are pleasant companions; but they are so only to a certain extent. In times not very remote, each of the pleaders before the Supreme Courts in the Athens had his “whiskey-shop,” in which he met with clients and solicitors, received fees, and fortified himself in the spirit, for appearing before the “fifteen.” Nor were these grave personages themselves prone to forget the lessons which they had learned during their noviciate as students or clerks, and their probation as members of the Faculty of Advocates. Whatever was or is the talents or the connexions of those persons, they were, and among the specimens that remain still are, democrats in their drink. It seems to be an Athenian maxim, that the bottle raises or lowers all people to the same level; and the Athenians still tell with a sort of pride, that when a celebrated Judge, who flourished in the latter half of the eighteenth century, had been missing for three days, and was wanted to aid in the decision of a very important cause, he was at length found upon the top of the steeple of St. Giles’, where he had been carousing and playing at cards with two or three members of that illustrious and accommodating fraternity, the _Caddies_. Nothing strikes a stranger more than the difference between the business streets and business men of the Athens, and the corresponding streets and men of London, or even of Glasgow. In Bond Street, Oxford Street, or Ludgate Hill, all is bustle and activity,--you cannot stand still, though you would; and within the shop, every one is completely occupied. The Athenian streets, more especially the High Street, present quite another spectacle. At every few yards you find upon the pavement a knot of idlers, concealing their hands in the pockets of their inexpressibles, and alternately settling the affairs of the world, (that is, of the Athens,) and criticising any stranger that passes. Every shop-door too is a sort of rostrum from which the occasional vender of brimstone or blue bonnets, is often found vending Athenian politics to customers of another description; while, almost during the whole morning, bevies of slip-shod damsels stand giggling together at the entrances of the closes, in which innumerable mops and slop-pails are exposed, but not for sale.