London is several cities rolled into one. If we walk along Regent-street, it is a city of gorgeous shops,—if you turn into the West, of parks and palaces,—if you traverse St Giles, of gin and dirt;—again, in Belgravia it is rich and grand,—in Pimlico it is poor and pretentious,—in Russell-square it is well to do,—in Islington it is plain and pious; and, strange as it may seem, the people are equally localised in their ideas. Jobson, the Stock-broker, lives at Clapham, and for years he has never set foot in any other streets than those leading from the Stock Exchange to that select and favoured spot. The law clerks, who live in Pimlico, seldom stray further than John-street, Bedford-row. The city gents from Islington and Holloway generally cluster round the Bank or the Post-office, and for years go in the morning and return at night by one unvaried route. The races are equally distinct. The swells in the Park, the millers in Mark-lane, the graziers in the new cattle-market, the Jews in Houndsditch or Holywell-street, the prim pale lads in the city, the sailors in Deptford and Wapping, the German sugar-bakers in Whitechapel, really form distinct communities, and are as worth studying as any race of “Red Indians dwelling beyond the sunset, And the baths of all the Western stars.” I should not like a son of mine to be born and bred in Ratcliffe-highway. That there would be a charming independence in his character, a spurning of that dreary conventionalism which makes cowards of us all, and under the deadly weight of which the heart of this great old England seems becoming daily more sick and sad, a cosmopolitanism rich and racy in the extreme,—all this I admit I should have every reason to expect, but, at the same time, I believe the disadvantages would preponderate vastly. How is this? you ask. Does not Ratcliffe-highway form part of our highly-favoured land? I grant it does. I confess that there the Queen’s writ is a power, that it boasts the protection of the police, that it pays rates and taxes, that it has its churches and chapels, that it is not cut off from the rest of the empire, that it is traversed by railways, by cabs and busses, and by postmen. Nevertheless, Ratcliffe-highway is not a favourite spot of mine. I saw lately a letter from an Englishman in the _Times_, complaining of the magistrates of Hamburg, because when he was coming from church with some ladies, he strayed into a street where his sense of decorum was very properly shocked. I know the street as I do every street in Hamburg, and I know this, that it ill becomes Englishmen to write of the immorality of Hamburg, or any other continental town. Let him walk down Ratcliffe-highway or any other spot where vice loses all its charms by appearing in all its grossness. I fear that it is not true generally to the eyes of the class she leads astray, that “Vice is a monster of such hideous mien, That to be hated, needs but to be seen,”