think of it sometimes in connection with Isabel Featherstone. A young and gleaming blonde, slender, bright in movement—the early morning sunshine has fallen on her, and stayed.

Steam Ferry Boat.

To-day the great expanse of New York Harbour, on the way to Staten Island, is dull of hue as Rotherhithe or Wapping-water and craft and sky and the encircling coast, all tones of grey and leadcolour. In better weather, though the objects are very picturesque, they are too multitudinous. At least, that is the first impression. The spires and smoke-stacks and colleges of Cambridge, seen from the Back Bay at Boston, group more harmoniously. It is confusion here, it seems. Boston Back Bay is restful, simple, and a picture.

Steam Ferry Boat.

But this evening, coming back from Staten Island, there is nothing to recall Rotherhithe or Wapping-no, nothing that recalls the solid land at all. It is a vision-and the landscape of a dream. The sun behind us, towards the Atlantic, went down but lately in a purple and orange cloud; but already the orange has ceased to be vivid, the purple is subdued. Before us the placid water is silver and dovecoloured. Over it and the lights of the city we are nearing, there is a soft, immense, and undefined sky. The many-decked river-steamers, broad of beam and with high sides, gleam white on the waters; their lights, like the lights of the city behind them, a pale gold, but in movement. One after another, to right or to left, they pass and vanish-phantoms of gold and white, gliding quite silently across a world of melting opal.

An Old Story.

WHEN the Spring was beginning, and May-day was nigh,

On a country girl spinning, the King cast his eye;
Fair flourish the roses anear the court wall,

But the rose of the hedges is fairest of all.

"Let me hide my fool's face, 'neath a lying tombstone,
For the world's gone a-maying, I mope here alone,"
Said the jester, who sat on the steps of the throne.

But the blossoms will fade which the thoughtless have torn,
And the cheeks of a maid will grow withered and worn.
Why should there for such a small matter be woe,
Since each hedge, and cach village, such roses will show?
"King! go to your wine; pretty maiden! go moan;
When its meat hath been mumbled we leave the picked bone,"
Said the jester, who sat on the steps of the throne.

Yet a peasant is grinding a knife, sharp and strong,
And silently winding his way through the throng-
Then the dogs must be driven from licking the gore
Of a monarch struck down at his own palace door.
"Though her name be a gibe, and her altars o'erthrown,
In the end, gossip Justice will seize on her own."
Said the jester, who sat or. the steps of the throne.

EDWARD SYDNEY TYLEE.

From Leicester Square to Covent Garden.

A LEISURE hour might be less profitably employed than in a solitary stroll-albeit without any definite object- through the streets of London. In whichever direction he may bend his steps, a man must indeed be unobservant if he fail to discover something worthy of note in the course of his ramble. The metropolitan lounger-not to be confounded with the "mooner," an uncomplimentary term invented by Albert Smith-has his favourite haunts and familiar "beats," and, although he is as well acquainted with every inch of his road as the real or pseudo-blind men perpetually tapping with their sticks the Regent Street pavement are with the intervening crossings, he nevertheless finds himself instinctively drawn towards the one particular locality which, above all others, has for him a special and invariable charm.

Let me at once confess that I am one of these; that I have a predilection for certain quarters of the town, offering perhaps little attraction to the chance visitor, but not the less interesting to their habitual frequenter, as displaying within a limited space a constantly varying and characteristic picture of every-day London life. Such is the district indicated by the heading of this paper, a nearer inspection of which, if it please the reader, shall be the object of our present and purposely "round-about " saunter.

Taking for our starting-point Leicester Square, with its cosmopolitan population, its long line of parcel-post vans awaiting their turn of duty, and its two theatres glaring at each other across Mr. Albert Grant's trimly kept refuge for the infantine denizens of the neighbourhood, we enter Cranbourn Street, a spacious and welcome substitute for the narrow and dingy alleys of fifty years. back, where the bonnet-vendors, lurking behind their shop doors, pounced upon the unwary pedestrian, and like their equally pertinacious contemporaries, the old clothesmen of Holywell Street, rarely let him go without saddling him with at least one specimen of their merchandise. Now that the book store, with its scarce editions and showy bindings, has transported its Penates elsewhere, the modern Cranbourn Street possesses no particularly salient feature save the cricketing dépôt of Wisden and Co.; the

famous Sussex bowler, however, having a year or two ago been gathered to his fathers, his name alone survives for the benefit of the "Co."

