accommodation of the public that his house is open. The real public have been in bed for hours. These men around us are here for immoral purposes. These women are on the same bad errand, and that they may better pursue their vocation, here they come and drink; but he sells his poison, thinking not of the mischief it will do, but of the gain it will bring. Is he not a degraded man, with his double chin, and dirty face, and low forehead? can you see in him one trace of benevolence or humanity? Do you doubt this?—spend your last farthing in his bar, pawn every article of clothing you have, and go with an empty pocket and in rags, and you will soon be ordered to the door. You see he is now turning out that wretched creature. He has allowed her to drink till she has no more money; but she solicited chance customers, and they treated her to gin, and so the landlord let her stop; but now she is so drunk as to interfere with his business, and he turns her houseless and friendless out into the streets. Let us watch her. She is too far gone to have any decency left. Drink and sadness combined have tortured her brain to madness. Her curses fill the air; a crowd collects; the police come up; she is borne on a stretcher to Bow-street, and in the morning is dismissed with a reprimand, or sentenced to a month’s imprisonment, as the sitting magistrate is in a good temper or the reverse. The longer we stop here the more of such scenes shall we see, for with such publicans and sinners Catherine-street abounds. I have known life lost here in these midnight brawls; yet by day it has a dull and decent appearance, and little would the passing stranger guess all its revelations of sorrow and of crime. THE BAL MASQUE, In foreign lands, we are told, is something refined and delicate. I have been to some abroad which certainly were nothing of the kind; but in England, or rather in London, they are low, blackguard places, whether in the Holborn Casino, or Covent Garden, or the Grecian Saloon, or Vauxhall, or at Drury-lane. In 1723 they were put down by government. Steele wrote of them, that in his time, “the misfortune of the thing is, that people dress themselves in what they have a mind to be—and not what they are fit for.” I have seen the French men and women at Vauxhall, and if they do in Paris what they do there—why, then I doubt somewhat of the superiority even of French Bal Masqués. But in England a public Bal Masqué is a disgusting exhibition, to enjoy which every moral sense must be deadened, and then a man must be drunk and have his pockets well lined. The rustic flower-girls and simple hay-makers with whom you dance will drink champagne as if it were ginger-beer, and consume all the delicacies of the season as if they cost no more than bacon and beans.