Nor is the "country,"--except in strictly limited quantities,--such an unfailing consolation to the children of the poor, as some would have us imagine. (That it is such a priceless advantage to their health is, no doubt, partly owing to the fact that it is generally associated with good and wholesome food.) The children like the "real country" for a day or two;--afterwards, they are too often conscious of slight boredom. At first, they delight in the fact that "it's so green all rarnd,--right to the sky,--with no roads, and no walls,--and no trespsin boards,--and no pleecemen;" but these joys have their limitations,--and, after a fortnight's holiday,--even poor slum children are generally glad to get back home. Even in tender youth,--the country is a cult that requires some learning. "The country is dreadful slow,"--a little girl of the great city once remarked with painful frankness,--"no swings, no rahnd-abarts, no penny-ice men, no orgins, no shops, no nothink;--jest a great bare field only." Here, again, is the difference of "the point of view!" Go into that glittering Armida-Palace, the busy Whitechapel Road, and watch the scene at nightfall. The weather may be cold or mirk; the weather matters little; the skies may be glum and starless, but a galaxy of light, from innumerable gas jets and shop fronts, floods the busy street. Here is, certainly, no lack of life and amusement; the crowd laughs, jostles, and chatters, as if no such thing as care or struggle existed. It is a motley crowd. Handsome dark-eyed Jewesses with floppy hair and long gold earrings; coster girls "on the spree," dressed in their gaudy best; staid couples doing their weekly marketing; here and there a happy family round a stall, eating "winkles" composedly with the help of pins, or demolishing saucerfuls of the savoury cockle; vendors of penny toys; all these, combined with the voluble "patter" of the lively shop-boys, make a veritable pandemonium. Shops are full; barrows of all kinds drive a brisk trade; velvet-cushioned trams ply up and down the big highway, which extends, apparently almost into infinity, up the long Mile End Road. (Tram-lines, in London, seem more or less confined to the uninspiring North and East and their suburbs.) Ugly and uninvigorating enough by day, the streets, by night, invest themselves with mysterious glamour and brightness. Like some murky theatre when the deceiving footlights are lit, this, too, is a "stage illusion," and it is a wise one. For all the East End does its shopping by gaslight; now only it begins to enjoy its day. Seen in such kaleidoscopic glare of light, even the Whitechapel Road has its attractions. Yet through it all one sometimes sees sad sights. Many public-houses dot these thoroughfares, shining like meteors through the nocturnal mists; and here and there, truth to tell, a bevy of red-faced women may be seen through the plate-glass, whose unhappy infants are stationed in shabby