very considerably and very rapidly in numbers, and the dogs and drovers, having harder work to do, grow more impatient and more noisy. The anglers begin to return, wearied out with their day's no-sport; and the country pedestrians, "dusty and deliquescent" with their long rounds, are seen marching back towards the city, bearing with them some verdant trophy ravished from the country-sidebranches of blossoms or of berries, or handfuls of mosses or wild flowers-to decorate their dull chambers at home in the smoky city. Then come the characteristic charioteers of the morning, in high spirits and in high voice, audibly proclaiming their practical dissent from the doctrines of Father Mathew.

As twilight comes down upon us, Our Terrace is almost as crowded as Cheapside on a week-day, owing to the simultaneous return of the tens of thousands of straggling pedestrians whom the fine weather had seduced into the country. The congregation which the chapel-of-ease pours forth after the conclusion of the service, makes hardly a sensible difference in their number. For an hour or more, this tide of returning population rolls on, continuing till past supper-time. Supper-time on Sunday has but little effect on the publichouses at each end of Our Terrace; they are crowded just then by the cattle and sheep drovers; and we think it as well not to send our servants among them, except upon a mission of absolute necessity. By the time we have finished our supper, the returning pedestrians have for the most part passed on to theirs. At about ten o'clock, if you walk out upon the terrace, it is ten to one that you hear Smith grinding away on his semi-grand at one of Handel's choruses; but

you must wait till that lot of sheep is gone by to hear it advantageously. Perhaps Jones and Co. are there, too, singing in parts; but the din outside is so great, that it is impossible to say. We are all so much used to this boo-o-ing and ba-a-ing, however, that we think nothing of it, and shall

assuredly miss it when it is gone, as go it soon will, now that the new cattle-market is fairly on its way to completion: it is not unlikely, such is the force of habit, that we may even regret its loss, though, of course, we have none of us ever failed to exercise our undoubted privilege of abusing it as an intolerable nuisance.

As the voices of cattle and sheep are the first accents that awake us in the morning of Sunday, so are they the last we hear at night. We are lulled to rest by the ba-a-ing, boo-oing, and bow-wow-ing of the brute creation; and if we dream, as we are likely to do, of beeves and flocks, and patriarchal times, and fancy ourselves wandering with Abraham on the pastoral plains of Mamre, or sitting with his angel-guests under the shadow of his milk-white tent, it is an agreeable and innocent delusion which beguiles the last moments of Sunday on Our Terrace.

JACK FROST AT OUR TERRACE.

WE must confess to a friendly feeling for Jack Frost, as an old acquaintance, who in times past has contributed not a little to those bracing exercises out-of-doors which are worth all the doctor's stuff in the world in a sanitary point of view. Jack, moreover, is a picturesque fellow, dealing in strong contrasts of colour, depths of rich brown and black beneath mountainous mantles of white; and in odd and grotesque shapes, as well as forms rare and fanciful-in involuted snowdrifts, curling like the capital of an Ionic column-in gigantic icicles ranged in jagged rows, like the teeth of some preadamite monster, or sharp, glittering, and terrible, as the sword of Michael. These doings of Jack's, we say, are picturesque and suggestive; they set the imagination scampering off on a new track, occasionally breaking up a little fallow-ground in a man's fancy, and awakening old associations, or creating new, which one would not like to be without altogether. Wherefore we welcome Jack Frost as a friend; and when he comes writing his beautiful and flourishing signature on our window-panes, we show him a cheerful face on the warm side of the glass, and wish him a merry time of it.

But a man may have too much of a good thing; and the best friend in the world may become a bore if he is always at your elbow; and on this account we would take the liberty of suggesting to our friend Old Jack Frost, that it would be quite as well if he would content himself with his own side of the street-door, and not be playing the burglar as he has done of late, and turning things upside down, besides per

petrating all manner of mischief in our peculiar domiciles. The fellow came in unceremoniously, "last Wednesday was a week," as Boniface says, and took possession like a broker's man; and here he stays, and won't be got rid of, do what we will. Betty, having a presentiment of his intention, did all she could to keep him out, by cramming the vents of the attic stoves, and shutting the windows tight, not to mention the lighting of rousing fires on every floor. But Jack found his way in somehow, and has had his own way ever since. The first thing he did was to crack the water-bottles by the expansion of their contents; then he glewed the ewers to the basins, so that they couldn't be got apart; then he transformed our private and particular sponge into a piece of pumice-stone; changed the tooth-brush into a lump of something as hard as the kitchen-poker, but of a colder flavour; and starched the towels to such a state of dignity, that each one thought fit to declare himself independent of the towel-horse, and would ride a pick-a-back no longer, but stand stubbornly on end. These exploits, however, were but trifles compared with what was to follow. Notwithstanding that we have regularly paid our water-rates, and have all our receipts on the file ready to produce at any time, Jack had the impudence to treat us as defaulters, and to manifest an intention to cut off the water. Betty, who had suspected his design, made up her mind to defeat it. With this view she commenced a course of friendly overtures and good offices to the pipe, which running through the kitchen, pierces the wall, and disembogues into the cistern in the back-garden. Never was pipe the object of more tender care or solicitous coddling-a part she swathed in warm flannels, a part she bandaged surgically with haybands, and another portion she boxed off with boards, filling the interstices with sifted coal-ashes. After all this skilful engineering, Betty grew defiant against Jack; and, we must say that for her, certainly kept her kettle boiling without the

help of foreign resources for days after our neighbours were frozen up. But, alas for the triumphs of the beau sexe !— the first thing we heard on coming down to breakfast on Tuesday morning last was, that that pipe had frozen and burst in the night, and that all the water in the house would have to be dipped out through ice three inches thick, from the half-empty cistern. There was no help for it; and we had to submit, especially as the plumber, upon being called in, declined operations till the thermometer should rise above the freezing-point. At the moment we write, the whole capillary system of the New River Company is suffering from congestion, and the arterial circulation of that leviathan body is represented by a few perpendicular plugs stuck up in odd corners and out-of-the-way places. Upon these extemporised fountains, Our Terrace, and the whole parish, for that matter, are thrown for their indispensable supply of water. The capture of a pailful of the precious liquid is no easy matter. The plug, being besieged all day long by tubs, buckets, pails, pans, and garden-pots, in the possession of every description of bare red-elbowed matron, serving-maid, small girl, and errand-boy, is not readily approachable, particularly as it is surrounded by a slippery glacier, a foot or more in thickness, caused by the spillings and overflowings. There is a continual quarrelling for priority; and though the law of "first come first served" is recognised in theory, it is not amicably carried out in practice-the strong supplant the weak, and the sure-footed upset the timid; and it is at the water-plug as it is all the world over, that the feeble go to the wall, and the strong-willed have their way. Now and then comes the sound of a splash, followed by a roar of laughter, and perhaps a faint cry: this time it is a little girl lugging a water-pot with a spout as long as herself, which she has been waiting half an hour to get filled, and having upset it through falling, is limping off to beg a kettleful from a neighbour.

F