 17 The last cab-driver and the first omnibus-cad. Of all the cabriolet-drivers whom we had ever had the honour and gratification of knowing by sight, and our acquaintance in this way has been most extensive, there is one who made an impression on our mind which can never be effaced, and who awakened in our bosom of feeling of admiration and respect which we entertain a fatal presentiment will never be called forth again by any human being. He was a man of most simple and prepossessing appearance. He was a brown-whiskered, white-haired, no-coated campman. His nose was generally red, and his bright blue eye not unfrequently stood out in bold relief against a black border of artificial workmanship. His boots were of the Wellington form, pulled up to meet his cord-drawing knee-smalls, or at least to approaches near them as their dimensions would admit of, and his neck was usually garnished with a bright yellow handkerchief. In summer he carried in his mouth a flower, in winter a straw, slight, but to a contemplative mind certain indications of a love of nature and a taste for botany. His cabriolet was gorgeously painted, a bright red, and wherever we went, city or west end, Paddington or Holloway, north, east, west, or south, there was the red calf bumping up against the posts at the street corners, and turning in and out among hackney coaches and drays and carts and wagons and omnibuses and contriving, by some strange means or rather, to get out of places which no other vehicle but the red cab could ever, by any possibility, have contrived to get into at all. Our fondest for that red cab was unbounded. How we should have liked to have seen it in the circle at Astley's. Our life upon it that it should have performed such evolutions as would have put the whole company to shame. Young chiefs, knights, Swiss peasants, and all. Some people object to the exertion of getting into cabs, and others object to the difficulty of getting out of them. We think both these are objections which take their rise in perverse and ill-conditioned minds. The getting into a cab is a very pretty and graceful process, which, when well performed, is essentially melodramatic. First there is the expressive pantomime of every one of the eighteen cabmen on the stand, the moment you raise your eyes from the ground. Then there is your own pantomime in reply, quite a little ballet. Four cabs immediately leave the stand for your especial accommodation, and the evolutions of the animals who draw them are beautiful in the extreme, as they grate the wheels of the cabs against the curb-stones and sport playfully in the kennel. You single out a particular cab, and dart swiftly towards it. One bound, and you are on the first step, and turn your body lightly round to the right, and you are on the second, bend gracefully beneath the reins, working round to the left at the same time, and you are in the cab. There is no difficulty in finding a seat. The apron knocks you comfortably into it at once and off you go. The getting out of a cab is perhaps rather more complicated in its theory, and is shade more difficult in its execution. We have studied the subject a great deal, and we think the best way is to throw yourself out and to trust to chance for a lighting on your feet. If you make the driver a light first, and then throw yourself upon him, you will find that he breaks your fall materially. In the event of your contemplating an offer of eight pence, on no account make the tender or show the money until you are safely on the pavement. It is very bad policy attempting to save the four pence. You are very much in the power of a cabman, and he considers it a kind of fee not to do you any willful damage. Any instruction, however, in the art of getting out of a cab is wholly unnecessary if you are going any distance, because the probability is that you will be shot lightly out before you have completed the third mile. We are not aware of any instance on record in which a cab horse has performed three consecutive miles without going down once. What of that? It is all excitement. And in these days of derangement of the nervous system and universal lassitude people are content to pay handsomely for excitement. Where can it be procured at a cheaper rate? But to return to the red cab it was omnipresent. You had but to walk down Holburn or Fleet Street or any of the principal thoroughfares in which there is a great deal of traffic and judge for yourself. You had hardly turned into the street when you saw a trunk or two lying on the ground, an uprooted post, a hat-box, a portman too, and a carpet-bag strewed about in a very picturesque manner, a horse in a cab standing by looking about him with great unconcern, and a crowd shouting and screaming with delight, cooling their flushed faces against the glass windows of a chemist's job. What's the matter here, can you tell me? Only a cab, sir. Anybody hurt, do you know? Only a fare, sir. I see him a turn in the corner, and I seize to another gentleman that's a regular little lost that, and he's a coming along rather sweet, ain't he? He just is, says the other gentleman, when bump they comes again the post and out flies the fare like bricks. Need we say it was the red cab, or that the gentleman with the straw in his mouth, who emerged so coolly from the chemist's shop and philosophically climbing into the little dicky, started off at full gallop, was the red cab's licensed driver. The ubiquity of this red cab and the influence it exercised over the risable muscles of justice itself was perfectly astonishing. You walked into the justice-room of the mansion-house, the whole court resounded with merriment. The Lord Mayor threw