cheerless homes, what wretched slums and corners, what dark and unwholesome dens, do they lurk in hunger, cold, and bodily discomfort, while the relentless rain shuts them out from the chance of earning an honest penny? Truly, a rainy day in London has its dismal aspect within doors as well as without.

The animal creation, which always sympathises in the pains and pleasures of us humans, show their aversion from rainy weather, when it is excessive, in a manner not to be mistaken.

We cannot pretend to decide whether the horse pulls a long face at a rain-storm, his face being never of the shortest; but his eye is sadder than usual when he is soaked with a shower. Donkey shows his dislike to heavy rain by invariably getting out of it when he can, and by his unwillingness to face the driving blast when upon duty. Dog is, in wet London streets, invariably draggle-tailed and downcast, and out of heart. His post is too often, on these occasions, outside his master's door, upon the step of which he may be seen sitting, his muddy tail between his legs, and his woebegone face confronting the public, upon whom he turns an appealing, lack-lustre eye, telling how much he would prefer sleeping curled up by the kitchen-fire to standing sentry in company with the scraper. Puss shows her

sense of cleanliness and comfort by keeping within doors; though our old "Stalker" is an exception to the general rule, preferring to sit on the outside of the window-sill, where, erecting every hair in his black coat till they bristle up "like quills upon the fretful porcupine," he gathers a vast amount of electricity and considerable moisture besides, and is always the cleaner and the livelier for the process, which he doubtless knows to be good for his constitution.

Time was (when we were not so thoughtful as we are now) when we entertained a notion that it would have been an agreeable and convenient arrangement of such moist phenomena, if all the rain, hail, and snow, of which Mother

Earth stands in continual need, had been predestinated to fall after sunset, and the hours of daylight had been left to the uninterrupted pursuits and enjoyments of mankind. We are grown wiser now, and see that it is better ordered. In that case, we should have lost for ever the moral effect of a rainy day; and the stock of undeniable blessings to our mental and spiritual nature which spring out of little crosses and disappointments, would have been diminished so much in amount through the lack of a little gentle moral discipline, that, bad as the world is now, it would have been infinitely worse, and perhaps hardly bearable for living in. Therefore, with your leave, good reader, we will be reconciled to the wet weather; and when it rains, let it rain, without grumbling, merely donning our gaiters, induing our waterproof soles, buttoning up our coats, hoisting our umbrellas, and setting about our business cheerfully and industriously, which, as everybody knows who knows anything, is the best way of providing against a rainy day.

A LONDON RAILWAY STATION.

IF some respectable mandarin of Pekin, Whang Whampoo Fong, who has spent forty years in learning to read his Confucius, and who takes forty hours, and a trifle over, to travel (when he does travel, which is not very often-not more than once in a year at the most,) a distance of a hundred miles-if he could be suddenly caught up out of that opiumsmelling snuggery of his, lighted by a single paper lantern, and dropped down in a London railway station at ten at night, say, during the arrival of one of the long trains—I wonder where he would think he was got to. How he would stare at the flaming gas-lights-at the glittering roof with its light cross-work of iron bamboo! How the sudden apparition of the monster engine, with its goggle eyes of fire, would bewilder the brains of the Chinaman! How he would shrink from the approach of the sinuous leviathan with thirty or forty stomachs, all disgorging at once their quota of men, women and children, amidst the bawling of countless voices, the lumbering of luggage, the din of whips and wheels, and the hissing of that big tea-kettle with a fire in its belly, and its straight spout aloft in the air! Poor Whampoo Fong might think the whole affair a dream conjured up by the fumes of opium, and would certainly wish himself back again, away from the incomprehensible uproar, to the calm of the sober city of the celestial empire.

Yes, disciple of Confucius, it was a dream once, and that not very long ago; but it is now the realisation of a dream, and, like a thousand other things of less importance, which

were all of them, at one period or other, dreams too, is as much a matter-of-fact affair as a cup of tea, a button, or a mandarin's tail.

A London railway station presents an aspect which constantly varies. At one hour you shall find it a cool promenade, where the footfall of the porter or the policeman reverberates from the lofty walls and the glazed roof in a silence broken now and then by the thundering echoes of a heavy hammer-stroke, or the crash of a ponderously-loaded truck shunted suddenly into its place. The pleasant sunlight shimmers softly through the arching roof, and at the open end towards the country, you see the glistening rails winding onwards for miles, and converging to a point in the far perspective. As you stand gazing, a bell rings sonorously at your elbow, and, if your eyes are as sharp as those of the ringer, you will discern in the distance a dim speck, or a fitful wreath of silvery steam, which grows rapidly bigger and bigger as you look upon it, and soon, bursting upon the ear with its sharp iterations of the piston-stroke, gives audible indication of its near approach. Another minute, and the huge iron fabric, with its brazen pyramid, pauses majestically at your side a hundred doors fly open, and a motley crowd of travellers, the majority of whom appear to be gentlemen in easy circumstances, unincumbered with luggage, alight on the broad flooring, and in a very few minutes are scattering themselves towards the City by various routes. It is the morning train, which runs for the special convenience of commerce, and brings from their country residences to the mart of London, perhaps a hundred or more of her merchants, whose dulce domum may lie at the distance of twenty, forty, sixty, or more miles from their places of business on 'Change. It is but a ride of an hour or so in a first-class carriage, soft with elastic cushions, purchased with the price of an annual ticket, which costs less than the difference in housekeeping between a domestic

establishment in London and one in the country, or by the sea-side. So it happens, that with all her abnormal increase --and London increases at the rate of more than a thousand souls a month—a good portion of her inhabitants live out of town, and places are now rising into note, as the country residences of London merchants and tradesmen, which, before the invention of railways, were no less than a day's journey from the metropolis.

In two minutes from the entry of the train not a single one of the passengers is to be seen. But now, on the other side of the platform another is preparing to go out there is a series of indescribable snorting, grinding, and clanking sounds, mingled with loud bangs and explosive concussions, -carriages and trucks are punching one another in the ribs; and while these are boisterously getting into line, the crowd are squeezing and jamming for precedence at the little trapdoors where the tickets are procured, and then they file off to the platform to secure places. "First-class to B—!" "Here you are, sir!" "Second-class to T-!" "That's your carriage-Where do you want to go, sir?" "To A-.' "Into that carriage, and then you won't have to change, sir." Such questions and directions are sounding and resounding on all sides; and now comes the news-boy, and mingles his shrill treble with the "manly voice" of the officiating police-"Who's for the Times?—this morning's Times!-Want the Advertiser, sir ?-Who's for the Illustrated News? supplement and all for sixpence !—Times! here! Times! Times! Times! Pa-a-par! ainy of the morning papers!" The boy doesn't stop shouting while he serves a customer, but bawls, and sells, and gives change, and bites the sixpences to taste if they are of the real mint flavour, "all under one" as he would say. But the train doesn't start yet, and old travellers know that well enough, and are in no hurry to take their seats after they have secured them by depositing their wrappers in a corner.