them, I own that they are not so various or
so suggestive as the sights and sounds of
London. Linnæus made a flower clock: there
is a clockwork in our street of a more wonderful
sort, that never once runs down. Early in
the morning, if the wind be favourable, I can
hear the striking of a real work-day clock—
that of the railway; and the key-notes of
its bells often remind me, as I lie under the
blanket, of the chime of an old cathedral
near which I was born. With eyes half-
opened, I begin to dream of nooks in rocky
woods, huge mossy oaks and ash-trees over-
hanging a clear river; of deep glens and
bubbling springs, and streams rattling about
great stones; of locks, and weirs, and ancient
Norman shrines, all lying within earshot of
that old cathedral bell. Then I hear, even
in London, the cocks crowing, and sometimes
the lowing of the kine, the bleat of sheep
and lambs, that pass under my window.
Factory bells sound in the distance; and I
hear the whistle of the locomotive, with its
rush of steam, that in a very sleepy mood
stands for the distant roar of the sea beating
upon rocks and shingles.

At seven o'clock, there arrive in our street
two or three criers of milk, and many voices
clamouring Four bunches a-penny,
watercresses! By the watercresses every sleeper
is awakened, and some neighbours, I believe,
awake to grumble—not remembering that
at seven it is time to rise, and little thinking
of the pleasant rills near Rickmansworth.
and Watford; of the picturesque groups
that were employed betimes in collecting and
packing this favourite herb for the London
market; of the anxious crowd of hungry
people flocking from unhappy courts and
sickly dens to Hungerford or Covent Garden,
or elsewhere, with little capitals to invest;
and then of the hard work these people go
through, with their little shops upon their
heads, before they earn a day's bread and a
sordid lodging.

Between seven o'clock and nine,
Watercresses! Dried Haddocks! Fine Bloaters,
fine young Yarmouth! Sweep! and Milk,
yeo! are never out of hearing. During a
part of the time, the attention of the street
is absorbed by two comic milkmen, who come
one of them at half-past seven, and one at half-
past eight. The first comes with cows and
cans, and cries an oration of some length about
''New milk from the kee-ow! Milk it in your
own jugs—milk it in your own jugs, all hot,
piping hot, new milk from the kee-ow!"
The other addresses us concerning "Railway
milk! Railway milk! Railway milk!
Milk—MILK—MILK! All milk and no
water, pretty maids, pretty maids! All
milk and no water, no water, pretty maids!
Only threepence! Threepence a quart!
Threepence—threepence! Only threepence
a quart, pretty maids!" So I think, during
the half-hour occupied by this pastoral song,
of Corydon and Damon, and declare to myself
that London is not such a work-a-day place,
after all, but that we too have something in
our streets about the pipe and reed.

At nine o'clock the hour is struck, all down,
the street by the postman's knock; we have
also Dust-hoy! and a man with a wheel, who
when he is not shouting, is grinding saws
and scissors. There is also a pleasant
clamour of the children on the way to school,
who play at leapfrog and chuck-farthing
outside my window. The tic-tic-tic-tic of the
German clockmaker, who passes about this
time, and the commencement of the morning
calls from persons who make offers in
confidential tones, of envelopes at a penny a
dozen, or request the purchase of fancy
articles in the missionary interest; street
minstrels knocking for pennies; the one-
horsed organ battery, or brain-thrasher,
opening its fire; rhubarb, twopence a bundle!
Clo-clo! Any ornaments for your
firestoves! Organs, Ethiopians, the Indian
tom-tom, and Mackerel alive O! with many
like ingredients in the busy hum of life,
keep us alive and warn us, nine o'clock
having struck, that the labour of another
day is well begun. Nine o'clock in the
evening is at last announced by the cry of
Bee-ar! and the clash of pots. After that
hour we have nothing to look for but organs
and brass-bands till midnight. Grant that I
like, better than all these sounds, the rustle
of the cornfields, and the murmur of the
river Wye, yet is there not in these town-
murmurings the voice that ought to engage
most of my attention? Shall the men,
women, and children who are all but
homeless, not labour and toil in the streets to
which they are remitted, because I desire
rest in my adjoining snuggery? Shall they
not cry aloud for honest bread, because my
ears are nice? I would much rather stop
the clock than stop the street-cries. I
respect the struggling industry they represent;
I hear the oaths, I see the cruelty,
I suffer from the habitual dishonesty of these
hucksters. Their quarts are pints; their
pounds are half-pounds: but what of that?

I am very much amused to think what a
good world this must be, as it is now to most
of us, when Londoners can find no worse
tyranny to complain of than the being ground
under the barrels of the foreign organ-boys.
When you hear much of small troubles, you
may suppose that there can be no experience
of great ones; and, indeed, I quite believe
that habitual grumblers are among the
happiest folk upon earth. What would the
complainant of to-day say to a return of the
old time when London was ground out of
patience by an English king, or even by
worshipful men, sons of its bosom, banded for
midnight robbery and murder in its pitch-
dark streets, and able to offer sums equal in
our money to five or six thousand pounds as
a bribe for escape when they were taken?

The organ-boys levy penny contributions