himself back in his chair in a state of frantic delight at his own joke. Every vein in Mr. Hobbler's countenance was swollen with laughter, partly at the Lord Mayor's facetiousness, but more at his own. The constables and police officers were, as in duty bound, in ecstasies at Mr. Hobbler and the Lord Mayor combined, and the very poppers, glancing respectively at the Beatles countenance, tried to smile, and even he relaxed. A tall, wheezing-faced man with an impediment in his speech would be endeavouring to state a case of imposition against the red cab's driver, and the red cab's driver and the Lord Mayor and Mr. Hobbler would be having a little fun among themselves to the inordinate delight of everybody but the complainant. In the end justice would be so tickled with the red cab driver's native humour that the fine would be mitigated, and he would go away full gallop in the red cab to impose on somebody else without loss of time. The driver of the red cab, competent in the strength of his own moral principles, like many other philosophers, was want to set the feelings and opinions of society at complete defiance. Generally speaking, perhaps he would as soon carry a fare safely to his destination as he would upset him, sooner perhaps because in that case he had not only got the money, but had the additional amusement of running a longer he to gain some smart rival. But society made war upon him in the shape of penalties, and he must make war upon society in his own way. This was the reasoning of the red cab driver, so he bestowed a searching look upon the fare as he put his hand in his waist-cut pocket when he had gone half the mile to get the money ready, and if he brought forth a pence out he went. The last time we saw our friend was one wet evening in Tottingham Court Road when he was engaged in a very warm and somewhat personal altercation with a locationless little gentleman in a green coat. Poor fellow! There were great excuses to be made for him. He had not received above eighteen pence more than his fare, and consequently labored under a great deal of very natural indignation. The dispute had attained a pretty considerable height when it last the locationless little gentleman making a mental calculation of the distance and finding that he had already paid more than he ought avowed his unalterable determination to pull up the cabinet in the morning. Now, just mark this young man, said the little gentleman. I'll pull you up to-morrow morning. No, will you, though, said our friend with a sneer. I will, replied the little gentleman. Mark my words, that's all. If I live till to-morrow morning you shall repent this. There was a steadiness of purpose and indignation of speech about the little gentleman, as he took an angry pinch of snuff after this last declaration, which made a visible impression on the mind of the red cab-driver. He appeared to hesitate for an instant. It was only for an instant. His resolve was soon taken. You'll pull me up, will you, said our friend. I will, rejoined the little gentleman, with even greater vehemence as before. Very well, said our friend, tucking up his shirt sleeves very calmly. There'll be three weeks for that. Worry good. That'll bring me up to the middle of the next month. Three weeks more will carry me on to my birthday, and then I've got ten pound to draw. I may as well get bored, lodging and washing till then out with the country, as pay for it myself, consequently here goes. So without more ado the red cab-driver knocked the little gentleman down, and then called the police to take himself into custody with all the civility in the world. A story is nothing without the sequel, and therefore we may state that to our certain knowledge the bored lodging and washing were all provided in due course. We happen to know the fact for it came to our knowledge thus. We went over the House of Corrections for the county of Middlesex shortly after, to witness the operation of the silent system, and looked on all the wheels with the greatest anxiety in search of our long lost friend. He was nowhere to be seen, however, and we began to think that the little gentleman in the green coat must have relented when, as we were traversing the kitchen-garden, which lies in a sequestered part of the prison, we were startled by hearing a voice which apparently proceeded from the wall, pouring forth its soul in the plaintive air of All Round My Hat, which was then just beginning to form a recognized portion of our national music. We started. What voice is that? said we. The Governor shook his head. Sad fellow, he replied, very sad. He positively refused to work on the wheel, so after many trials I was compelled to order him into solitary confinement. He says he likes it very much, though, and I'm afraid he does, for he lies on his back on the floor and sings comic songs all day. Shall we add that our heart had not deceived us, and that the comic singer was no other than our eagerly sought friend, the red cab-driver? We have never seen him since, but we have strong reason to suspect that this noble individual was a distant relative of a waterman of our acquaintance who, on one occasion, when we were passing the coach-stand over which he presides, after standing very quietly to see a tall man struggle into a camp, ran up very briskly when it was all over, as his brethren invariably do, and touching his hat asked, as a matter of course, for a copper for the waterman. Now the fair was by no means a handsome man, and waxing very indignant at the demand, he replied, Money, what for? Coming up and looking at me, I suppose, veilser rejoined the waterman with a smile of immovable complacency, that's worth