distinction between the rural and the urban way of viewing a new acquaintance as regards both birth and fortune is very curiously betrayed by the habit of townsfolk to ask simply “_what_ a man may be” (meaning, “Is he a lawyer, a _littérateur_, a politician, a clergyman,—above all, is he a pleasant fellow?”) and that of country gentry invariably to inquire, “_Who_ is he?” (meaning, Has he an estate, and is he related to the So-and-so’s of such a place?) It is not a little amusing sometimes to witness the discomfiture of both parties when a bland old gentleman is introduced in London to some man of world-wide celebrity, whose antecedents none of the company ever dreamed of investigating, and the squire courteously intimates, as the pleasantest thing he can think of to say, that he “used to meet often in the hunting field a gentleman of that name who had a fine place in Cheshire,” or that “he remembers a man who must surely have been his father—a gentleman-commoner of Christchurch.” For those men and women—numerous enough in these days—who hold rather pronounced opinions of the sort not relished in country circles, who are heretics regarding the religious or political creed of their relatives and neighbors, London offers the real Broad Sanctuary, where they may rest in peace, and be no more looked upon as black sheep, suspicious and uncomfortable characters, the “gentleman who voted for Topsy Turvey at the last election,” or “the lady who doesn’t go to church on Sundays.” In town, not only will their errors be overlooked, but they will find scores of pleasant and reputable persons who share the worst of them and go a great deal further, and in whose society they will soon begin to feel themselves by comparison quite orthodox, and perhaps rather conservative characters. And lastly, besides all the other advantages of London which I have recapitulated, there is one of which very little note is ever taken. If many sweet and beautiful pleasures are lost by living there, many sharp and weary pains also therein find a strange anodyne. There is no time to be very unhappy in London. Past griefs are buried away under the surface, since we may not show them to the unsympathizing eyes around; and present cares and sorrows are driven into dark corners of the mind by the crowd of busy every-day thoughts which inevitably take their place. A man may feel the heart-ache in the country, and wander mourning by the solitary shore or amid the silent winter woods. But let him go, after receiving a piece of sad intelligence, into the busy London streets, and be obliged to pick his way amid the crowd; to pass by a score of brilliant shops, avoid being run over by an omnibus, give a penny to a streetsweeper, push through the children looking at Punch, close his ears to a German band, hail a hansom and drive to his office or his chambers,—and at the end of the hour how many thoughts will he have given to his sorrow?