very far from the Borough. To look at it one wonld say it was all right and proper; there is nothing gaudy or extravagant about it, for it consists of a plain, simple ring, thin at it's socket and gra, dually thickining towards the lower part of its circle. It is to be found in a short street running into Berkeley Square, on a few of the doors near Storey's gate, and also in Brompton and Trinity Squares. The proprietors of this species, both ladies and gentle, men, are servants of the public, either on the stage or in print,— on boards, or in boards-in Drury Lane or Paternoster Row, They all live in a dashing style, aud give a succession of card and musical parties. The gentlemen keep their saddle horses, and their cabriolets, and their tigers, and all that sort of thing, until some unlucky day they happen to become the property of the Sherriff's officer, and then my gentleman moves to another quarter, to try his luck once more. The ladies, particularly those with the sweet voice and the sweet eyes, have a very large circle of acquaintance, and many a coronetted cabriolet and curricle is seen stand, ing before their doors for an hour or two daily. They keep their ladies maids and footboys, and often a Phaeton in which they dash along to Mr. Bunn or Mr. Murray. Their houses are furnished in the first style, their wines and dinners are faultless. To see them as they are seen by the world, in the green room or the draw, ing room, one might suppose them to be the happiest creatures in existence; but it is not so. If we could peep behind the scenes of private life how different would they appear. If we could lay bare those hearts, hid as they are beneath gay and thoughtless exteriors, we should be witnesses of many a bitter pang, many a blighting care. Disappointments, jealousies, uncertainty of friends and fortune, their own fickleness, all render their butterfly-existence wearysome and painful, and it is only by keeping up a constant succession of gaities and excitements, that they are able to endure life.

Next we have the Convenient Knocker, an easy going, right minded personage, of some substance and character. It is a cumbrous, massive circle, reposing upon a large, carved bed of metal, about half way down the door which has only two large panels. They are to be met with in great numbers in the suburbs of London, such as the Mile-end road, Hackney, Islington, Kennington, &c. and are generally in terraces or pairs. The owners of them are mostly head-clerks in mercantile houses, stock-brokers, or retired tradesmen. I am strongly attached to these knockers for there is an appearance of extreme neatness and comfort about them. They are always well cleaned The steps leading to them are white as snow: the very scraper is bright, and even the iron plate that covers the hole of the coal-cellar is kept shining by Mary's blacklead brush. Through the fan-light over the door is seen a bust of Cupid with one finger on his lip. The front parlour has either a gauze-wire blind, or half curtains of muslin on brass rods. The drawing-room is on the first floor, and there is a chair and an ottoman at each of the long french sashes. The clerks and brokers come home outside the short stages, about five, except when they

remain to see Madame Vestries's new burletta, or to go to Vauxhall, and finish with the Coal-hole or the Cider cellars. The res tired gentry lead a wandering-jew sort of existence, strolling out after they have devoured the hot rolls and the warm Chronicle, in search of amusement. They will frequently call a cab, drive to the Horse-guards to see if their watches keep good time, and thence go by steamer to Greenwich to compare notes with the Hospital clock. They punctually make their appearance at every sale of furniture in and near London, and are moreover most persevering in their attendance at all Old Bailey trials: besides which they may always be heard cheering Her Majesty on her way to open the Houses of Parliament. Altogether they are a busy, bustling race of knockers and really deserve great credit for the praiseworthy means by which they contrive to pass their time without doing anything useful.

