THE LONDON ROW.

N returning to town after a brief sojourn in some sequestered spot far from the mad

ding 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 irritating 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 say 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 thun-
dering row and its terrific jolting must be as in-
jurious 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 senti-
mental novelists delight to call "the noblest feel-
ings of our nature." As for conversation in the
civilised 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 omni-
buses, cabs, and vans in what Mr. Tennyson_too
truly describes as "roaring Temple Bar." John
Gay, apostrophising 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 these lines very little has been done to tranquilise 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 outraged ears.

Walking the other day 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 maniac who died years ago-alas! that he should have ever lived-left a leg of mutton and trimmings (so the Cocknies are led to believe) to ensure the ringing of the bells of the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields at a stated hour every Friday evening till the last syllable of recorded time. The bells were, accordingly, swinging uproarious from the church tower as I set out from Morley's Hotel; and what a fearful row they made to be sure! At the Lowther Arcade a wretched woman was grinding a barrel organ for the torture not only of the passers-by, but still more for that of her own child, a little animal about two years old, every nerve and fibre of whose tiny frame must have vibrated, and whose brain must have been well nigh convulsed by the discord emitted from the instrument upon which it lay, poor infant, as upon a bed. At the corner of Agar Street a fellow was playing upon that newest engine of agony, the mitrailleuse piano; in front of the Adelphi Theatre, three men, standing in a row, were blowing brazen horns of some sort, wherewith they made the hoarsest, most discordant noise imaginable; near Somerset House, but on the opposite side of the road, a girl was playing on the cornopean; a few yards further on a fellow was filing a saw; in Essex Street there was a Punch-and-Judy show; and all this while countless vehicles were rumbling uproariously over the granite pavement. Why, it was enough to drive the devil mad, "Coaches roll, carts shake the ground, and all the streets with passing cries resound."

Have you ever stood upon the Holborn Viaduct of an afternoon? If not, don't. What with the roar of cab and 'bus; the heavy artillery of Pickford and railway vans, the vibration of the bridge; the tantalising expression of the figure of "Commerce," with her hands full of coins which you may not touch; and the ridiculous proceeding of Prince Albert in taking off his hat to the Viaduct as if it were a lady; there is at that particular place such a combination of horrors as you had better not encounter if you have any regard for your bodily health or your peace of mind. Nor do matters mend if you strike out of the great city arteries into the capillaries. In the City Road, the New North Road, and the whole route from Westminster to Brixton, the bells of the tram-cars aggravate the noise-nuisance to an intolerable degree, to say nothing of the injury which the cars in question do to the roads, and to the "traps" of various kinds other than tram-cars plying thereon. You fly for refuge to the railways-out of the fryingpan into the fire! The shriek of the locomotive runs through your spine like a knife; and the row the railway porters make in slamming the doors of the carriages is simply inhuman.

66

The line being blocked we came to a stand-still for a few minutes yesterday at a station on the Underground Railway. Sir," said I, with a suavity all my own, to one of the porters, a gentleman in corduroy, who had shut the door with even more than ordinary fury, "I wish you would do your spiriting a little more gently. You frighten the life out of me. You might shut the door quite as effectually with half that noise." "Oh! my eye and my elbow!" replied that haughty young porter. "Sir," said I, with unruffled dignity, "I made no reference either to your eye or your elbow; though

I should be well pleased if the former were more vigilant and the latter less vigorous; but permit me to assure you that you are more noisy than the occasion warrauts. Why not imitate the motion of the spheres ?" "I know nothing about them," he rejoined. "Have you ever read Bacon's Natural Philosophy?" I ventured to inquire. No! not he. He had never heard of it. "Well then," quoth I, "allow me to inform you of what Lord Bacon says on the subject of a placid demeanour: 'Great motions in nature pass without sound or noise. The heavens turn about in a most rapid motion without noise, to us perceived; though in some dreams they have been said to make an excellent music.' Now, my young friend, do let me implore you to emulate the gentle and melodious example of nature, and to shut the doors quietly for the future." What do you suppose was his answer? "Go! put your head in a bag!" Yes, that was what the haughty young porter made answer. was very angry, and threatened to report him; but on second thoughts I won't. Instead of reporting him I will take his advice. "Fas est et ab hoste doceri." The next time I travel from Moorgate Street to Edgware Road by rail, I will put my head in a bag, and I daresay I shall not suffer half so severely from the shrieking of the engine or the slamming of the door. The experiment is at all events worth making; and in the interest of humanity I will make it.

I

Many of the noises which were wont to invade the repose of our forefathers have disappeared, only, however, to be succeeded in some cases by others of a more clamorous character. The guardians of the night no longer cry out the hour. If you were to ask a Bobby to sing forth the time o'night under your window he would probably re