The

Crossing St. Martin's Lane into Garrick Street, a glance at the office of the ubiquitous Mr. Willing recalls to my memory an occurrence that created no little sensation in Paris about eighteen years ago. This enterprising firm had established some time previously a branch office on the Boulevard des Capucines, a young man of good family being engaged there as principal clerk. experiment not proving sufficiently remunerative, it was subsequently abandoned; and the clerk, whose services had naturally been dispensed with, after indulging his theatrical propensities by officiating as occasional "super" in 'Lord Dundreary' during Sothern's brief stay in Paris, eventually obtained a situation in a well-known banking house, and for a few months discharged his duties to the satisfaction of his employers. Unfortunately, among his acquaintances was a youth of notoriously bad character, by whose persuasion he was tempted to appropriate to their joint use a large sum of money, of which, during the absence of the cashier, he had the temporary charge. Long before the theft was discovered, the two accomplices had left Paris on their way to Baden, where for three or four days they committed every sort of extravagance, and astonished even the croupiers of the roulette by the recklessness of their play. Such a display of eccentricity was not likely to pass unnoticed, and, the bank robbery having been duly chronicled in the papers, suspicion was soon directed towards them; and on the fifth day after their arrival, both culprits, whose whereabouts had been traced by an emissary from the Rue de Jérusalem, were safely lodged in the town prison, from whence they were transferred to Paris, and condemned to expiate their little "indiscretion" by a five years' detention at Poissy.

A few doors from Willing's are the chambers tenanted by the leading "crammer" of London, in and out of which young aspirants for the F.O. and other public offices are perpetually hurrying; and in their immediate vicinity is the Garrick Club, a stately and well-proportioned building, but far less exclusively dramatic than its comparatively modest predecessor. Here, and in the adjoining streets, the literary and artistic elements are plentifully represented by some half a dozen book and print sellers of various nationalities, one of whom has had the ingenious idea of ornamenting his periodical catalogues with a portrait of the "genius loci," David Garrick.

A passing glimpse of the Hebrew fraternity congregated round

the entrance to Debenham's sale rooms is enough for us, and crossing Bedford Street, with its cab stand and straw-chewing "waterman," we find ourselves in Henrietta Street. Many years ago, in one of the houses recently demolished to make way for more pretentious edifices in red brick, lived a publisher of the name of Miller, the same who, according to Planché, was signalised by the mischief-loving Liston to the "gamins" of Leicester Square as" the man who didn't like tripe," and pursued by a pack of noisy urchins to his own shop door. I often wonder what has become of all the sixpenny contributions to dramatic literature for which we were indebted to him and his colleagues Cumberland, Duncombe and Webster, the precursors of Lacy and French. I remember once discovering in a court off Bow Street a small shop— it may still be there, for all I know to the contrary-the owner of which chiefly occupied himself with the completion of “sets,” the scarcer items fetching prices varying from ten shillings to a sovereign. Many of these pieces never having been reprinted, and the demand for them being of course in proportion to their rarity, my friend in the court ought to have made a good living out of them, and I sincerely hope he did.

Except its hotel and the costume dépôt bearing the name of the elastic Mr. Vokes, Henrietta Street offers nothing worthy of remark; nor need anything detain us in the portion of Southhampton Street we have to traverse on our way to Tavistock Street. There we come to that unique repository of pleasant caricature, Vanity Fair,' where notabilities of all kinds, social and political, attract the eye, from the peer to the comedian, from fair Elizabeth of Austria to that prince of jockeys the "demon Fordham. At the junction of Wellington and York Streets is the office of the perennial All the Year Round,' and at the corner of the latter thoroughfare a pink placard announces the headquarters of that widely circulated organ of "Society," the 'World.'

Another step, and we are in Catherine Street, a locality possessing an aspect peculiar to itself, not exclusively theatrical, journalistic or sporting, but combining the characteristics of all three; almost every one you meet having apparently some connection with foot-lights, printing-presses, or the turf. On a great race day, about half-past three in the afternoon, the pavement in front of what was until lately 'Bell's Life' window used invariably to be blockaded by a mob of seedy individuals, eagerly awaiting the appearance of the slip of paper proclaiming the names of the "first three;" while around the Echo' office waited as they do still-a crowd of impatient news-men