lent species that ring the bell, could we hope to have female
chimney-sweeps as well behaved? Here, at all events, is a new opening
for female labour. When the milkman has done his worst, the watercress
people come and mournfully ejaculate. Now it is time for the sleepless
and nervous to get up and do their work. Now, too, the barrel-organ
comes round. There are persons who, fortunately for themselves, are so
indifferent to music that they do not mind the barrel-organ. It is
neither better nor worse to them than the notes of Patti, and from the
voice of that siren, as from all music, they withdraw their attention
without difficulty. But other persons cannot work while the dirty
grinder and the women that drag his instrument are within hearing. The
barrel-organ, again, is strong in the support of servants, especially
nurses, who find that the music diverts babies. The rest of the day is
made hideous by the awful notes of every species of unintelligible and
uncalled for costermonger, from him who (apparently) bellows "Annie
Erskine," to her who cries, "All a-blowing and a-growing." There are
miscreants who want to buy bones, to sell ferns, to sell images, wicker-
chairs, and other inutilities, while last come the two men who howl in a
discordant chorus, and attempt to dispose of the second edition of the
evening paper, at ten o'clock at night. At eleven all the neighbours
turn out their dogs to bark, and the dogs waken the cats, which scream
like demoniacs. Then the public houses close, and the people who have
been inebriated, if not cheered, stagger howling by. Stragglers yell and
swear, and use foul language till about four in the morning, without
attracting the unfavourable notice of the police. Two or three half
drunken men and women bellow and blaspheme opposite the sufferer's house
for an hour at a time. And then the chimneysweep renews his rounds, and
the milkman follows him.

The screams of costermongers and of rowdies might surely be suppressed by
the police. A system of "local option" might be introduced. In all
decent quarters householders would vote against the licensed bellowings
of cads and costermongers. In districts which think a noise pleasant and
lively the voting would go the other way. People would know where they
could be quiet, and where noise would reign. Except Bologna, perhaps no
town is so noisy as London; but then, compared with Bologna, London is
tranquillity itself. It is f