The Easy Knocker is of various forms: some are thin rings of iron with snakes wreathed round them, the heads forming the knobs: some consist of an oblong square surmounted by a lion's mouth: whilst, others are shaped like a jew's harp and are held by a small hand. The greater portion of them are iron, nicely blackleaded every Saturday morning, though a few are of brass. There is a peculiar facility in using these: no stiffness, no ricketyness, no mistake about them, and they fall upon the door with an ease and grace which impart a sensible gratification to those handling them. The teuements on which these are affixed are mostly occupied by junior clerks with small salaries and large families, by shabby ar tists and dandy mechanics, by young reporters aud occasionally by a widow with a daughter or two. They hang together very thickly about the Commercial and Bow roads, Kennington common and in the new streets of Somers Town, Islington and Paddington. They are mostly spare, cold, consumptive-looking houses, pinched up and huddled together as though they were trying to keep each other warm. They have long pigeon-hole windows and before those on the first floor are semi-circles of iron-work in shape and size very like nursery fenders, each containing three under-sized red flower-pots in green saucers, with a few flowers in them that are making desperate efforts to appear fresh and green. Many of these knockers have taken to let lodgings and find it auswers very well, when they get tenants that pay. The small-salary clerks usually come home with a blue bag in their hands, which they would have their neighbours to believe contain official documents and books, but which in reality is the receptacle of nothing less than two full-sized quarterns from the cheap baker, or a joint from the Whitechapel butcher who sells for ready money. The artists have no blue bag, and if they had, it would be an useless appurtenance, seeing that they have seldom anything to bring home but a hungry stomach and an empty purse, living as they do upon the little credit they may happen to have at the neighbouring shops. As to the reporters they are seldom visible but on Sundays when they usually contrive to get a few brother stenographs to meet them, and a rare day they have of it.

The Humble Knocker is mostly a small ring with a leaf in the centre, or it will be in imitation of an oaken wreath it is in great favor in the neighbourhood of Stangate, Vauxhall, Little Britain, St. John's Street Road, Hoxton and Lower Islington. This variety is extremely honest and trustworthy and worth a hundred professional knockers. They belong to mechanics, journey men tailors, book-keepers in small houses and warehouse keepers in large ones, and are great patrons of the weekly dispatch, believing Publicola to be the greatest genius of the day. They generally congregate in rows, with narrow slips of ground tailed off in front, originally intended for gardens, but which possess no other qualification for the title than about four square feet of bilious looking earth edged with oyster-shells, containing a misanthropical marigold in the centre, drooping its head in sheer disgust at its situation. These knockers are great opposers of Sir Andrew Agnew and his Sabbath Bill; their chief recreation being on sunday, which, if the weather be fine, consists in two-shilling's worth of Gravesend or Richmond atmosphere. Excursions to the Nore are mainly supported by this class and as to the Eagle Tavern and White Conduit House, they might close their doors were it not for them. Pass by one of these dwellings about ten o'clock on sunday morning and you will see the watchmaker and the warehouseman in their shirt sleeves either reading the leader in the dispatch, or whisthing to a few ignorant cockney pigeons that are fluttering about in a little lattice-work box on the top of the house. At one they will dine on a baked pig, or ribs of beef, and a goodly fruit pie, after which they proceed to drag a four-wheel'd chaise and three fat children towards Copenhagen Fields or the "White Conduit" where they indulge in the cockney delicacies of shrimps, sour gooseberries and porter. Between eight and nine they may be seen returning home in crowds, tired, hot and hungry, and the enjoyments of the day are ended with a supper of ale, pickled salmon and the remainder of the fruit pie.

The Disreputable Knocker speaks for itself.-A small shapeless piece of iron, rusty and ricketty, banished from all decent company, it seeks refuge in the Waterloo and Commercial Roads, Brick Lane, the vicinity of Sadlers Wells, and other equally in teresting spots. The external appearance of such are picteresque in the extreme, their varied decorations, however, refuting the old adage that "variety is charming." Some of the windows are mended with brown-paper, others with a saucepan lid and not a few with what had once formed the crown of a hat. On the ground floor a petticoat of doubtful color performs the duty of a window-curtain. The number of the house, if it has one, will be elegantly and chastely designed in chalk, or, if the groundwork of the panels be of a light colour, the same will be performed with a piece of charcoal. A large portion of these miserable abodes have no doors at all and allow free ingress to such as necessity obliges to enter them. To see these dwelling places of the poor of the earth, one might well cease to wonder at the extent of demoralization and crime in their ranks,

and almost doubt if such spots could be the abodes of our fellow men. Yet there are thousands of human beings who pass their whole lives in these sorrowful tenements: who sit hour after hour, on cold winter nights, listening to the heavy snow storm peiting against the window and the mournful voice of the wind booming down chimney, with no fire to warm them, no bread to feed them, no friends to cheer them. When we see and know all this can we wonder at our workhouses, our prisons and our madhouses being so well tenanted? Can we feel surprised that human beings weary of suffering, should rise up in desperation against those above them, and, attempt to seize by force what they cannot hope to possess by patience? Or, can we wonder at man sinking beneath an accumu lation of unceasing sorrows and sufferings, day after day, until the load becomes so oppressive that the heart bursts, or reason resigns her throne, and the mind is wrecked.-Oh! that our many societies for the promotion of temperance and morality would turn their eyes and their hearts to such things as these for, depend upon it, it is not so much vice and misery, as it is misery and vice!

