In former years Punch and Judy shows were quite common in the London streets, but they are now rarely to be met with, and the piano-organs look like sharing their fate, for of late there has been a great diminution in their numbers, and few are now to be heard in the West End. They have indeed been practically banished from many squares and streets, in some of which draconian edicts are posted up against them. Personally I rather deplore their disappearance, but then I have never had the slightest pretension to being endowed with a musical ear, and I suppose many people find them a great nuisance. Nevertheless, all the barrel-organs in London could not produce anything like the din made by that clanging and clattering conveyance, the motor omnibus. The old red-coated crossing-sweepers are now also almost a thing of the past, though one or two are still to be seen striking a picturesque note in certain squares; modern methods of road-cleaning have, however, rendered this humble vocation more or less obsolete. Some years ago street vendors shouting out their picturesque cries still survived as a feature of some London streets, but now, I believe, there are regulations preventing any one shouting out anything, and even the newsboys, who formerly used to utter the most strident cries when shouting out news, real or imaginary, have been sternly bidden to hold their peace. Rowlandson or Wheatley would find no picturesque types in London streets to-day, from which even the Guy Fawkes celebrations, not very long ago pretty well universal, have now been practically banished. As for the Jack of the Green, with his attendants, he has long become but a memory of other days, and with him has gone that strange instrumentalist who, playing any number of instruments, may be said to have been a musical host in himself. The tendency of the age now seems distinctly hostile to everything which is not regulated, and a good-humoured toleration is no longer meted out to the picturesque, if somewhat disreputable, characters who were formerly well-known features of certain thoroughfares. London, indeed, is altogether a different and, no doubt, a much more orderly city than when Pierce Egan’s heroes, Corinthian Tom and Jerry Hawthorn, were witnessing the day and night scenes which Cruikshank pictured with such quaint and inimitable skill. Externally, as I have before said, the streets within the last twenty years or so have changed a good deal. Amongst other alterations the removal of the old lamp-posts, which used to line each side of every street, has effected a considerable alteration in the appearance of London.