chuppants. The identical waterman afterward attained a very prominent station in society, and, as we know something of his life, and have often thought of telling what we do know, perhaps we shall never have a better opportunity than the present. Mr. William Barker, then, for that was the gentleman's name, Mr. William Barker was born. But why need we relate where Mr. William Barker was born, or when? Why scrutinize the entries in parochial ledgers to seek to penetrate the Lucinian mysteries of lying in hospitals? Mr. William Barker was born, or he had never been. There is a son, there was a father, there is an effect, there was a cause. Surely this is sufficient information for the most fatima-like curiosity, and, if it be not be, we regret our inability to supply any further evidence on the point. Can there be a more satisfactory or more strictly parliamentary course impossible? We will, at once of our similar inability to record at what precise period, or by what particular process, this gentleman's patronymic of William Barker became corrupted into Bill Borker. Mr. Barker acquired a high standing, and no inconsiderable reputation, among the members of that profession, to which he more peculiarly devoted his energies, and to them he was generally known either by the familiar appellation of Bill Borker, or the flattering designation of Agrawaiton Bill, the latter being a playful and expressive sobriquette illustrative of Mr. Barker's great talent in Agrawaiton, and rendering wild such subjects of her majesty as are conveyed from place to place, through the instrumentality of omnibuses. Of the early life of Mr. Barker little is known, and even that little is involved in considerable doubt and obscurity, a want of application, a restlessness of purpose, a thirsting after-porture, a love of all that is roving and cadre-like in nature, shared in common with many other great geniuses, appear to have been his leading characteristics. The busy hum of a parochial free school and the shady repose of a county jail were like inefficacious in producing the slightest alteration in Mr. Barker's disposition. His feverish attachment to change and variety nothing could repress, his native daring no punishment could subdue. If Mr. Barker can be fairly said to have had any weakness in his earlier years, it was an amiable one. Love, love in its most comprehensive form, a love of ladies, liquids, and pocket handkerchiefs. It was no selfish feeling. It was not confined to his own possessions, which but too many men regard with exclusive complacency. No, it was a nobler love, a general principle. It extended itself with equal force to the property of other people. There is something very affecting in this. It is still more affecting to know that such philanthropy is but imperfectly rewarded. Bo Street, Newgate, and Milbank are a poor return for a general benevolence, evincing itself in an irrepressible love for all created objects. Mr. Barker felt it so. After a lengthened interview with the highest legal authorities, he acquitted his ungrateful country with the consent and at the expense of the government proceeded to a distant shore and there employed himself, like another circonatus, in clearing and cultivating the soil, a peaceful pursuit, in which a term of seven years glided almost imperceptibly away. Whether at the expiration of the period we have just mentioned, the British government required Mr. Barker's presence here, or did not require his residence abroad, we have no distinct means of ascertaining. We should be inclined, however, to favor the latter position. It is much as we do not find that he was advanced to any other public post on his return than the post at the corner of the Hay Market, where he officiated as assistant waterman to the Hackney-Coach stand. Seated in this capacity on a couple of tubs near the curb-stone, with a brass plate and number suspended round his neck by a massive chain, and his ankles curiously enveloped in hay bands, he is supposed to have made these observations on human nature which exercised so material and influence over all his proceedings in later life. Mr. Barker had not officiated for many months in this capacity when the appearance of the first omnibus caused the public mind to go in a new direction and prevented a great many Hackney-Coaches from going in any direction at all. The genius of Mr. Barker at once perceived the whole extent of the injury that would be eventually inflicted on Cabin-Coach stands, and by consequence on Waterman also, by the progress of the system of which the first omnibus was a part. He saw, too, the necessity of adopting some more profitable possession, and his active mind at once perceived how much might be done in way of enticing the youthful and unwary, and shoving the old and helpless into the wrong bus, and carrying them off until reduced to despair, they ransomed themselves by the pavement of six pence ahead, or to adopt his own figurative expression in all its native beauty, till they was regularly done over and forked out the stumpy. An opportunity for realizing his fondest anticipation soon presented itself. Rumors were rife on the Hackney-Coach stands that a bus was building to run from Lyssen Grove to the bank, down Oxford Street and Holburn, and the rapid increase of buses on the Paddington Road encouraged the idea. Mr. Barker secretly and cautiously inquired in the proper quarters. The report was correct. The Royal William was to make its first journey on the following Monday. It was a crack of fair altogether, an enterprising young cabman of established reputation as a dashing whip, for he had compromised with the parents of three scrunched