or, perhaps, pondering on the fitness of the time for a passage through the Insolvent Court, when trade is dull, and his wife and children are spending the money he does not make at Margate. Of all the strikes to which commerce is liable, this strike of the consumers is the most formidable. The unsold baubles, glittering in the windows with their gigantic plateglass, are apt types of the useless heaps of incalculable riches buried in "the deep, deep sea." The world has equally done with both: no divingbell will recover the one-no belle that does not dive, will purchase the other. So useless and so joyless will all worldly wealth become when he that now covets it, works for it, sins for it, shall be consigned to that eternal country-house, the tomb of his ancestors.

If this scene be too pathetic for endurance, cross over Oxford-road, and passing by the seven sleepers, if seven there be, who take no money nor checks at the gates of the Coliseum, penetrate the deserts of Regent's Park, and visit the animals at the Zoological; there will you find the monkeys weeping for their brethren absent in the Highlands, or at Cowes; and the maccaws, who will not be comforted for want of the society and rival plumage of their chattering sisters, who sojourn at Ramsgate or voyage on the Rhine. Sunday no longer shines distinctively upon them. Bears, with or without sore heads, may be unsociable to their hearts' content, and the lion may fancy himself at home in Africa, so undisturbed are his meditations on buffalo and venison. Silent now are the ardent vows so lately poured into the ears of beauty and the elephant; unseen the glances, lately so thick flashing, which "reigned influence" on whole regiments of beaux, or, missing their aim, lighted on some less sensible brute, and were shot in vain: where, too, are the passions which excited them? Alas! that the most brilliant "affairs" should not be permanent as sweet, and that the gallants of a season should be dismissed with the job-horses and the extra footmen, or dropped by their mistresses, with the tollman's shilling, at the first turnpike-gate.

Wherever you turn your steps, the few straggling persons, condemned, for God knows what unassoiled offence, to remain in town, have assumed an aspect of dulness "to countenance the horror of the locale, and "walk like sprites." The very sweepers at the crossings look as if they mourned the days when sixpences were to be had for asking, or as if the halfpence, few and far between, which now cross their palms, scarce sufficed to keep life and soul together. Here may be seen loitering the apothecary, (who lately rattled along the pavement in his cab,) as chop-fallen and as trade-fallen as his brother in "Romeo and Juliet;" there lingers the emancipated linendraper's apprentice, rattling his spurs and curling his moustache, oblivious that guardsmen and hussars are as out of season as green gooseberries, and unsuspicious that there is no soubrette abroad to be the dupe of his fierceness. Exchanging St. James's for Bury-street, or gliding along the south side of Oxford-road, may be detected the stealthy stride and sidelong glance of some half-pay dandy, or cleared out sprig of nobility, fearful of recognition, as he returns from a bootless round in search of one open house, and almost glad that he has escaped the dreadful necessity of owning himself in town, though he loses his claret in consequence. Turning into Pall-mall, you will not improbably encounter a minister of state, office-chained to London-some Lord of the

Treasury left to sign warrants—or, it may be, a foreign secretary in expectation of important despatches; while loitering at the door of the Travellers' Club, or examining the progress of the builders at the Reform Club, stands that really important personage "the last man in town," one of the autochthones of London, who is not expert at foreign languages, cares not for the grouse, is much subject to seasickness, and hardily maintains that the parish of St. James's is the best place in the season, and the only place all the rest of the year.

In St. James's Park, dining with Duke Humphrey under the trees, or sharing his crust with the ducks on the water's edge, may be seen some specimen of the unemployed dependants on the temporary establishments of the season; some butler "for the nonce," hired with the plate, for the behoof of the dinner givers in half-furnished houses; or some nightly groom of the chambers, as well known to the frequenters of routs, balls, and conversazioni as the fermenting cherry-water and hot ice they distribute. Nearly as melancholy, and quite as désouvré, saunters the vocationstruck writer to a law-stationer, or the once pert lawyer's clerk, escaped from keeping watch and ward over his absentee master's chambers, to meditate on the fees which should pay his way into Astley's or The Wells, but which are absent without leave, until " Michaelmas term next ensuing." He, with the would-be jaunty air, and hat set on one side, is one of "her Majesty's servants," too undistinguished to star it in the provinces, or to get himself transported to America, but fortunate at home in an engagement at the Surrey or the Victoria; and he that looks up to him with such reverence as he passes, is an harlequin out of employment, or a tradesman on the look-out for "two to the boxes." Should you meet a man with a remarkably intelligent physiognomy, meagre, or haply bearing a slight look of dissipation, its owner clothed in black rather the worse for the wear, or perhaps, as Curran described the orator of the debating club, "the gentleman in the dark shirt and greasy breeches," he, in all likelihood, is a parliamentary reporter, conning the original article that is to occupy the speechless columns of his journal; or if his pace be rapid, and his regard eager, doing duty pro. tem. as a penny-a-liner: in either case, a clever fellow, though somewhat at odds with fortune, and not improbably the embryo crysalis of a future judge or attorney-general. Beyond these personages, imagination itself can scarcely add another citizen" to the Western Cuma, at least not to its street-walking population.

