This is the professional quarter of the metropolis. At least three-fourths of what I have termed the amusing classes, whether connected with circuses, theatres, public gardens, or music-halls,—actors, singers, dancers, equestrians, clowns, gymnasts, acrobats, jugglers, posturers,—may be found, in the day-time at least, within the area bounded by a line drawn from Waterloo Bridge to the Victoria Theatre, and thence along Gibson Street and Oakley Street, down Kennington Road as far as the Cross, and thence to Vauxhall Bridge. Towards the edges of this area they are more sparsely scattered than nearer the bridges. They are well sprinkled along York Road, and in some of the streets between the Albert Embankment and Kennington Lane they constitute a considerable proportion of the population. You may enter Barnard’s tavern, opposite Astley’s, or the Pheasant, in the rear of the theatre, and find circus and music-hall _artistes_ making two to one of the men before the bar. They are, as a class, a light-hearted set, not remarkable for providence, but bearing the vicissitudes of fortune to which they are so liable with tolerable equanimity, showing a laudable desire to alleviate each other’s ills to the utmost extent of their power, and regarding leniently each other’s failings, without exhibiting a greater tendency to vice than any other class. There is not much education among them, as I have before indicated, and they are not much addicted to literature of any kind. This seems to arise, not from any deficiency of natural aptitude for learning, but from their wandering lives and the early age at which they begin to practise the feats by which they are to be enabled to live. The training of a circus rider, a gymnast, or an acrobat begins as soon as he or she can walk. From that time they practise every day, and they are often introduced in the ring, or on the platform of a music-hall, at an age at which other children have not left the nursery. They wander over the United Kingdom—Europe—the world. The lads whom you see tumbling in one of the quiet streets between the Strand and the Victoria Embankment one day, may be seen doing the same performance a week or two afterwards on the sands at Ramsgate, the downs at Epsom, or the heath at Newmarket. The equestrian or the gymnast who amazes you at the Amphitheatre may be seen the following season at the Hippodrome or the Circo Price. They may be met passing from one continent to another, from one hemisphere to another, sometimes gorgeously attired, sometimes out at elbows, but always light-hearted and gay, excepting perhaps the clowns, who always seem, out of the ring, the gravest and most taciturn of the race. I do not know how a moral phenomenon of such strangeness is to be accounted for; perhaps all their hilarity evaporates in the saw-dust, or on the boards; but I am afraid that their humour is very often forced, their jests borrowed from the