The next are the balancers,--from a feather to a fir-tree, nothing comes amiss. That fellow will balance a sword on his naked chin with the point downward; you look under his throat, and expect to see it come through every minute, and are greatly disappointed to behold it spinning round without making an incision. Now he takes a ladder, high enough to reach a second-floor window, and up it goes on his chin, as if it were no heavier than the straw he has just thrown down. Mercy on us! whatever is he going to do with that little boy in the harlequin dress? See, the daring child steps from the balancer's shoulder to the ladder: higher the little fellow goes, slowly, cautiously--the ladder still on the man's chin. It looks dangerous, and (self-preservation) you begin to think that if the ladder were to fall, it would be much safer to stand a few feet farther back. The Stilt-dancers are not so common in our London streets as they were a few years ago, when they came popping up suddenly at our first-floor windows, and startled us in some occupation which we had no wish to be overlooked,--perchance trying on a peruke, so well-made, that all our friends gave us credit for wearing our own hair. Then, perhaps, they understood not a single word of English; and if you bade them go to Old Harry and shake themselves, they still kept smiling and smirking at you through the window, until their immovable goodnature overcome your slight anger, and you sent them away quite happy, and perfectly unconscious that you had given utterance to one angry word. We also miss the pipe and tabor, and those droll back-kneed fellows the dancing-dogs: these the new police act have driven away, or they are only to be met with in the far-off country. To what different objects the telescope is now turned from what Horace Walpole describes witnessing, when the heads of unfortunate rebels were placed on Temple Bar: for a penny we may peep at the mountains in the moon, or hear a poor but intelligent man describe the wonders of the "Spacious firmament on high," instead of paying to peep at those mangled and goary heads--a great improvement on those old barbarous street-sights. White mice and guinea-pigs are still to be met with as "plentiful as blackberries" in the yellow month of October; and from the sound of hurdy-gurdies and the droning of bagpipes, who has not prayed to be delivered? while from our hearts we pity those poor white-haired, pink-eyed mortals, who go winking and blinking hand in hand along the crowded pavements, gazed at in wonder even by the swarthy Lascars, who are ever thrusting tracts in our faces.