Granting, which we readily do, that the above scene is an exaggeration, still we believe it to be nearer the mark than the opposite representations, which would lead us to believe that all persons in the employ of Government are overworked and underpaid. Their places are sinecures; bread for life. Every merchant or employer of labour has the power of instant dismissal; but in Government offices this great check on idleness and stupidity is ignored. Officials are happy fellows. The ills of life do not affect them. Mills may stop, panics may take place, commerce may decline, ships may rot in deserted harbours; docks and warehouses, once teeming with busy life, may be silent as the grave—but their income knows no change, save when death causes a general promotion in their ranks. The agricultural mind may be weighed down with grief—it may find its idols but clay. There, where it must live, or bear no life, it may find all hollow, delusive, and false. The seasons may be unpropitious. The common ills farmers are heir to, such as potato disease, the fly at the turnips, the rot in the sheep, may be theirs in no common degree; nevertheless, the Clapham omnibus duly deposits at the Treasury in Downing-street Mr. Smith, who, with the exception of two hours for lunch, and another hour or so for miscellaneous conversation, and the perusal of the _Times_, will, from ten till four, magnanimously devote himself to his country’s good. At the hour of four, Mr. Smith is again on the omnibus, about to seek, in the bosom of his family, that relaxation which, did his country deny him, it would be ungrateful indeed. Mr. Smith is a family man; and, regardless of London temptations, he hastens to his mutton at five. On the contrary, the junior clerk, Mr. Adolphus Blaser, is a young man about town; and just as Mr. Smith retires to his night’s rest, our young _roué_, having recovered from the effects of a good dinner, is ready to commence the diversions, or, as they may be more fitly termed, the follies of a night. At a good old age Mr. Smith is gathered to his fathers, and a tombstone in Norwood Cemetery calls upon the public to admire those virtues, the loss of which has left such a blank in the Clapham annals of domestic life. One of Mr. Smith’s companions, a much-maligned individual, has just written to the _Times_, indignantly asking if it be nothing to attend every day at Somerset-house, in wet weather or fine? But, upon the whole, we think few men were more fortunate than our deceased friend. Like many of his schoolfellows, he did not make and lose a fortune; his hair did not become prematurely grey. There were storms, but they never reached him. He never missed his church: he had always a friend, and a bottle to give him; for your true Church and King man is generally reared on fine old port. His sons were placed in his office; and his daughters (good-looking, as most of the daughters of well-to-do, jolly old