mer. They get wetted through and through, and having no change of clothes, fall easy victims to the catarrh and other maladies that come in the train of hard weather. Then, again, how sad it is to think what innocent schemes of enjoyment are frustrated, and what pleasant projects of holiday-making in the country lose the name of action! It is a sight to bring a cloud upon the sunniest brow to see the rain pouring down in sheets and tons of water upon the little children in the parish vans, who for weeks past had thought all day and dreamt all night about a merry "outing" in Epping Forest, at Rye House, or on Buckhurst Hill, and whose noses are as blue as indigo, and whose teeth chatter in their heads even while they proclaim, amid diluvian drenchings, their heroic determination not to go home till morning. The "Upper Ten " partake the disasters of the million, for the glories of "Vanity Fair" have vanished from Rotten Row, and the splendor of the Park is washed out. Never more this season will the Four-inHand Club display their magnificent equipages to the admiration of a dazzled populace; nor, if this sort of thing goes on, is it to be expected that the Butterfly coaches to Brighton, High Wycombe, Seven Oaks, and other delightful localities, will be left much longer upon the road. It is no joke to send a splendid vehicle, a team of spanking "bloods," and a coachman and guard in dainty liveries from the White Horse Cellars in Piccadilly, on a journey of some forty or fifty miles, with no happier result than to find coach, horses, and men all soddened with rain and bespattered with mud. Look where we may, we see failure, disappointment, and vexation of spirit. The Eton and Harrow match came to grief at Lords; summer manœuvres," as they are

the

styled with grim pleasantry, will probably eventuate in rheumatism to all concerned; Wimbledon Common has been converted into a swamp, and picnics and floral fêtes, and garden parties of all kinds have but served to illustrate in their downfall the absurdity of human anticipations and the vanity of human desires. "Such

is life, which is the end of all things!" as Mrs. Brown beautifully remarks. Unless matters meteorological mend, and that speedily, still graver calamities are in store. What is to become of the excursion season, and whither is that large section of the over-worked London public to turn for comfort, who have heretofore been accustomed to have recourse for the recruiting of their health and spirits to trips down the river or to the seaside? A more pitiable sight can hardly be imagined than that now presented by the Thames steamers on their rainy way to Gravesend, Southend, and Sheerness. Alas, for North Woolwich! Alas, for Erith Gardens ! Alas, and a-well-a-day for Rosherville, the place to spend a happy day! As for Ramsgate, Margate, and Broadstairs, the sooner their respective inhabitants throw up the sponges which they so closely resemble, the better for the Cockneys, who have enough to put up with without being befooled as well as deluged.

The sights one is doomed to witness in the streets of London during the Reign of Rain are derogatory to the dignity of human nature. It is no uncommon thing to see people of the humbler sort going about in tarpaulins, coal-sacks, horse-clothes, or blankets, "in the alarm of fear caught up." I protest that no longer ago than Wednesday last I saw a man in Bishopsgate Street with a blanket swathed around him, and I will do him the justice to say that Cæsar could not have

worn his toga with a finer air of grace and grandeur. Still, one does not like to see men going about in blankets, however elegantly they may be worn. A still more harrowing spectacle was to be viewed in the Strand on Tuesday, where—while it was raining cats and dogs, and here and there a rat-I actually saw an ironmonger's porter with an inverted coal-scuttle upon his head. Fancy man, born for immortality, going about the Strand with a coal-scuttle upon "the dome of thought, the palace of the soul!" Then, again, how sad-how very sad-it is to see human bodies clad in those clammy, glistening mackintoshes, which make a man look like a turbot! I always expect to find fins and scales growing upon a man thus piscatorially apparelled. But the most agonizing sight of all is to see a cabman with two hats on. This is a practice which ought to be put down by the strong arm of the law. How should any man dare to wear two hats in a civilized country? No one should be permitted to sport two hats unless a man with two heads. Suppose everybody were to put two hats on, what a nation of lunatics we should be accounted! A law should be passed without an hour's delay to disentitle a cabman wearing more than one hat to recover his fare under any circumstances whatsoever.

When I was a very small boy, no bigger than a decanter, it was customary for little children to sing this song in rainy weather," Rain! rain! go to Spain, and never come to us again!" The latter part of this supplication should be omitted, for the world may not do without rain; but the former ought now to be in common use from John o'Groat's to Land's End. Let us hope that brighter days are coming, and that, for the present, at all events, it is all over with the Reign of Rain.

ON

THE LONDON ROW.

N returning to town after a brief sojourn in some sequestered spot far from the maddening crowd, nothing strikes you more forcibly than the contrast between the tranquillity of the country and the pother of London. If you are, unluckily for yourself and your friends, of a poetic temperament and prone to the folly of writing original verse or parodying that of other people, it is ten to one that as you stroll from Charing Cross to Fenchurch Street you will pause pensively every now and then, and, striking an attitude at a crossing, burst forth into some such utterance as this"What are the wild wheels saying,

Rumbling the streets along,

All my fine feelings flaying

With their uproarious song?"

The row in the streets is something appalling, and the most exasperating thought about it is that it might be in a great measure prevented, or at all events assuaged, if we would but set about the task in a resolute manner. But we won't. Fully one-half the noises of London might be hushed; and it is not in words to express how much more comfortable and enjoyable our lives would be made in consequence. It is dreadful to think what we suffer in the course of the year by reason of the granite pavement alone. We had need to be made of the like material to endure it with impunity. The wear and tear of "tissue," as physiologists call it, to us who have hourly experience of its thundering row

and its terrific jolting, must be as injurious to health as it is ruinous to peace. It splits our ears, it shakes our bones in their sockets and our teeth in our heads, it shatters our nervous systems, and it plays the mischief with what sentimental novelists delight to call "the noblest feelings of our nature." As for conversation, in the civilized sense of the word, it is out of the question when you walk through a street paved with granite. You must bellow like Stentor if you would shout down the combined clatter of omnibuses, cabs, and vans, in what Mr. Tennyson too truly describes as "roaring Temple Bar." John Gay, apostrophizing London by the fanciful title of "Augusta," one hundred years ago, makes pointed allusion to the roughness and noisiness of her thoroughfares

"To pave thy streets and smooth thy broken ways,
Earth from her womb a flinty tribute pays,

For thee the sturdy paver thumps the ground,

Whilst every stroke his lab'ring lungs resound."

During the century that has elapsed since the penning of those lines very little has been done to tranquillize the great metropolis. True, a few streets have been asphalted and a fewer still have been paved with wood; but stone is still the main material of pavement, and still as of yore the dismal "Ogh!" of the sturdy paver wielding his ponderous hammer-an implement that would have disgraced the middle ages-shocks our ears. Walking one Friday evening not long ago through the Strand, on my way from Trafalgar Square to Farringdon Street, I was bothered, bewildered, and distracted by such a conflict of inharmonious noises as has probably never been found upon earth elsewhere than in London since the building of the Tower of Babel. Some