But what has all this to do with the Haymarket? Wait awhile, and your curiosity will be satisfied. It is day-time, and we will stroll up thither. There is nothing peculiar about the place, except the unusual number of gin-palaces, hotels, French restaurants, oyster-shops, coffee-houses with the blinds drawn, as if to show they did not care to do business, and the general sleepy appearance of the waiters. There is a cab-stand seemingly inclined to shut up shop, and if it were not for the omnibuses there would be but few indications of life. On the right-hand side as you go from Pall Mall there are most respectable shops, but the wonder to me is how they manage to attract custom sufficient to enable them to pay what must be their very heavy rents. At the top of the Haymarket we find the street from Leicester-square to Piccadilly always full of traffic, and just opposite are the oyster-shops, and Turkish divans and cafés, all quiet enough now, but at the witching hour of night destined to be filled to suffocation with fast men and flash women, with cabs and carriages, with old hags with fruit and flowers, male vendors of pencils and knives, policemen and bullies, fools and rogues. Let us skip over a short interval of time, and suppose the neighbouring church bells to have chimed the midnight hour. A few steps take us to the Lowther Arcade. We take our stand with a crowd just opposite a building with an entrance lighted with gas, which we learn to be a handsome casino—one of the handsomest in London—devoted to dancing and drinking. The hour of closing has arrived, and the votaries of pleasure, as it is called, are leaving. There are an immense number of women all splendidly dressed—from the young girl who has not yet learnt the bitterness of the life she has ventured on, to the woman thoroughly dead to all feeling, all modesty, and shame. It is a sad sight, though few see the snake in the grass for the flowers; and of the gay ones there none think they will ever become like the bloated, ragged women now standing in their path and asking with the true professional whine for alms. Some are borne away in broughams, some in cabs, but the most on foot. Let us now look at the men. You cannot see a finer set anywhere. Are not the flower of our youth and manhood there? Of course I refer merely to their physical formation. Young fellows from the army and navy, men from all our universities and inns of court, gents from the city and the Stock Exchange, and respectable middle-aged country gentlemen stopping in town a night, and just dropping in to see what is going on. Before us there is enough material to found a mighty empire, including even that pale melancholy little lordling dashing along in his cab, who has already, boy as he is, a regiment; and all this multitude is going headlong to the devil at express speed, in spite of the baptismal vow and the ministrations of the church. But let us see what they are about.