country which is hid under its basement stories, any more than the social activity and happiness which live along its crowded streets.  We serve ejectments upon nobody.  The only question is, whether some would not do well to move of themselves.  Among the hopes and objects by whose influence 1,200,000 human beings are collected on the same spot, a certain proportion will be found, which have not been at all,—­and more still, which have not been very judiciously or magnanimously, considered.  There are many in the higher classes of its inhabitants especially, who, we suspect, on examining into their principles and habits, will have some difficulty in satisfying themselves that they have not chosen ill for their real happiness; and, for all real usefulness, a great deal worse.  But the mistaken notion which most strips the country of its natural guardians, is the fallacy, on the part of young and sanguine dispositions, of believing that the motives and sphere of individual action rise in proportion to the apparent magnitude of the scene.  These are the absentees most to be regretted.  In the single line of professional practice, and in its most successful instances, that may be the case.  But in taking ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, and in every other of the varied departments of social duty, the sphere of useful action, however nominally extended, will be found to be strictly and substantially reduced.

There can be as little fear that London will ever want any of the elements of an enlightened and well-constituted community, as that it will not be large enough.  It is very different with the provinces.  The capital offers so many real, and still more, so many plausible attractions to all that is active and refined, as well as to all that is idle and selfish in human nature, that a long list of supernumaries and expectants is sure, in every case, always to be at hand.  It is the lottery into which the credulous are eager to put in;—­it is the theatre on whose stage ambition and vanity are impatient to appear;—­it is the land of Cockayne, in whose crowded mazes the selfish escape from every duty, and reduce their intercourse with their fellow-creatures to the sympathies of visiting and of shopping.  It is the seat also of liberal society, and independent existence, among the friends and occupations of one’s choice.  Lord Falkland, the love of his age, admitted, that quitting London was the only thing which he was not sufficiently master of himself ever to manage without a struggle.  In this state of things, it is plain that nobody can be of such consequence there but that he is easily spared.  The death of a town wit is handsomely celebrated, if it furnishes five minutes’ conversation for the table where he dined the day before.  He is replaced with the same regularity and indifference as fresh snuff is put into a snuff-box, or fresh flowers are set out upon the epergne.  Nobody misses him.  The machine goes on without perceiving that the blue-bottle or the gnat has fallen from its wheel.