children, and just worked out his fine for knocking down an old lady, was the driver, and the spirited proprietor, knowing Mr. Barker's qualifications, appointed him to the vacant office of CAD on the very first application. The bus began to run, and Mr. Barker entered into a new suit of clothes and on a new sphere of action. To recapitulate all the improvements introduced by this extraordinary man into the omnibus system, gradually, indeed, but surely, would occupy a far greater space than we are unable to devote to this imperfect memoir. To him is universally assigned the original suggestion of the practice which afterwards became so general of the driver of a second bus keeping constantly behind the first one, and driving the pole of his vehicle either into the door of the other every time it was opened, or through the body of any lady or gentleman who might make an attempt to get into it, a humorous and pleasant invention exhibiting all that originality of idea and fine bold flow of spirits so conspicuous in every action of this great man. Mr. Barker hit opponents, of course, what man in public life has not, but even his worst enemies cannot deny that he has taken more old ladies and gentlemen to Paddington who wanted to go to the bank, and more old ladies and gentlemen to the bank who wanted to go to Paddington than any six men on the road, and however much malevolent spirits may pretend to doubt the accuracy of the statement, they well know it to be an established fact that he has forcibly conveyed a variety of ancient persons of either sex to both places who had not the slightest or most distant intention of going anywhere at all. Mr. Barker was the identical cat who nobly distinguished himself some time since by keeping a tradesman on the step, the omnibus going at full speed all the time, till he had thrashed him to his entire satisfaction and finally throwing him away when he had quite done with him. Mr. Barker, it ought to have been who, honestly indignant at being ignominiously ejected from a house of public entertainment, kicked the landlord in the knee and thereby caused his death. We say it ought to have been, Mr. Barker, because the action was not a common one, and could have imitated from no ordinary mind. It has now become a matter of history. It is recorded in Newgate Calendar, and we wish we could attribute this piece of daring heroism to Mr. Barker. We regret being compelled to state that it was not performed by him. Would for the family credit we could add that it was achieved by his brother. It was in the exercise of the nicer details of his profession that Mr. Barker's knowledge of human nature was beautifully displayed. He could tell at a glance where a passenger wanted to go to, and would shout the name of the place accordingly without the slightest reference to the real destination of the vehicle. He knew exactly the kind of old lady that would be too much flurried by the process of pushing in and pulling out of the caravan to discover where she had been put down until too late. Had an intuitive perception of what was passing in a passenger's mind, would he inwardly resolve to pull that cat up to-morrow morning, and never fail to make himself agreeable to female servants whom he would place next the door and talk to all the way. Human judgment is never infallible, and it would occasionally happen that Mr. Barker experimentalized with the timidity of forbearance of the wrong person in which case a summons to a police office was on more than one occasion followed by a committal to prison. It was not in the power of trifles such as these, however, to subdue the freedom of his spirit. As soon as they passed away, he resumed the duties of his profession with unabated ardor. We have spoken of Mr. Barker and of the red cab driver in the past hence. Alas, Mr. Barker has again become an absentee, and the class of men to which they both belonged is fast disappearing. Improvement has peered beneath the aprons of our cabs, and penetrated to the very innermost recesses of our omnibuses. Dirt and fustion will vanish before cleanliness and livery. Slaying will be forgotten when civility becomes general, and that enlightened, eloquent, sage, and profound body, the magistracy of London, will be deprived of half their amusement and half their occupation. End of Section 24. We hope our readers will not be alarmed at this rather ominous title. We assure them that we are not about to become political, neither have we the slightest intention of being more prosy than usual if we can help it. It has occurred to us that a slight sketch of the general aspect of the house and the crowds that resort to it on the night of an important debate would be productive of some amusement. And as we have made some few calls at the aforesaid house in our time, have visited it quite often enough for our purpose, and a great deal too often for our personal peace and comfort, we have determined to attempt the description. Dismissing from our minds, therefore, all that feeling of awe, which vague ideas of breaches of privilege, sergeant at arms, heavy denunciations, and still heavier fees, are calculated to awaken, we enter at once into the building and upon our subject. Half past four o'clock, and at five the mover of the address will be on his legs as the newspapers announce sometimes by way of novelty as if speakers were occasionally in the habit of standing on their heads. The members are pouring in one after the other in shoals. The few spectators who can obtain standing room in the passages scrutinize them as they pass, with the utmost interest, and the man who can identify a member occasionally becomes a person of great