Lo, as I pen these reminiscences of nine o’clock in the evening—pen them in the “quiet street,” where I am again for a season—though my boat is on the shore, and my bark is on the sea, and ere you hear from me again there will be a considerable variation of clocks between London and Jericho—a fife and tabour announce the advent of a little dancing boy and girl, with a careworn mother, in the street below. I look from my window, and see the little painted people capering in their spangles and fleshings and short calico drawers. It is against conviction, and against my own written words, and against political economy, and ex-Lord Mayor Carden; but I think on Mr. Carrick’s picture of “Weary Life,” and must needs take some pence from the clock-case, and throw them out to these tiny mummers. Life is _so_ hard, my brother! TEN O’CLOCK P.M.—A DISCUSSION AT THE “BELVIDERE,” AND AN ORATORIO AT EXETER HALL. Exists there, in the whole world, civilised or uncivilised, a nation of such inveterate grumblers as the English? We grumble at everything. We are five-and-twenty millions of bears afflicted with perpetually sore heads. Are we charged sixpence extra for a bed? is the tail of our mutton-chop underdone? does our mockturtle soup disagree with us? is a railway train late? or the requisite amount of hop deficient in our pale ale? does an Italian itinerant split our ears while we are endeavouring to solve the Seventh Problem in the First Book of Euclid? does the editor or manager refuse to return the manuscript of our poems or our farces? do we buy a silk dress that turns out to be nine-tenths cotton? are we surcharged by the commissioners of income-tax, (_they_ say I make a thousand a year, I say I don’t _make_ a hundred and fifty; but may difference of opinion never, et cetera)? forthwith we call for pen, ink, and paper, and indite a letter to the “Times,” that providential safety-valve for the great legion of grumblers. What are our public meetings but organised arenas of grumbling? what the “leaders” in our Sunday newspapers but extra facilities for grumbling after we have been grumbling all the week? I think it was Mr. Horace Mayhew, in his “Model Men and Women,” who told the story of a waiter at a city tavern, who took but one holiday in the course of the year, and then enjoyed himself by paying a visit to another waiter at another tavern, and assisting him in laying the knives and forks. In like manner the ordinarily-understood holiday for the gentlemen of the daily press—there being no diurnals published on Sunday—is Saturday; whereupon, after lying in bed somewhat longer than usual on the sixth day’s morning, they indulge in the _dulce desipere in loco_, by writing stinging leading articles in the journals which publish editions on the Sabbath. This is due to their inveterate propensity for grumbling. And, mark me, this licensed and acknowledged grumbling is the surest safeguard of our