ladies fails to attract even the most rapacious and inexperienced of country clowns. Discredit hath come down on debts of honour, since the Usurer and the Usuress have so prominently figured in the Bankruptcy Courts along with the hotel-waiter, the breechesmaker, and the wine (or blacking) merchant, as the Poor Noble's friend.—But “the Season,' as Miss Le Grand would say, is somewhat the worse for all these new-fangled ameliorations. Its signs are dying out, one by one; its times getting less and less marked; its features considerably mollified. There are hints of such astounding possibilities as a sociable September and an October Opera; there are fears of a dearth-that the yearly crop of grass in Grosvenor-square may fail, owing to the disturbance of comers and goers, at a time, when erst the Shepherd and the Haymaker had it all their own way there.

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In one point, however, this breaking down of land-marks-this decline and fall of Exclusiveism-this opening of close boroughsthis making of Fop's-alley a railway terminus, and of Parliament a place where sense is spoken and carried out, not speeches performed (Mr. Benjamin-last of the Grimaldi race-being the exception which proveth the rule)-all this distribution and intercourse-I say-this division of interests and destruction of overgrown despotisms, may have an effect, for the moment, less agreeable than some of those just indicated. The Book of the Season-the Play of the Season-the Picture of the Seasonwhere be they? Somewhere else:-like the child of Dr. Syntax, gone because they never came. Think not that I mean disrespect to Dombey; nor meditate mischief upon Maclise; nor talk treason against Turner (being in mortal fear of the Oxford Graduate, whose Turner-olatry accepts every marvel: "Fallacies of Hope," Brobdignag cabbages, and canarycoloured statues of the Duke, swimming in scarlet light, not excepted). I am loyal to Landseer, and eke to Lough; welcomed White to the Wells, with his clever drama, as cordially as any one of the hundreds who applauded it, I believe devoutly that Wigan will figure among the "famous old actors,' in the Ana or Elia of the Lamb or Hazlitt of the twentieth century. No, Grace be thanked! (putting the present company of editor and correspondent out of the question) there is not the lack of genius among us, which the Croakers would fain have us believe. The book is not closed-the door not shut-the spring not driedthe taper is high above the socket: but this quick and earnest

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and universal awakening of mind, is not wholly clear of consequences, which have some outward signs, common also to the fruits of dissipation. It is, perhaps, more difficult now than formerly, to concentrate either effort or attention. Patience in production, care in appreciation, are not the epidemic virtues of our epoch. We may become used to the speed at which the world goes; we must-since affairs move on nobly, healthily, and wisely. And with our progress, retreats for the thinker and creator will be provided, as surely as occupation for the pioneer, the excavator, and the mechanician; but in the meantime we are somewhat dizzy; unwilling-perhaps unable to rivet our eyes on any given point. Though the stuff whereof Heroism is made be cried in the streets and sold in the markets-a thing plenteous and accessible, as compared with what it was in the times when the few held itthe Chief in his tower, the Monk in his cell, or the Solitary discoverer in his scrip-it does not follow that "the season' shall produce its Hero; and it follows as little that the world shall come to an end for lack thereof!

But enough-I sate down thinking no harm; simply to write a letter to Halcyon Row, telling my wife and our friends what my boy and I have done in London during "the season ;" and here am I, wandering off so wide and so wildly, that my Mrs. Bell, I know, will stuff my paper into the fire with a "Fudge! the man has been dining out with some of those Germans; and come home, as he always does after, in a smoke.” It is too late now, I fear, to be clear and concise this month-to narrate how my Samson has caught a famous likeness of Duke Constantine, the Bear, if not the Lion of "the season"—and another of Crown Prince Oscar, who, my boy hopes, is not come to be its Bore: too late to repeat what- and. and- and said to me with regard to my poor productions-or to tabulate the state of the better classes during this strange time of scarcity; beyond the fact, as yet undivulged in The Post, that the Marchioness of Whortleberry, instead of Dancing Teas, is this year issuing cards for a series of Indian Corn Dinners. Of these, and sundry yet more interesting facts and passages, another day. Since the season is getting, year by year, more and more "out of season," who knows but that we may treat Ardwick to our Memoranda on May Fair in September?

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A VOICE FROM THE CROWD IN A STEAM-BOAT. BY ANGUS B. REACH.

A CARPET-BAG is an article which proverbially can never be so full but that it can be made to hold more. In this respect of unlimited accommodation, however, I would back a river steamer against the most elastic repository of shirts innumerable, socks incalculable, and razors and brushes without end. The art of packing has certainly been most assiduously studied by the directors of the mercantile steam marine between Greenwich and Battersea. Spanish slavers are tolerably expert at it; and one of the illustrated papers published sometime since a diagram shewing the diabolical ingenuity with which every crevice and cranny could be stuffed and crammed with black flesh. Sure I am, however, that the captains and mates of the Watermen and the Citizens would be able to give a practical lesson in the mystery of making the smallest space available for the greatest number, to the most experienced slaving commander who ever threw his niggers overboard in barrels, when chased by a British cruiser.

