But let us pass on to the artistic Boxing-day keepers at the National Gallery. The walk will take us through the Seven Dials, and can scarcely fail to be suggestive. It is now one o'clock, the traditional hour of dinner; and in Broad Street, St. Giles's, I see, for the first time to-day, the human barometer evidently standing at "much wet." A gentleman in a grey coat and red comforter, who bears palpable signs of having been more than once on his back, has just reached that perplexing point of inebriety when he can walk quickly or run, but cannot stand still or walk steadily. He is pursued by small children, mostly girls, after whom, every now and then, he runs hopelessly, to their intense gratification. The poultry and bird shops in the Seven Dials are objects of some attraction, though they savour too much of "business" to be in very great force. The National Gallery is crowded with unaccustomed art students. There is about the visitors a quiet air of doing their duty, and being determined to go through with it at any price. One brazen-faced quean speculates audibly--in fact, very audibly--as to which "picter" she should choose if she had her "pick," and decent matrons pass the particularly High Art of the old masters with half-averted gaze, as though they were not quite sure of doing right in countenancing such exhibitions. Hogarth's evergreen "Marriage a la Mode" is a great centre of attraction, and the youngsters never tire of listening, as "with weeping and with laughter still is the story told" over and over again by their elders. Gainsborough's likeness of Mrs. Siddons is also a great favourite; but perhaps the picture that attracts most attention is Van Eyck's "John Arnolfini, of Lucca, and his Wife." The gentleman wears a portentous hat, which tickled the fancy of the Boxing-day people immensely. There were great speculations too among them as to whether the curious Tuscan pictures at the top of the stairs were "needlework" or not. Still, who shall say that these visitors were not the better for their visit, surrounded as they were by forms of beauty on every side, even if they did not examine them with the eyes of connoisseurs?