--runs the old ballad. Though St. James's Square now contains a fair sprinkling of Government and other offices,--yet its clientèle is still somewhat ducal. Nevertheless, this Square, too, recalls something of the seamy side of life. "What," says Lord Rosebery, referring to London's many associations, "can be less imposing, or less interesting in themselves,--than the railings of St. James's Square? Yet, you cannot touch those railings--hideous as they are and dull as are the houses that surround them--without thinking that Johnson and Savage, hungry boys, starved by their kind mother, London, who attracted men of letters to her, walked round that square one summer night and swore they would die for their country." Yes,--this, in some way, seems "the best of all possible worlds,"--and London, in such surroundings, the best of all possible cities to live in. Yet, here, too, the East is still present in the West. Round the corner, as I gaze, comes a pitiful group,--a tawdry woman, her voice raucous and suggestive of gin, holding by the hand two children, a boy and a girl,--all singing, or making believe to sing, in chorus: "'Ark! ar ark, my sowl! Angelic songs are swellin', From Hearth's green fields--and Hoceant's way-be shore-- 'Ark, ar-ark,--" Alas! the notes are hardly suggestive of angelic visitants. The chubby little boy is crying, the tears making streaky marks down his dirty little face. "I'm so cowld, so cowld, mammy," "'Owld yer row!"--admonishes his sister, in the intervals of her husky accompaniment.... The sodden voice of the mother is so terrible that I am moved to give her a shilling to go away and remove her poor suffering babies.... But,--at the angle of Waterloo Place,--another phantom is stationed; a wretchedly-clothed creature, evidently on the look-out for a job. He might himself be an incarnation of Famine. His cheeks are hollow and cadaverous; his eyes are dulled and hopeless; he shivers in the bleak raw December air;--in the "best of all possible worlds,--the richest of all possible cities".... The mere "cab-horse's charter" is not for such as he! Ungrateful country, that deals so ill with her children, giving them too often "stones for bread!"