I should be grossly misleading you, were I to attempt to inculcate the supposition that at seven o’clock in the morning only the humbler classes, or those who have stopped up all night, are again up and doing. The Prime Minister is dressed, and poring over a savage leader in the “Times,” denouncing his policy, sneering at his latest measure, and insulting him personally in a facetious manner. The noble officers told off for duty of her Majesty’s regiment of Guards are up and fully equipped, though perchance they have spent the small hours in amusements not wholly dissimilar from those employed by the daring Flybynight and the intrepid Keepitup to kill time, and have devoted their vast energies to the absorbing requirements of morning parade. Many of the infant and juvenile scions of the aristocracy have left their downy couches ere this, and are undergoing a lavatory purgatory in the nursery. Many meek-faced, plainly-dressed young ladies, of native and foreign extraction, attached as governesses to the aristocratic families in question, are already in the school-room, sorting their pupils’ copy-books, or preparing for the early repetition of the music lesson, which is drummed and thrummed over in the morning pending the arrival of Signor Papadaggi or Herr Hammerer, who comes for an hour and earns a guinea. The governess, Miss Grissel, does not work more than twelve hours a day, and she earns perhaps fifty guineas a year against Papadaggi’s fifteen hundred and Hammerer’s two thousand. But then she is only a governess. Her life is somewhat hard, and lonely, and miserable, and might afford, to an ill-regulated mind, some cause for grumbling; but it is her duty to be patient, and not to repine. What says the pleasing poet? “O! let us love our occupations, Bless the squire and his relations, Live upon our daily rations, And always know our proper stations.”[2] Let us trust Miss Grissel knows her proper station, and is satisfied.