busy liming twigs for fluttering vanity. Here on the pavement comes a procession of standard-bearers, an army with timber banners, levied in the east to invade the west-a battalion of slop-shop militia, commissioned to fight the battle of cheap pantaloons under the very nose of fashion. Ragged recruits they are, very much in want of the garniture which they are doomed to puff: they defile slowly round St. Paul's Churchyard, and vanish to their work.-Now sets in a current of omnibuses towards the Bank, all crammed within, and covered without, with business faces. At every turn they stop and discharge a part of their cargo of clerks, managers, time-keepers, book-keepers, and cash-keepers, and then, with a convulsive bang of the door, roll on again. Others having set down their passengers, exemplify the truth of the old adage, “Empty vessels make the greatest sound," and come sauntering westward, emitting lusty cries of "Charing Cross!" "Sloane Street!" "Westminster!" "Angel!" "Highbury!" &c., &c., to which places very few people just now want to go. Of course the London reader knows well enough what's o'clock now, and does not require to be informed that it is nearer TEN than nine in the morning.

But the old edax rerum has bitten another mouthful out of the day, and we come again for a third look at Cheapside. And what a spectacle it is! the whole broad thoroughfare is one mass of life, as full of activity as Thomas Carlyle's Egyptian pot of tame vipers, who had nothing else to do all their lives long, but each one to struggle to get his head above his fellows-which after all is very much what this city pot of human beings are about, if the truth were told. One wonders whence came all this marvellous concourse of eager energies. Carts, waggons, carriages, gigs, dog-carts, phaetons, drays, with a score or two of omnibuses, choke up the roadway, while the foot pavement is hidden almost every inch from view by the swarming pedestrians. Here and there a heavy team stands patiently waiting at one of the narrow turnings

from the main channel, for an opportunity to dash forward into the living stream. The rattle and rumble of wheels, which has been increasing momentarily since the dawn, has swollen into a deafening crash, continuous and unbroken as the roar of a cataract. Every face you meet is alive with interest; hand, heart, and head are working while day lasts. From some of the side streets and from narrow entrances of warehouses you see working-men and porters with paper caps and aprons rolled round the waist, making the best of their way to the cook-shop or the coffee-house, by which you learn that the big bell of St. Paul's, whose note could not pierce to your ear through the roar of traffic, has just struck ONE.

Another interval.-The din of commerce continues without an instant's pause, but the symptoms of ebb-tide begin to be visible to the experienced eye. The 'busses which have been crawling at the picking-up pace for the last five or six hours as they passed towards the west, now drive smartly off, crammed, it is said with bulls and bears, whose feeding time is at hand. Here and there the smart "turn-out" of the merchant or capitalist—phaeton, brougham, or close chaise, drawn by a spanking grey, darts off rapidly from the scene of action—a token to everybody that business is over for the day on the Stock Exchange, and that it is FOUR o'clock. Two hours later, and the stroke of six is heralded by signs which, standing at the junction of Cheapside with St. Martin's-le-Grand, it is amusing to witness. Then the steps of the Post Office are besieged by a motley class of the population. Enormous bags of damp paper and printer's ink run on very little feet, and plunge themselves head-foremost into yawning receptacles; grave gentlemen forget their gravity, and hasten with long strides to deposit their epistolary contributions; lanky runners dart forth from dark places and narrow short-cuts, and while the hour is yet striking save by a second the inevitable post. Mail carts

drive up from all quarters, and postmen with corpulent bags from the district offices flock rapidly and silently to the grand centre of a nation's correspondence.

