severe attack of "Beautiful Star" early in their
day's work. Whatever people may think, it is
not a good preparation for a day of intellectual
labour to rush out into the street, after being
told by your maid-servant that "the Frenchman
don't seem to understand that he's to go," and
threaten a grinning Italian with a policeman.
The performance of this feat half a dozen times
in the course of a morning lays in a stock of bad
blood, which is apt, during the remainder of the
day, to get into the brain and clog the ideas
which might otherwise have flowed with some
degree of smoothness to the pen's nib, or the
pencil's point. A day's work spoilt not uncommonly
interferes with a man's capacity for enjoying
the evening which ensues, and so a day
that might have been a profitable and a pleasant
one, is doubly lost.

Sir, I have now said, not all that might be said
on this topic, but enough, I trust, to prove that
the evil for whose extermination I am pleading
is not a trivial or unimportant one. I might
have enlarged at greater length on the troubles
of those for whom "music hath not always
charms." I might have described their sufferings
more minutely, but to have done so would
only have been to heap together minute points
of evidence when the great fact to be
demonstrated was already proved. The organs are a
nuisance—they interrupt labour, they interfere
with comfort—in Heaven's name let us be rid
of them.

With this earnest cry, I would conclude that
speech which, had I the luck to be an M.P.,
and to get as much as a wink of the Speaker's
eye, I would assuredly let fly at him. I appeal
to the large class whose interests I am
advocating, whether in this torrent of eloquence I
have outstepped the boundaries of truth and
justice? I appeal to all scientific and literary
characters, to all calculators, arithmeticians,
mathematicians, to all cultivators of the fine
arts, to hard readers, to the nervous lastly, and
the sickly, whether I have been too hard on the
organ-grinding fraternity? I believe that every
member of every one of these classes will cordially
endorse everything I have said. Why, even as
I write these last words sitting in Lumbago-
terrace, the strains of a band playing before the
houses in Sciatica-row, a considerable distance
off, reach me quite audibly. The tune is the
"Last Rose of Summer," and for the last half-
hour this has been preceded by other dirges of a
like nature. Between each of these there has
been a pause just long enough to make me hope
that the musical entertainment was over. How
can a man write under such circumstances? His
pen is paralysed, and the words of the song with
which these artists are dealing, ring in his ears.
What, I ask, can a man do under these
circumstances? Sciatica-row is too far off for me to
send my servant to order those wretches off, and
even if she were to go they would only move a
little farther, and I should still hear that
disgusting trombone pumping away at the solemn
passages. No, I must either bear it, or—no, I
will not bear it, I will go out just as I am and
hunt those men out of Sciatica-row, if it takes
me the whole morning; and a nice state I shall
be in when I come back for the remainder of my
day's work.

AT THE ROADSIDE.

I, for a time, have left behind
The giant-city with its sin,
And here, secure from rain or wind,
I sit at ease within mine inn;
The dew lies bright on garden flowers
Below this little quiet room,
Beyond, the sunshine strikes the showers,
From gloom to gold, from gold to gloom.

Pleasant it is to linger here,
And watch the workings of the soil,
To taste the pleasant country cheer,
And seem so far away from toil.
Far from the busy human flock,
To feel the pauses of the brain
Filled by the sound of yonder clock,
And by the tinkling of the rain.

The rough old pictures on the walls,
The shining pewter sound and good;
The straggling postman when he calls,
Confirm my dim and dreamful mood;
The waiting-maid, fair, fresh, and free,
Might cause a softer heart to burn;
But, is it appetite or she,
That cooks my dinners to a turn?

And chief, mine host! with flaxen poll,
An ale-tanned wight, at fifty sound;
I wot, a better-envied soul,
Dwells not for seventy miles around.
He is the Delphos of the place,
His calm predictions cannot fail;
A talking host, whose very face
Diffuses politics and ale.

So here I sit within mine inn,
Secure to-day from fortune's frown,
The rain without, the calm within
Are something sweeter than the town;
This pleasant room, that changeful sky,
The dreamful peace of brain and heart,
Have left a fresher sense, that I
Shall take to town when I depart.

TOWN AND COUNTRY CIRCUS LIFE.

HAVING been engaged in a large Circus, I
think I can enlighten the public, who are said
to delight in obtaining a glimpse behind the
scenes, about the ground and lofty tumbling,
and the other extraordinary novelties which are
to be seen in that wonderful institution "The
Imperial British Hippodrome," as the bills now
call the Circus. Clever tumblers, professors of the
single and double trapeze, riders of trick acts,
exhibitors of trained ponies, Shakespearean jesters,
and champion vaulters of the world; the
glittering paraphernalia incidental to the gorgeous
spectacle of The Camp of the Cloth of Gold,
or The Sprites of the Silver Shower; or the
tortuous pyramidal feats of the dusky children
of the desert; have not been invented quite at a
moment's notice, but have grown to perfection
by slow degrees and by means of incessant