Of the hack-cabs seen about, but few were Hansoms; for at that season men who want to go quickly, and don't mind paying a shilling a mile, are at a discount. Now and then a sun-tanned swell, whose portmanteau atop nearly obstructed the driver's sight, and who himself was but dimly visible among gun-cases, hat-boxes, and railway-rugs, might have been encountered, passing from one terminus to another; but the "reg'lar riders,"--the lawyer's clerk, with the tape-tied bundle of papers, who charges his cab to "the office;" the lounging swell; the M.P. dashing down to the House; the smug-faced capitalist, whose brain is full of calculation, and who sits the whole way to the City smiling at all and seeing none; the impecunious speculator, who rides in a cab because he cannot afford to be seen in an omnibus,--all these were away from London. And the four-wheelers, though laden, had but dreary burdens: the fortnight at Margate is over; no more morning dips, no more afternoon rambles on the sands, no donkey-backs, no pleasure-boats, no Pegwell Bay now! Paterfamilias is once more Hobbs and Motchkin's out-door at thirty shillings a week; the eight-roomed house in Navarino Terrace, Camden Town, resumes its wonted appearance; the children return to the "curriculum" of education at Miss Gimp's in the Crescent; and save the sand-covered little wooden spades which hang from the hat-pegs in the passage, naught remains of their maritime excursion. Dreary, dreary, every where! Dreary down in old country mansions, where, while the men are pheasant-shooting in the woods, the ladies look dismally on what was lately the croquet-ground, where the gardeners are now busy sweeping up the leaves, and pressing them into huge barrows, and wheeling them away; where the trees stand out gaunt and brown, and where the evergreens bordering the pleasant walks rustle with the autumnal winds; where the cracks, and flaws, and dampnesses of old country mansions begin to make themselves unpleasantly conspicuous; and where the servants, town-bred, commence to be colded, sniffy, to have shivers and "creeps." Dreary at the seaside, where the storm-soaked, worm-eaten jetty, lately echoing to the pattering feet of children, or the sturdy tread of the visitor taking his constitutional, is now given over to its normal frequenters--tarry-trousered men in blue jerseys and oilskin sou'-wester hats, who are always looking out for some boat that never arrives, or some storm which always comes when they do not expect it; bills are stuck on the pleasant plate-glass bow windows so lately filled with pretty girls, rosy children, and parents who dined at two o'clock, and enjoyed their nuts and port-wine "looking over the sea;" and the proprietors of the lodging-houses, who have lived in damp back-kitchens since June, are once more seen above-ground. Dreary in Continental towns, where home-returning English are finding out that they have spent too much money on their trip, and bewailing the