virtue in having at least liberty to grumble. These thoughts come over me as I wend my way at Ten o’Clock at night along the New Road—what do they call it now? Euston Road, Pancras Road, Paddington Road—_que scais-je_—towards the suburban district of Pentonville. It won’t be suburban much longer; for Clerkenwell and Islington, Somers Town and Finsbury, are hemming it in so closely that it will be engulphed some of these days by a brick-and-mortar torrent, like the first Eddystone Lighthouse. A pleasant spot once was Pentonville, haunted by cheery memories of Sir Hugh Myddleton, the New River Head, Sadlers’ Wells Theatre, and the “Angel” at Islington—which isn’t (at least now-a-days, and I doubt if it ever was) at Islington at all. They began to spoil Pentonville when they pulled down that outrageously comic statue of George IV., at Battle Bridge. Then they built the Great Northern Railway Terminus—clincher number one; then an advertising tailor built a parody of the Crystal Palace for a shop—clincher number two (I am using a Swivellerism). The pre-ordinate clincher had been the erection of the hideously lugubrious penitentiary. However, I suppose it is all for the best. The next step will be to brick up the reservoir, and take down that mysterious tuning-fork looking erection, which no doubt has something to do with the water supply of London, and the New River Head; then they had better turn the Angel into a select vestry-room or a meeting-house for the Board of Works; and then, after that, I should advise them to demolish the “Belvidere.” Whose connection with grumbling you shall very speedily understand. At this famous and commodious old tavern, one of the few in London that yet preserve, not only a local but a metropolitan reputation, there is held every Saturday evening—ten o’clock being about the time for the commencement of the mimic Wittenagemotte—one of those meetings for political discussion, and the “ventilation” of political questions, whose uninterfered with occurrence, not only here, but in Fleet Street, in Bride Lane, and in Leicester Square, so much did rouse the ire of the _sbirri_, and _mouchards_, and unutterable villany of Rue de Jérusalem spydom, in the employ of his Imperial Majesty, Napoleon III.