In other ways also is London truly wonderful. It seems as if the earth toiled and moiled to simply supply her wants. Sail up the Baltic and ask whither those vessels laden with tallow and corn and flax are steering, and the answer is, The Thames. Float down the Mediterranean, and the reply to the question would be still the same. Ascend the grand rivers of the New World, and the destination of the stores of beef and cheese and wheat is still the same. Canada supplies us with our deals; America with half our food; Australia with our wool; the Cape with our diamonds; the Brazils with coffee. Havannah sends her choice cigars, China her teas, Japan her lacquered and ingenious ware, Italy her silks; and from the vineyards of France, or the green hills that border the Rhine and the Moselle, we are supposed to draw our supplies of sparkling wine. Spain sends her sherry, Portugal her port. For us the spicy breezes blow soft on Ceylon’s isle, the turtle fattens languidly under burning suns, the whale wallows in the trough of frozen seas, the elephant feeds in African jungles, and the ostrich darts as an arrow across the plain. In the country village, in the busy mill, on sea or on land, it is the thought of London that fires the brain and fills the heart, and nerves the muscle and relieves the tedium of nightly or daily toil. As Cowper writes: Where has commerce such a mart, So rich, so thronged, so drained, and so supplied, As London—opulent, enlarged, and still Increasing London? Babylon of old Not more the glory of the earth than she, A more accomplished world’s chief glory now. It is not our province to speculate as to the future. There are men who tell us that Babylon is about to fall, and that it is time for the elect to be off. It may be so. Time, the destroyer, has seen many a noble city rise, and flourish, and pass away; but London, it must be admitted nevertheless, never more truly in any sense deserves the epitaph of “wonderful” than at the present time. II.—THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE PEOPLE.