There is, in fact, a sort of mid-passage being established between the West End and the City. The unhappy cargoes are conveyed at the rate of a small copper money per head; and it is only to the lucky fact that the passengers are stowed away on deck, and not in the fore-cabin and saloon, that we are indebted to the absence of deplorable paragraphs in the daily papers, setting forth that the Bee or the Cricket had arrived at the Adelphi with a loss of 40 per cent. of her cargo, the survivors having landed in a very weakly and exhausted condition.

Sunday sees every week the climax to this abominable traffic in human flesh. The boats then appear huge clusters of humanity clinging together like swarming bees round the smoking funnel. Away they go, rolling and careening from starboard to port-nothing but the resistance offered on either side by the paddle-wheels, and the ballast afforded by the engine, which happily cannot come on deck, to prevent them toppling clean over, and shovelling every living item of their contents into the river. And some day they will. We cannot expect eternally to owe

everything to good luck, and nothing at all to good management. The terrible example which we always require to precede a reform, we shall one day have; and then, merciful powers! when the thief bestrides the stolen steed, with what a bang will we slam to the stable-door! Not, indeed, that there will be any certainty of a change for the better, if it be only a boat load of mere unknown, contemptible nobodies, which is hurled into the Thames. ensure the public safety on the Rails, Sidney Smith desiderated the burning of a Bishop. We shall be more moderate still. For the sake of the lawful travellers from London Bridge to Battersea, we only demand the drowning of an Alderman.

To

Can anything be more reasonable! Consider-only an alderman. The ship may be lost for the lack of a pen'orth of tar. Give us the dab of saving pigment-the mud which shall enshrine the rotund beauty of the civic hero-dead-perished in most alien cold water-that the citizens over whom he ruled-for whom he died-might safely, and comfortably, and pleasantly, enjoy a blow on the river!

As I have said, sooner or later the catastrophe will arrive. Picture the scene-the black roaring mass of man and womankind—plunged in one fearful avalanche into the surging river— fighting-choaking— screaming-battling with each other clinging to each other-settling by clusters bound together in the gripe of death-convulsed, tortured things-into the fat black ooze over which rolls the cold dim water. How the news would thrill through London ! Three hundred-four hundred-five hundred-lives lost at a blow! Conceive the popular excitement -the popular fury! What invective-what passionate abuse ! How the directors of the company would come in for it-how Parliament-how Government would come in for it! Why were such things permitted? Why was an avaricious company allowed, for the sake of the last hundred coppers, to send into eternity hundreds of souls, and plunge into misery thousands of families. Aye, why was it? Only it strikes me that, with a slight variation, the question might as well be put before, as after the catastrophe. Why is it, that we allow the risk to continue for a single day?

Look forward beyond the gloom cast by the shadow of the coming event. The law will then begin to be sternly enforced upon the point. Government inspectors will have a station on every pier-check-takers for steamers, like their brethren in theatres, will cry "boat full "—and dam back the advancing

masses; or perhaps legislation will in the first instance be requisite. The Secretary for the Home Department will give notice, "amid loud cries of hear, hear," of his intention to bring in a bill for the prevention in future of the overloading of steam-boats on the Thames, and the other rivers of England. The night for the introduction of the measure will come. The House will be densely crammed and anxiously silent. The Noble Lord or the Right Honourable Gentleman will rise. He will recal to the remembrance of honourable members thelate fatal catastrophe. He will pay a passing tribute of regret to the memory of the sufferers-but he will not attempt to conceal the fact, of how much the apathy of Parliament and the public had to do with the calamity. His bill will, so far as legislation can do it, go to prevent the recurrence of like horrors. It will contain machinery which shall effectually prevent it from rottinga dead legislative carcass-like a crushed fly, between the leaves of the statute-book. It will do its work, and there will be men to work it. Nobody can either drive a coach-and-six, or steer a steam-boat through it-the mesh of its clauses will catch little fish, and will not break away before great ones. It will say, in short, to steam-boat companies and captains-"Thus far shall ye load and no further.' And the bill will be hailed by acclamation. In Commons and Lords-it will rattle through its necessary stages merrily and fast, and three weeks after its introduction to the world-it will have shot up to the dignity of enrolment amongst the Statutes at large. The following Sunday a trip upon the water will be delightful.

But, en attendant—ere the drowning and the reformation come -who are the governors of the River-who are responsible for the liberties taken with Father Thames? The city asserts a feeble authority. The Lord Mayor and Aldermen conserve the river annually-by consuming turtle soups, and quaffing iced punch on board the Maria Wood. Last year they made a vigorous effort travelled gallantly to Oxford by land, and then made their way back valiantly to London by waterhappily without setting fire to the silent highway by which they journeyed. Very well-the Mansion House arrogates to itself some right to look after the Thames. Farther-it occasionally raises a forcible feeble note of objection to passengers being crammed into Thames steamers-like Yarmouth bloaters into barrels of brine.