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How pitiable, then, is the position of the unfortunate foreigner who arrives in our metropolis at this unseasonable season--the forlorn Thunder Von Trenck from Bavaria, the mediatised Pickled Mustard from Prussia, or the unlucky Kick-his-own-whisker-off from imperial Russia! Useless to him are his letters of introduction; not a house is open for his reception. The beautiful English countess, his Parisian idol of last year, upon whom he counts for an introduction to the beau monde, is re-presented by a house agent, and there is no longer a beau monde to be introduced to. The worthy baronet who pressed him so hospitably to visit London, is yachting it in the Mediterranean, or canvassing a nest of boroughs in the north of Scotland. The savant, upon whose scientific assistance he depends to cicerone him through museums and manufactories, is playing the philosopher to gaping coal-heavers at Newcastle, or holding intercourse with the antideluvian monsters of Murchison's

Siluria. The Amphitryon, who has " a long arrear of dinners to settle with Alonzo," has removed his batterie de cuisine to the familyscat in Yorkshire, or perhaps is off in a steam-packet to Egypt, on his way to the extreme Indies, to eat bird's nest soup on the spot. Meantime, all a foreigner's objects of research are beyond his reach: Parliament is up, the Opera is closed, the British Museum is undergoing its annual cleansing, Macready and Kean are enlightening the dark villages of the provinces, there is no whist to be had at the Traveller's, no hazard at Crockford's: the great political dinners of the goldsmiths and fishmongers of London are over, and all the white bait of the Thames is eaten up: for him there are now no partis fines at Richmond, no suburban ruralities, with their comfortable flirtations and their uncomfortable damp feet. The only house open for his reception is his hotel; and there, the man-cook is dismissed for the summer, and the best rooms locked up for repairs and setting in order. Nothing, in short, is left but flight for the stranger thus misdirected— nothing but a run on the railroad, and a peep at the Giant's Causeway, to repay him for his sea-sickness and ruinous expenditure: and he will return to his own country, more firmly convinced than ever that an Englishman's home is on the continent, and that the Reform Bill was a sentence of banishment upon the whole aristocracy.

Such, reader, is the generally-received opinion respecting London when nobody is in town-an opinion loudly and pertinaciously maintained by such of the mediocrities, as having the means of quitting it, are driven by the etiquettes of fashion to encounter the bore of an annual rustication, without any genuine taste for country life, and without one of those acquirements which make tranquillity and retirement not merely an endurable alternation of existence, but a positive enjoyment. How many hundreds are there of men who, pusillanimously dreading to appear on the pavement at this tabooed time of year, sweat and fatigue themselves to death in the hottest days of August, amidst the bogs of Ireland, or the heather of Scotland, although they absolutely detest shooting! how many winter at Melton, in the daily fear of breaking their necks! how many who, in obedience to the self-same authority, keep the sea for the proper number of months, in defiance of an infirm stomach, and the apprehension of shipwreck! how many who hurry up the Rhine, or over the Alps, while they would rather be in Wapping, and care no more for the picturesque, and know no more of antiquities, than if they had never left that long-shore locality! All these personages, and the still more numerous category of those whose winter extravagances drive them to saving money, at home on their own estates, or abroad, in some remote village, do their petit possible to exaggerate the evils of an autumn in the metropolis, and to expatiate upon the impossibility of being seen in the streets, without an utter loss of caste. But there are not wanting a few more knowing, or more honest persons, who are ready to declare that, granting all that has been advanced, still Providence has not so unequally divided its blessings, that in this, as in most other cases, the devil is not as black as he is painted, and that a man may survive a sojourn in London when nobody is in it, without deserving a charge of lunacy, or being set down irreclaimably as an incurable vulgarian.

For our own parts, we are free to confess" that we are among

these few we have more than once made the experiment, and-we trust that our readers will take our word for it-we are alive to tell the tale; nay more, (we say it not perversely,) we have found that “in the worst of times" London has its enjoyments, and have found ourselves more at home in it when left to itself than when crowded to the uttermost with birds of passage.

At this very moment of writing we have the moral courage to declare that we are in town, that we have eschewed Brighton, declined three invitations to great country-houses, given up a trip to Paris, a visit to Mahomet Ali, a peep at Constantinople, and a free passage in the Great Western-and all for the sake of a quiet three months between this and the opening of Parliament. If, to justify such heterodoxy, such daring contempt of the vox populi, a strong authority be thought necessary, it must be called to mind that the latest lingerers in the rear of the season are ever persons of the highest rank; and that "the last man in town" is always that precise individual who might be taken, without hesitation, as the most knowing and experienced tryer of all things, at any time to be found on the pavement. It will likewise turn out, nineteen out of every twenty times, that he is a person having nothing to prevent his instant departure, but his decided preference for the metropolis.

