It is these evening hours which are the dangerous time. Purposeless loafing in the streets, though entertaining enough, is not sufficient for a vigorous young body, which has been pent all day at work; while loafing with purpose, we may say, is not good for anybody, yet it is to loafing with purpose that purposeless loafing naturally leads. Purposeless loafing is innocent enough, but, to use the morphia simile again, it is as if the sufferer from the morphia habit took a bottle of morphia and continued to finger it, a highly dangerous performance; and we do not believe that the class which loafs in the streets, anyhow the best of them, loaf because they prefer it to some suitable employment for their body, but because no suitable employment for their body, is accessible to them. The bulk of them would vastly prefer something different, and the eagerness with which they would embrace bodily exercise may be gathered from the crowds on the Serpentine and waters of the park if skating is possible. The theatre every night is, of course, as hopelessly out of their means, as it would be to belong to Prince’s or Lord’s, but with what patience and in what numbers do the crowds wait at the pit door. The middle classes of England, we believe, are not naturally sensual, but, as it is, during just those hours in the day when they are at leisure, there is nothing whatever for them to do, except loaf, till loafing becomes a habit, and from being an innocent one passes into the Devil’s care, who has made the London streets what they are, down the most populous of which, Piccadilly, the Strand, etc., no man would willingly take his sister at night.