civilization which he may meet on those distant shores, and exhibits graceful forbearance in putting up with the delicious fresh fruit, cream, vegetables, and home-fed beef and mutton of his entertainers in lieu of the stale produce of the London shops. One such stranded Cockney I have known to remark that he “observed” that the eggs at N——, and at another country house where he occasionally visited, had in them a “peculiar milky substance,” about whose merits he seemed doubtful; and another I have heard, after landing at Holyhead on his return from Ireland, complacently comparing his watch (which had, like himself, faithfully kept London time during all his tour) with the clock in the station, and observing to his fellow-passengers “that there was not a single clock right in Dublin,—they were all twenty minutes too slow,—and, when he went to Galway, he found them still worse.” Even if a man sincerely prefer country life, and transfer his abode from London to the rural districts, he still retains a latent satisfaction at having lived once in the very centre of human interests, close to the throbbing heart of the world. The old squire, who has been too gouty and too indolent to run up to town for twenty years, will still brighten up at the names of the familiar streets and play-houses, and will tell anecdotes, the chief interest of which seems to lie in the fact that he formerly lodged in Jermyn Street, or bought his seals at the corner of Waterloo Place, or had his hair cut in Bond Street, preparatory to going to the play in Drury Lane. As volunteers enjoy a field day with the manœuvres and marches, so a Londoner experiences a dim sense of pleasure in forming part of the huge army of four millions of human beings who are for ever moving hither and thither, and yet strangely bringing about, not confusion, but order. The Greek philosophers and statesmen, who thought such a little tiny “Polis” as Athens or Sparta (not an eighth part of one postal district of London) almost a miracle of divine order, would have fallen down and worshipped at the shrine of Gog and Magog for having provided that a whole nation should be fed, housed, clothed, washed, lighted, warmed, taught, and amused for years and generations in a single city eight miles long. It is impossible not to feel an ever fresh interest and even surprise in the solution of so marvellous a problem as this human ant-hill presents, and Londoners themselves, perhaps even more than their visitors, are wont to watch with pleasant wonder each occurrence which brings its magnitude to mind: the long quadruple train of splendid equipages filing through Hyde Park of a summer afternoon; the scene presented by the river at the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race; or the overwhelming spectacle of such crowds as greeted the Queen on her Jubilee.