Well, to waste no more words about it, of the nuisances of London it may be said their name is legion. In the first place, there are the streets. If you get out at Farringdon Street Station, and walk towards the Holborn Viaduct, it is of little use your having had your boots cleaned that morning—a little shower of rain, and the pavement is covered with mud. This ought not to be. Let us take another nuisance. All at once, as you walk along, you see a chimney vomiting forth clouds of smoke. This is a great nuisance, especially on a fine summer day, when the atmosphere of the City may be said to be almost clear; and this nuisance is the more unbearable as there is a law to put it down, which law is actually to a certain extent carried out. Let anyone take his stand on some spot where he can get a good view around him, and he will be sure to see some chimney, in spite of the law, darkening the sky and poisoning the air. Then there is the orange-peel, which has shortened many a valuable life, and quenched the light of many a home. Then there is the crowded traffic of the streets, which renders all locomotion impossible, and keeps you sitting, angry and fuming, in a cab, when it may be you are hurrying off to save a bill from being dishonoured, to keep an appointment with a rich aunt or uncle from whom you have great expectations, to have a last fond look at someone whom you dearly love. As to the disputed points as to the pavements, I have nothing to offer. To those who have to live and sleep in the City, asphalte, I should say, must be the greatest boon devised by the art of man. With asphalte you may talk pleasantly to a friend in Cheapside, you may get a reasonable night’s sleep in St. Paul’s Churchyard, or you may crack a joke without bursting a blood-vessel opposite the Mansion House itself. Be that as it may, as the question as to the comparative merits of asphalte, or granite, or wood will be settled by wiser heads than mine, I say no more; but what I complain of, and what is a nuisance to everyone, is the perpetual tinkering and repairing always going on in the streets, and the consequent blockade for a time of certain important thoroughfares. What with the drainage, and the water, and the gas pipes, and the telegraph wires, there is in most of the City ways as much bustle almost under the street as on it, and an ominous board with a notice from the Lord Mayor turns aside a tremendous traffic, and is a terrible nuisance as long as it lasts. Surely this waste of time and annoyance is, a great deal of it, unnecessary. All that is wanted is a little more contrivance and forethought. I was once discussing the subject with a leading City man and an M.P., as we were travelling together in a railway carriage on our way to a pleasant gathering of City people many miles away beyond the sound of Bow Bells. “Well,” said he, with a suggestive wink, “the thing is easily explained;