush of wheels. Mr. Henry Mayhew, in his admirable work of "London Labour and London Poor," writing in 1851, under the head "Of the Sellers of Second Editions," says:-- "I believe that there is not now in existence--unless it be in a workhouse and unknown to his fellows, or engaged in some other avocation, and lost sight of by them--any one who sold 'Second Editions' of the _Courier_ evening paper at the time of the Duke of York's Walcheren expedition, at the period of the battle of the Nile, during the continuance of the Peninsular war, or even at the battle of Waterloo. There were a few old men--some of whom had been soldiers or sailors, and others who have simulated it--surviving within these five or six years and some later, who 'worked Waterloo,' but they were swept off, I was told, by the cholera." [Illustration] [Illustration: CLEAN YOUR HONOUR'S SHOES. "Temper the foot within this vase of oil, And let the little tripod aid thy toil; On this methinks I see the walking crew, At thy request, support the miry shoe; The foot grows black that was with dirt embrown'd, And in thy pocket jingling halfpence sound." _Gay's "Trivia."_]