Take a stroll down one of the streets in which these knockers abound, on a sunday morning, and witness the squalid wretchedness, the sottish, abject misery of all around. The windows on either side will be thrown up to admit what little wholesome air ever ventures into the street, and projecting from a number of them may be seen sundry dirty faces and half-clad shoulders. The male part of the population are well acquainted with Her Majesty's Government, and follow the entertaining and speculative professions of House-breakers, Pick-pockets, Coiners and Prize-fighters. As.

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the other sex they are of the most abject grade of human › beings. One of these wretched creatures is standing at a door with her hair loose and her head leaning against the door-post. A black eve and a deep cut on her forehead, disfigure what had once been interesting features, but which are now haggard and bloated. She received those marks of affection from the young gentleman in the great-coat and high-lows sauntering down the street to the pot-house. Her eyes follow him, for she is a WOman, and woman's heart is not lightly turned from what she has once loved. Her abstracted manner shews that her thoughts, wherever her heart may be, are far away. Hark! the bells are ringing to church-perhaps she is thinking of bye-gone days of happy innocence, when she, like the rest of the world, was wont to wend her way with a light heart and a smiling face to the house of prayer:' she may be thinking, too, whether they sound as did the bells of her own native village, when she was wont to trip along the lanes and fields, with her young brothers and sisters, ere she had listened' to the serpent-voice of the deceiver. Or she may be pondering for a moment on the future, inwardly cursing him who first poisoned her cup of happiness :-But she is gone;-one of the same stamp called to her from across the street, and she has pass'd over with an oath on her white lip, and a bitter smile on her painted cheek.

P

The Overland Route,

BY THE REVD. J. G. MACVICAR.

(Continued.)

ROME.

IN travelling inland from Civita Vecchia one naturally looks anxi ously from every rising ground which the carriage passes over in the hope of seeing something of the Imperial City-Such is the nature of the country however, that he looks long in vain. But at last a beautiful dome is seen, assuring the eye that Rome lies in the hollow out of which it stands and looking so majestic and beautiful that the beholder scarcely needs to be told that he now sees that singular masterpiece of the genius of Michael Angelo the cu pola of St. Peters. But not without astonishment does he discover that the Imperial City lies in such a site-a hollow surrounded by barren rising grounds on all sides except one, where a comparatively trivial river which passes through the city steals away to wards the sea, in distance about forty miles. Such is the site of Rome. How dissimilar to the sites that are chosen for great cities now-And on the contrary hand how similar to the spots chosen by Gypsies for their questionable encampments-But let us not indulge in the speculation which such a remark is calculated to awake and on this subject, let us only further remark that bad though it be for every good purpose, yet the site of Rome is most expressive of what Rome ever was, and but for the want of Power would be still, the capital of a people subsisting neither by agriculture, nor commerce, nor industry of any kind, but by the wealth of others around them, whom they spoil with success.

The traveller coming from Civita Vecchia enters Rome by the Western gate, close to St. Peters, and if he purpose driving at once to the Porto del Populo, or the Piazzá di Spagna the quarter where most of the English take up their abodes, it falls to him to pass at once through the whole diameter of the city and consequently to see at once what sort of place Rome is. And doubtless if he do so his first feelings will be those of extreme disappointment. Rome when compared with almost any of the capitals of the other European nations and still more when compared with that idea of it which we contract from our education (which presents to us this city as the mistress of the world,) appears at first sight an pectedly small and a poor-looking place; owing what grandeur it seems to have chiefly to gorgeous but gloomy churches and rich but yet prison-like palaces forming part of the streets, which are always narrow; and what population it has chiefly to beggars, priests and English. Nor will the travellers first impressions improve should he go immediately in search of lodgings, as he will then find that such is the insecurity, or at least the feeling of insecurity in Rome that most of the doors of private houses have grated peepholes in them through which, after the stranger has rung of

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