We are afraid that nothing short of a miracle could provide a complete remedy for the evil of which our correspondent complains. We should require a second Joshua to bid modern civilisation stand still or change its course. There are, indeed, philosophers who look hopefully forward to the time when men will be content to do just enough work to supply them with the means of gratifying their proper mental and bodily wants - when they will not be for ever jostling and struggling with each other in the arduous race for power and wealth. The philosophers may, for aught we know, be right, and it at least gratifies the benevolent instincts to picture our over-worked world some day settling down by universal consent into a blessed state of repose. But certainly there are at present no signs of this coming millennium. The nineteenth century notion of 'enough' means 'always a little more.' Thus A may have plenty to eat and drink of the best, a comfortable house, a charming wife and family, a large balance at his bankers to spend in the most pleasurable ways prompted by a cultivated taste - may, in short, have all that the philosophers consider essential to human happiness; but all this avails nothing to keep A quiet while B remains a yard ahead of him in the race of life; and no sooner is B distanced than he becomes equally solicitous about C. Nor is this always A's own fault, if fault it is to be considered, or his deliberate choice. He cannot stand still if he would, since to remain stationary where everybody else is moving on is to lose ground which cannot, perhaps, be made good. The successful merchant or professional man toils in his office all day, and then goes home late at night too tired and worn out to enjoy the home comforts and luxuries with which his wealth has enabled him to surround himself. If you tell him that he is throwing all his opportunities away, that he might as well be a poor man without these advantages as rich without time for enjoying them, and that he would be wiser to content himself with doing two-thirds of his present work for two-thirds of his present pay, he will probably reply that he gladly would do this if he could, but that he has no choice. He cannot do just as much work as he likes, and leave the rest undone, without danger of losing his position altogether. In the general rush of eager competitors from all quarters, he must go ahead with the crowd, or risk being left far behind and perhaps trodden down by it. When a man has attained so secure a position that he can please himself about taking or rejecting work, it usually either is time that he should retire upon his laurels, or else, if his health is good, long habit has made constant work such a second nature that he cannot get on without it. We are afraid that, until the promised millennium provides some substitute for the keen spirit of competition, as understood and practised in the nineteenth century, there is no hope of escaping altogether from the growing evils of over-work, since every new invention which diminishes space and time, or otherwise multiplies facilities for communication between man and man, only supplies fresh materials for the competitive spirit to work upon.

However, that we cannot effectually remedy the evils of over-work, and that it is steadily on the increases are only additional reasons for adopting what partial remedies we can find; and 'M.D.' has at least one to suggest well worth public consideration. The best cure for over-work is obviously rest, and the best kind of rest is sound sleep at night. The first question usually that a doctor asks a patient suffering from 'nervous exhaustion,' 'worry,' or 'brain-fag,' is whether he sleeps well, and if the answer is in the negative, every plan is tried to secure him that surest and safest of all restoratives, a sound night's rest. Yet in London, as 'M.D.' bitterly complains - and the complaint is repeated by other correspondents, whose letters we publish to-day - in which, as the busiest centre of industrial and social life, the wear and tear of overwork is greatest, and the need for the best kind of rest proportionately pressing, no attention whatever is paid to procuring quiet nights. Anybody and everybody is allowed, without let or hindrance, to make night hideous by whatever discordant sounds may suit his jovial or fantastic mood, his pleasure in the performance being probably enhanced by the thought that he is disturbing all the commonplace, prosaic people who have tamely slunk off to bed instead of 'enjoying life' as he does.

Our correspondent 'M.D.' graphically described with the indignant energy apparently of a victim, the various nocturnal noises which in London murder sleep. It is not necessary here to re-enumerate them, or to say more about them than that they nearly all - certainly all the most objectionable - might be, if not altogether stopped, at least kept within less troublesome limits by the police. The police, for instance, cannot prevent cabs from remaining in or driving about the streets all night, but they can prevent the cabmen from carrying on a conversation in Stentorian tones with each other or the watermen or any late reveller who provokes them to a wordy war; and although the reveller himself cannot be kept from wandering all night about London, he may at least be kept quiet without any unwarrantable infringement upon the liberties of the British subject, and it is to l'evellers that much of the nightly disturbance in town is due. Besides, the interference of the police, independently of its immediate and special effects, would generally exercise a beneficial influence by directing public attention to a question which, notwithstanding its vital importance, is now strangely neglected. Unless a law is so unpopular that people deliberately rebel against it, its natural tendency is to educate the public mind into a spontaneous appreciation of the practice it enjoins. Many Londoners, otherwise harmless and well-disposed enough, are often noisy at night simply because the duty of keeping quiet and allowing their neighbours to sleep undisturbed has never been fairly brought home to them. But if the violation of this duty came to be recognised as an offence, not merely in theory, but in practice, rendering the offender liable to be locked up some hours in a police-cell, and punished next morning by a magistrate, the duty itself would acquire its proper importance in the eyes of all respectable law-regarding people. Nor would the indirect effects of police interference cease, we think here. In various other ways attention would be drawn to the necessity of securing quiet nights in London. Streets would be paved, houses and windows be constructed, and even bedrooms chosen with much greater regard than at present to this point if its importance were more generally recognised - if, in fact, it became one of the standing sanitary arrangements of the metropolis. Now, although a vast number of Londoners suffer sadly from want of sleep at night, they have learnt by long habit to look upon it as a necessary evil, inseparable from London life. They bear with it, because their only notion of escaping from it is to rush off to some quiet place in the country where there are no night cabmen or drunken revellers, and by most Londoners the remedy would probably be considered worse than the disease. Yet, for all this, they do not at all relish the disease, but would gladly be rid of it, and if the police will take the matter up and endeavour gradually and judiciously, by making a few well-chosen examples, to protect the streets of London and other large towns from needless disturbance between, say, midnight and 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning, we are quite sure they will receive the thanks of the community, and may rely on public support."