You see, there are some elements of sadness, nay, of deep and terrible tragedy, in these vehicular panoramas—the unconscious show-vans; but at Six o’Clock in the Evening the cabs and carriages on which you look down offer, mostly, a far pleasanter spectacle. They are full of people going out to dinner. Some in broughams, coupés, double-bodied carriages, and the occupants of these are ladies and gentlemen, attired in the full panoply of evening costume, and whom, at the first blush, you might take for members of the highest aristocracy. But they are not so. They simply belong to the first-class genteel circles, the very superior middle ranks; the dwellers in Lower Belgravia—Brompton, Kensington, and Pimlico; or in Lesser Tyburnia—Bayswater and Notting Hill. They have all the airs and graces, all the allurements, of the titled and the exclusive; but they have not the genuine Hall-mark of nobility and fashion; they are but Britannia metal, electro-gilt in a very superior manner. The undeniable Patricians, the satraps of our modern Persian splendour, do not dine (would not supper be a more appropriate term?) till half-past seven, or even eight, post meridian. They can have, I should imagine, but scant appetites for their dinner at that advanced period of the evening, unless, indeed, they partake of it in the ancient Roman manner, lolling on the _triclinium_, crowning themselves with flowers, and following, between the courses, the swinish examples of Apicius and Lucullus. Better, I take it, a mutton chop at the Cock, or the Cheshire Cheese, than these nasty Ancient Roman repasts. It is true our moderns stay their aristocratic stomachs early in the afternoon with a copious lunch of hot meats and generous wines; and they say that her blessed Majesty herself, like a good, sensible woman, makes her real dinner at two o’clock, with her little children, in the nursery, and takes but a mere bite and sup at the grand stall-fed feast of gold plate in the evening.