There is a nuisance common enough with us about the streets; and in London it takes every shape. I mean street music. Besides the troops, which infest public places, startling you with a crashing outburst of noise from many brass instruments, there are mendicants, of all ages and both sexes. The halt, the blind, come singing in the most doleful manner, unaccompanied; and others making the night hideous with squeaking wind-pipes, or noisy things of some sort. After annoying you for a long time, one of these will perhaps boldly knock at your door, and demand a gratuity. Some of these creatures blacken themselves, and appear in the courts and squares singing and playing not too decently. Some poor woman, with babes in a kind of basket pushed along on wheels, will try to gain sympathy and pennies by screaming out some woful strain which nobody comprehends, and which grates upon the ear like rasping iron. Sometimes a miserable wretch, shivering with cold, will stand before the bright, warm doors of a drinking place, and sing his feeble note of woe. The most dreadful objects will be those horribly deformed, who, crooked and distorted out of human shape contrive to get along in some strange device of wagon, pushed by their own stumps of hands or feet. Generally these affect to play upon something, no matter what, and drag on an existence too wretched to think of. But why dwell upon these lowest strata of human existence. It shows out on all hands. Among the gilded idlers of the West End, on the very porticoes of grand Temples. Luxury and pride drive, with mien unconscious of human want and woe; unconscious of "the common lot" awaiting all; almost over the very bodies of these to whom life is so deep a darkness. London in its sparkling splendours laughs and makes merry. Within its great Parks, in the summer months, musical birds make the air melodious, and flowering shrubs, and fine trees and verdure, give beauty and rest to thousands of the poor--but not to the lowest. These slink away into the fouler haunts, or spread themselves over the green country, seeking new sources of pitiful gain! In the mid-summer the best of London looks almost cheerful; and a sky more pure, and a sun-light which, though not brilliant, _is_ soft and warm, render life tolerable to the poor. For the rich and idle, they go out of the City and leave it, as they say, _empty_--for those who remain are _nobodies_ [cham-tsi]. Yes, the millions left to toil are nothing. Still, the magnificence of the High-Caste flowers immediately upon that toiling mass--from _it_ grows all the spreading splendour which regards it not. The glowing flame cares nothing for the black coal; nor is the money soiled which passes through the hands of despised indigence. London gay and brilliant, glows and glitters upon its dung-heap--as a luminous vapour flashes and flits over a putrescent carcass.