importance. Every now and then you can hear earnest whispers of, that's Sir John Thompson, which, him with the guilt order round his neck, no, no, that's one of the messengers. That other with the yellow gloves is Sir John Thompson. Here's Mr. Smith. Law. Yes, how do you do, sir? He is our new member. How do you do, sir? Mr. Smith stops, turns round with an air of enchanting urbanity, for the rumour of an intended dissolution has been very extensively circulated this morning, seizes both the hands of his grateful constituent, and after greeting him with the most enthusiastic warmth, darts into the lobby with an extraordinary display of ardour in the public cause, leaving an immense impression in his favour on the mind of his fellow townsmen. The arrivals increase in number, and the heat and noise increase in very unpleasant proportion. The livery servants form a complete lane on either side of the passage, and you reduce yourself into the smallest possible space to avoid being turned out. You see that stout man with the horse voice in the blue coat, queer crowned, broad brimmed hat, white corduroy britches, and great boots, who has been talking incessantly for half an hour past, and whose importance has occasioned no small quantity of mirth among the strangers. That is the great conservator of the peace of West Minster. You cannot fail to have remarked the grace with which he saluted the noble Lord who passed just now, or the excessive dignity of his heir as he expostulates with the crowd. He is rather out of temper now, in consequence of the very irreverent behaviour of those two young fellows behind him who have done nothing but laugh all the time they have been here. Were they divide tonight, do you think, Mr? timidly inquires a little thin man in the crowd, hoping to conciliate the man of office? How can you ask such questions, replies the Functionary, in an incredibly loud key, and pettishly grasping the thick stick he carries in his right hand? Pray do not, sir. I beg of you, pray do not, sir. The little man looks remarkably out of his element, and the uninitiated part of the throng are in positive convulsions of laughter. Just at this moment some unfortunate individual appears with a very smirking air at the bottom of the long passage. He has managed to elude the vigilance of the special constable downstairs, and is evidently congratulating himself on having made his way so far. Go back, sir. You must not come here, shouts the horse one, with tremendous emphasis of voice and gesture the moment the offender catches his eye. The stranger pauses. Do you hear, sir? Will you go back? continues the official dignitary, gently pushing the intruder some half-dozen yards. Come, don't push me, replies the stranger, turning angrily round. I will, sir. You won't, sir. Go out, sir. Take your hands off me, sir. Go out to the passage, sir. You are a jack-in-office, sir. A what? ejaculates he of the boots. A jack-in-office, sir, and a very insolent fellow, reiterates the stranger, now completely in a passion. Pray do not force me to put you out, sir, ripped towards the other. Pray do not. My instructions are to keep this passage clear. It's the speaker's order, sir. Damn the speaker, sir, shouts the intruder. Here, Wilson, Collins, gasped the officer, actually paralyzed at this insulting expression, which in his mind is all but high treason. Take this man out. Take him out, I say. How dare you, sir? And down goes the unfortunate man five stairs at a time, turning round at every stoppage to come back again, and denouncing bitter vengeance against the Commander-in-Chief and all his super-numeraries. Make way, gentlemen. Make way for the members. I beg of you, shouts the zealous officer, turning back and proceeding a whole string of the liberal and independent. You see this ferocious looking gentleman, with a complexion almost as sallow as his linen, and whose large black mustache would give him the appearance of a figure in a hairdresser's window if his countenance possessed the thought which is communicated to those wax and caricatures of the human-faced divine. He is a militia officer, and the most amusing person in the house. Can anything be more exquisitely absurd than the burlesque grandeur of his air as he strides up to the lobby, his eyes rolling like those of a Turk's head in a cheap Dutch clock? He never appears without that bundle of dirty papers which he carries under his left arm, and which are generally supposed to be the miscellaneous estimates for 1804 or some equally important documents. He is very punctual in his attendance at the house, and his self-satisfied, here, here, is not unfrequently the signal for a general titter. This is the gentleman who once actually sent a messenger up to the stranger's gallery in the old house of Commons to inquire the name of an individual who was using an eyeglass in order that he might complain to the speaker that the person in question was quizzing him. On another occasion he is reported to have repaired to Bellamy's kitchen a refreshment room where persons who are not members are admitted on sufferance, as it were, and perceiving two or three gentlemen at supper who, he was aware, were not members and could not in that place very well resent his behaviour. He indulged in the pleasantry of sitting with his booted leg on the table at which they were supping. He is generally harmless, though, and always amusing. By dint of patience and some little interest with our friend the Constable, we have co-drived to make our way to the lobby, and you can just manage to catch an occasional glimpse of the house as the door is open for the admission of members. It is totterably full already. The