occasion for the expression of the sentiment of
loyalty, the sense must go ... the loyalty of a second northern
people--going--going--for a little sand and bunting--and--NO OFFER?

[Illustration]

There is no chance of ennui in the week in London before a voyage; you
have packing, shopping, insuring, and buying tickets and general
bustling round--what charming occupations for the contemplative mind!
Then you throw in visits to friends, and acquaintances call on you, all
in the concentrated week; you breakfast late, lunch heavily, rush off to
a hurried dinner somewhere, then rush off to a play or some function or
other, supper somewhere else and then home, too late for half a pipe;
engagements about clothes, hats, dresses, guns, lunches, dinners,
theatres, you have all in your mind, awake and asleep, and as you run
about attending to essentials and superfluities, you jostle with the
collarless man in the street, and note the hungry look, and reflect how
thin is the ice that bears you and how easy it is to go through, just a
step, and you are over the neck--collar gone and the crease out of the
trousers. A friend of mine went through the other day and no one knew;
he lived on brown bread and water for ever so long, but stuck to his
evening clothes, and now he sits in the seats of the mighty. What "a
Variorem" it all is--tragedy and comedy written in the lines of faces
and the cut of clothes. But I confess; what interests me in London more
than types or individuals, are the street scenes and figures seen
collectively. What pictures there are at every turning, and yet how
seldom we see them painted. With the utmost modesty in the world I will
have a try in passing at Piccadilly Circus. Is there a street scene so
fascinating as that centre for colour and movement?--say on a May night,
with people going to the theatres, the sky steely blue and ruddy over
the house-tops, the Pavilion and Criterion lights orange and green
glinting on the polished road and flickering on the flying hansom
wheels--or The Circus in a wet night, a whirlpool of moving lights and
shadows and wavering reflections! What a contrast to the quiet effects
in some side street; for example this street seen half in moonlight,
beneath my window in the Coburg; the only sound the click clack of the
busy horse's feet on the wood pavement, as hansoms and carriages flit
round from Berkeley Square--there's a levee to night, and their yellow
lamps string up Mount Str