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 fair to say that really nervous and irritable
people find the country worse than town. The noise of the nightingales
is deplorable. The lamentations of a cow deprived of her calf, or of a
passion-stricken cow, "wailing for her demon lover" on the next farm,
excel anything that the milkman can perpetrate, and almost vie with the
performances of the sweep. When "the cocks are crowing a merry
midnight," as in the ballad, the sleepless patient wishes he could make
off as quietly and quickly as the ghostly sons of the "Wife of Usher's
Well." Dogs delight to bark in the country more than in town. Leech's
picture of the unfortunate victim who left London to avoid noise, and
found that the country was haunted by Cochin-China cocks, illustrates the
still repose of the rural life. Nervous people, on the whole, are in a
minute minority. No one else seems to mind how loud and horrible the
noises of London are, and therefore we have faint hope of seeing
nocturnal 'Arry gagged, the drunken drab "moved on," and the sweep
compelled to ring the bell till some one comes and opens the door of the
house in whose chimneys he is professionally interested.



LENDING OF BOOKS.


A popular clergyman has found it necessary to appeal to his friends in a