What time the dock-labourers have finished lunch, another very meritorious class of human ants begin their prandial repasts. With just one thought at the vast number of merchants’, brokers’, shipping-agents’, warehousemen’s, wholesale dealers’ counting-houses that exist in London city, you will be able to form an idea of the legions of clerks, juniors and seniors, who, invariably early-breakfasting men, must get seriously hungry at one p.m. Some I know are too proud to dine at this patriarchal hour. They dine, after office hours, at Simpson’s, at the Albion, at the London, or, save us, at the Wellington. They go even further west, and patronise Feetum’s, or the Scotch Stores in Regent Street, merely skating out, as it were, for a few minutes at noon, for a snack at that Bay Tree to which I have already alluded. Many, and they are the married clerks, bring neat parcels with them, containing sandwiches or bread-and-cheese, consuming those refreshments in the counting-house. In the very great houses, it is not considered etiquette to dine during office-hours, save on foreign-post nights. As to the extremely junior clerks, or office-boys, as they are irreverently termed, they eat whatever they can get, and whenever they can get it, very frequently getting nothing at all. But there are yet hundreds upon hundreds of clerks who consume an orthodox dinner of meat, vegetables, and cheese—and on high days and holidays pudding—at one p.m. Their numbers are sufficient to cram almost to suffocation the eating-houses of Cheapside, the Poultry, Mark Lane, Cornhill, and especially Bucklersbury. Of late years there has been an attempt to change the eating-houses of Cheapside into pseudo “restaurants.” Seductive announcements, brilliantly emblazoned, and showily framed and glazed, have been hung up, relating to “turtle” and “venison;” salmon, with wide waddling mouths, have gasped in the windows; and insinuating mural inscriptions have hinted at the existence of “Private dining-rooms for ladies.” Now, whatever can ladies—though I have the authority of Mr. Charles Dibdin and my own lips for declaring that there are fine ones in the city—want to come and dine in Cheapside for? At these restaurants they give you things with French names, charge you a stated sum for attendance, provide the pale ale in silver tankards, and take care of your hat and coat; but I like them not—neither, I believe, do my friends, the one-o’clock-dining clerks. Either let me go to Birch’s or the Anti-Gallican, or let me take my modest cut of roast and boiled, my “one o’ taters,” my “cheese and sallary,” at an eating-house in Bucklersbury—such a one as my _alter ego_, Mr. M’Connell, has here presented for your edification. And his pictured morals must eke out my written apophthegms—for this sheet is full. TWO P.M.—FROM REGENT STREET TO HIGH CHANGE.