To say the truth, the imputed desolation of London lies in a very great degree on the surface; and they only who do not know how to make the most of the town, need complain of its want of resources. As long as the weather continues fine, there is the dinner at Greenwich, so snug and so compact; the two days' run to some race, or to the suburban villa of a bachelor friend; and, as the season advances, there are plenty of hunts within twenty miles round, to expel the fog from one's lungs, and to pull up, after the last late sitting and broiled bones. The rail-road, too, is an endless source of variety, with the unspeakable advantage of bringing you home to your own bed, or, if you like it, in time for the sly appointment in the private box of the petit spectacle.

Notwithstanding that everybody is (cense) out of town, this is far more generally by a figure of speech, and ad honores, than is commonly imagined. The houses, indeed, are closed, universally; but every here and there a glimmering lamp may be seen in the hall after sunset, or lights may be detected in the back drawing-room windows of mansions where no sign of life is given in the day-time. Late in the afternoon, too, a close observer will not fail to detect a stray horseman and his groom dashing through Grosvenor Gate, or insidiously stealing across the Regent's Park, and "going up and down concealing himself" in the lanes of Hornsey and Hampstead. About the same time, also, it is possible that a cab may be seen at the door of an aristocratic residence, a living token that there is somebody at home, and some visitor within, of sufficient vogue to merit admission. The fact is, if people would but give themselves the trouble to think of it, that inevitable circumstance must always bring or keep a few persons in town to make up a dinnertable, or maintain a causerie even in the month of September. Ladies must lie-in, out of the season, as well as in it. Ill health will occasionally force papa to stay for the doctors, or financial reasons make it inconvenient to remove from the sheltered seclusion of the town-house, and

encounter the demand for enforced hospitalities and county display. Then, as has already been hinted, the officials must be in the way; while, in the hotels, there is a constant small floating capital of families on their route to the continent, or passing through, between the wateringplace and the family-seat.

Now, for our own parts, we feel that the small social re-unions which these resources bring together, are infinitely more enjoyable and more enjoyed than the gorgeous and fulsome dinners of thirty, with every delicacy in season, marred as they are, during the season, by satiety, and the suffocation of hot rooms in July-far more so than the crowded rout, the noisy ball, or the opera supper, where nobody cares for anybody. At this time of the year, the most insignificant diner-out rises in personal consequence, the most transient acquaintance becomes an acceptable guest, and the smallest contribution to sociality is everywhere thankfully acknowledged. If you accept an invitation, you are welcomed as no man is welcomed during the season: if you give one, you are a public benefactor. At the dull time of year, as it is ignorantly imputed, men have intimate friends; and there is such a thing as taking pot-luck. One has leisure, moreover, to see a play; and it is the only season for really enjoying a novel, and reading up to the age. Then alone can you know the comfort of going to bed before midnight, and sleeping without the fever of repletion, and of over-exhausting fatigue. Then, too, is the time for an uninterrupted tête-à-tête, and for those delicious liaisons, three parts friendship and one tendresse, in which sentiment is not pushed to passion, and confidence and unreserve make the frais of the intercourse. At this time of the year, if you have a more substantial flirtation in progress, you have not to fear the momentary intrusion of rivals, or the scarcely less vexatious interruptions of female visitors, to whom the lady "must be at home:" neither have you so much to apprehend those distractions which will come over the women, even in the most interesting moments, when town is full, and men as plenty as blackberries.

Now-a-days, also, when every one writes, and when to be an author is all but an indispensable qualification for good society, it is no trifling consideration that London, when everybody is out of town, affords the greatest facilities to literary labour. Then, if you really write your work yourself, you are the most secure from interruption; then, if you employ the pen of another, you are the safest from detection. Then may the candidate for public honours take lessons of elocution unobserved, or get up most effectually the subject with which he is to astonish the town, and conciliate his constituents, during the ensuing sessions. At that time of the year, may the virtuoso look out for cheap bargains, and pick up a picture or a marble for half what it would have cost him in the season. At that time, if a choice lot of wine is thrown on the market, there are fewer competitors to snap it up; in one word, it is then and there, that the man of the world has his best, if not his only, opportunity of living for his friends, or for himself-of enjoying, in the utmost intensity, agreeable society; or of wrapping himself up the most completely in his isolated individuality. If London, when everybody is out of town, be not precisely London when everybody is in town, still it is barren only to the barren, and insipid only to the insipid. It is without resources only to those who are themselves utterly resourceless; and without charms only for the unamusable, and such as can only exist in