nt of the waiters, and the subdued awe with which
Young Norvals fresh from the Grampian Hills and their fathers' flocks
tread the costly carpets or sprawl their long legs beneath glittering
mahogany.

Let us suppose it is about nine or ten in the evening, and we step into
one of the numerous establishments which are to the respectable classes
what the gin-palace and the beer-house is supposed to be to the class who
are not. The reader must pardon my use of the word respectable. It is a
word which, from my heart, I abhor, and, as it is commonly employed,
merely denotes that a man has an account at a bank. There are but two
ways in which human actions can be contemplated--the worldly and the
philosophical or Christian. I use the term respectable merely in its
worldly acceptation, but I skip this digression and pass on. Undoubtedly
at the first blush it is a cheerful scene that first meets our eye. In
this box are two or three old friends discussing a bottle of claret, who
have not met perhaps since bright and boisterous boyhood, and who may
never meet again. Of what manly struggle, of what sorrow that can never
die, of what calm pleasures and chastened hopes, have they to tell! No
wonder that you see the tear glistening in the eye, though there is
laughter on the lip. Pass on; here are some bagsmen red with port, and
redolent of slang. In the next box are three or four young fellows
drinking whisky and smoking cigars, and of course their talk is of wine
and women; but there is hope, nevertheless, for woman is still to them a
something divine, and the evil days have not come when they see in her
nothing but common clay. Look at this retired old gentleman of the old
school sitting by himself alone; yet is he not alone, for as he sips his
port memories thicken in his brain, of ancient cronies now sleeping in
churchyards far away, of a sainted wife no longer a denizen of this dark
world of sin, of daughters with laughing children round their knees, all
rosy and chubby and flaxen-haired, of sons with Anglo-Saxon energy and
faith planting the old race on a new soil. Cross to this other side and
look at these reckless, dissipated fellows, whom the waiter has just
respectfully requested not to make so much noise, as it disturbs the
other gentlemen in the room. Possibly they are Joint Stock Bank
directors or railway officials, and after a few years it will be found
that for their revelry to-night a deluded public will