tarnished, and common councilmen tramp through the mud and rain in their robes of little authority—­even with the glorious prospect of the Guildhall tables, the glitter of gas and civic beauty, and the six pounds of turtle, and iron knives and forks before him—­still he is a miserable creature, he drinks to desperation, and is carried home at least three hours sooner than he would be on a fine frosty night.  Then, instead of fifteen pounds to the square inch, atmospheric pressure is increased to five-and-forty, not calculating the simoom of the following morning, when he is as dry as the desert of Sahara, and eyes the pumps and soda-water fountains with as much gout as the Israelites did the water from Mount Horeb.

Man, however, is the most helpless of all creatures in water, and with the exception of a few proscribed pickpockets and swindlers, he is almost as helpless on land.  This infirmity, or difficulty of keeping above water, accounts for the crammed state of our prisons, fond as we are of the element.  On the great rivers of China, where thousands of people find it more convenient to live in covered boats upon the water, than in houses on shore, the younger and male children have a hollow ball of some light material attached constantly to their necks, so that in their frequent falls overboard, they are not in danger.  Had we not read this in a grave, philosophical work, we should have thought it a joke upon poor humanity, or at best a piece of poetical justice, and that the hollow ball, &c. represented the head—­fools being oftener inheritors of good fortune than their wiser companions.  As the great secret in swimming is to keep the chest as full of air as possible, perhaps the great art of living is to keep the head a vacuum, a state “adapted to the meanest capacity.”  But had kind Nature supplied us with an air-bladder at the neck, the heaviest of us might have floated to eternity, Leander’s swimming across the Hellespont no wonder at all, and the drags of the Humane Society be converted into halters for the suspension and recovery of old offenders and small debts.

A wet day in London is what every gentleman who does not read, or does not recollect, Shakspeare, calls a bore,[3] and every lady decides to be a nuisance.  Abroad, everything is discomfiture; at home all is fidget and uneasiness.  What is called a smart shower, sweeps off a whole stand of hackney-coaches in a few seconds, and leaves a few leathern conveniences called cabriolets, so that your only alternative is that of being soaked to the skin, or pitched out, taken up, bled, and carried home in “a state of insensibility.”  The Spanish proverb, “it never rains but it pours” soon comes to pass, and every street is momentarily washed as clean as the most diligent housemaid could desire.  Every little shelter is crowded with solitary, houseless-looking people, who seem employed in taking descriptions of each other for the Hue and Cry, or police gazette.  On the pavement may probably be seen some wight who with more than political obstinacy, resolves to “weather the storm,” with slouched hat, which acts upon the principle of capillary attraction, drenched coat, and boots in which the feet work like pistons in tannin:  now