Again and Cheapside is illumined with a thousand jets of gas; the throng of foot-passengers is reduced one half or more, and is visibly diminishing in numbers every minute. Those that yet remain are mostly of a different class from the eager crowds of the morning. The gorgeous display of the shop-windows under the vivid artificial glare, collects a nightly assemblage of admiring spectators and purchasers. Offices and counting-houses are closed, and the labourers of the desk and labourers of all ranks find relaxation and refreshment in the enjoyment of an out-door stroll. The noise of the wheels, though unceasing, is no longer deafening; yet to our thinking, is much more suggestive and impressive than at its greatest uproar, because the ear, no longer overwhelmed by the surrounding crash, is at liberty to catch the fardistant and portentous hum of sound which, from every quarter of the metropolis, surges heavily in the upper air. Now a sudden wall of darkness bars the breadth of the way; the print-shop has dropped its portcullis of patent shutters; and now you may see on either side long wooden ones rise out of the ground, and men come forth with iron bars not at all fit for toothpicks, so please, friend porter, to keep them out of our mouths-and now you know it is NINE o'clock in the evening.

When we take our last glance, the moon is high in the sky, and the shops are all shut up save one or two, from the narrow doors of which-for even they have closed their shutters—a stream of red light flashes across the road. The last omnibus rattles noisily along, and the shouts of the conductor are audible at a distance of fifty yards. Heavy wains, loaded with goods for luggage-trains, grind their slow way to the several stations. Groups of individuals still pass hastily along, and the sound of their footsteps, heard at no

other time, gives token of the comparative solitude. Lights now gleam aloft in bedroom windows, disappearing one by one, and lulled by the continual rumble of wheels, the inhabitants retire to rest as a thousand iron tongues proclaim the midnight hour of TWELVE.

If you ask a dweller in this locality how he knows when it is past two in the morning, he may tell you, as he has told us, that the silence of the City sometimes wakes him at that hour, and that then he does not sleep again until the melody of cart-wheels, which begins once more an hour or two after, soothes him to slumber.

The dweller in Cheapside of a hundred and thirty years ago, when the place looked very different from what it does now, might have known what o'clock it was at a certain time by the coming of a small, plain carriage, drawn by one horse, and driven by a steady serving-man, and which stopped for half-an-hour or thereabouts, at the north-west corner of the street. A person of observation would have remarked, that though that small vehicle came regularly every day, yet the driver never descended from his seat, and no one ever alighted from the carriage, which, after standing on the spot for the allotted time, wheeled round and returned by the way it came. If, urged by curiosity, he had looked through the little glass window, he would have seen an old, old man of nearly fourscore years and ten, enveloped in the folds of a warm cloak, and gazing with moistened eyes upon the dome of St. Paul's church, so grandly defined against the clear morning sky. That was worthy old Sir Christopher Wren, who, now too feeble for action, came daily to snatch another, and yet another last look at the greatest and most glorious fact of his manly life. Ah, my friend! there was a man who always knew what it was o'clock.

THE EXPECTANT.

WHEN a boy I was sent to school in a country village in one of the midland counties. Midvale lay on a gentle slope at the foot of a lofty hill, round which the turnpike-road wound scientifically to diminish the steepness of the declivity; and the London coach, as it smoked along the white road regularly at half-past four o'clock, with one wheel dragged, might be tracked for two good miles before it crossed the bridge over the brook below and disappeared from sight. We generally rushed out of the afternoonschool as the twanging horn of the guard woke up our quiet one street; and a fortunate fellow I always thought was Griffith Maclean, our only day-boarder, who on such occasions would often chase the flying mail, and seizing the hand of the guard, an old servant of his uncle's, mount on the roof, and ride as far as he chose, for the mere trouble of walking back again. Our school consisted of between twenty and thirty boys, under the care of a master who knew little and taught still less: for having three sermons to preach every Sunday, besides two on week-days, he had but little leisure to spare for the duties of the school; and the only usher he could afford to keep was a needy hardworking lad, whose poverty and time-worn habiliments deprived him of any moral control over the boys. This state of things, coupled with the nervous and irascible temper of the pedagogue, naturally produced a good deal of delinquency, which was duly scored off on the backs of the offenders every morning before breakfast. Thus, what we