little groups of members are congregated together here, discussing the interesting topics of the day. That smart-looking fellow in the black coat with velvet facing and cuffs who wears his dorset hat so rakishly is Honest Tom, a metropolitan representative, and the large man in the cloak with the white lining, not the man by the pillar, the other with the light hair hanging over his coat-caulder behind, is his colleague. The quiet, gentlemanly-looking man in the blue-shirted gray trousers, white neckerchief and gloves whose closely buttoned coat displays his manly figure and broad chest to great advantage, is a very well-known character. He has fought a great many battles in his time, and conquered like the heroes of old, with no other arms than those the gods gave him. The old hard featured man who is standing near him is really a good specimen of a class of men now nearly extinct. He is a county member, and has been from time whereof the memory of man is not to the contrary. Look at his loose, wide brown coat with capacious pockets on each side, the knee-bridges and boots, the immensely long waistcoat and silver watch chain dangling below it, the wide-brimmed brown hat and the white handkerchief tied in a great bow, with straggling ends sticking out beyond his shirt-frill. It is a costume one seldom sees nowadays, and when the few who wear it have died off it will be quite extinct. He can tell you long stories of Fox, Pitt, Sheridan, and Canning, and how much better the host was managed in those times, when they used to get up at eight or nine o'clock, except on regular field days, of which everybody was apprised beforehand. He has a great contempt for all young members of Parliament, and thinks it quite impossible that a man can say anything worth hearing unless he has sat in the house for fifteen years, at least without saying anything at all. He is of opinion that young Macaulay was a regular impostor. He allows that Lord Stanley may do something one of these days, but he's too young, sir, too young. He is an excellent authority on points of precedent, and when he grows talkative after his wine, we'll tell you how Sir Somebody Something, when he was a whipper-in for the Government, brought four men out of their beds to vote in the majority, three of whom died on their way home again, how the host once divided on the question that fresh candles be now brought in, how the speaker was once upon a time left in the chair by accident at the conclusion of business, and was obliged to sit in the host by himself for three hours till some member could be knocked up and brought back again to move the adjournment at a great many other anecdotes of a similar description. There he stands, leaning on his stick, looking at the throng of exquisites around him with most profound contempt, and conjuring up before his mind's eye the scenes he beheld in the old house in days gone by, when his own feelings were fresher and brighter, and when, as he imagines, wit, talent, and patriotism flourished more brightly too. You are curious to know who that young man in the rough greatcoat is, who has accost at every member who has entered the house since we have been standing here. He is not a member. He is only an hereditary bondsman, or in other words, an Irish correspondent of an Irish newspaper who has just procured his forty-second frank from a member whom he never saw in his life before. There he goes again, another, bless the man, he has his hat and pockets full already. We will try our fortune at the stranger's gallery, though the nature of the debate encourages very little hope of success. What on earth are you on about, holding up your order, as if it were a talisman at whose command the wicket would fly open nonsense? Just preserve the order for an autograph, if it be worth keeping it all, and make your appearance at the door with your thumb and forefinger expressly inserted in your waistcoat pocket. The tall stout man in black is the doorkeeper. Any room? Not an inch. Two or three dozen gentlemen waiting downstairs on the chance of somebody's going out. Pull out your purse. Are you quite sure there's no room? I'll go and look," replies the doorkeeper, with a wistful glance at your purse. But I'm afraid there's not. He returns, and with real feelings assures you that it is morally impossible to get near the gallery. It is of no use waiting. When you are refused admission into the stranger's gallery at the house of commons under such circumstances you may return home thoroughly satisfied that the place must be remarkably full indeed. Retracing our steps through the long passage to sending the stairs and crossing the palace-yard, we halt at a small, temporary doorway adjoining the king's entrance to the house of lords. The order of the sergeant at arms will admit you into the reporter's gallery, from whence you can obtain a tolerably good view of the house. Take care of the stairs, they are none of the best through this little wicket there. As soon as your eyes become a little used to the mist of the place and the glare of the chandeliers below you, you will see that some unimportant personage on the ministerial side of the house, to your right hand, is speaking amidst a hum of voices and confusion which would rival Babel but for the circumstance of its being all in one language. The here-here which occasioned that laugh proceeded from our warlike friend with the mustache. He is sitting on the back seat against the wall, behind the member who is speaking, looking as ferocious and intellectual as usual. Take one look around you and retire. The body of the house and the side galleries are full of members, some with their legs on the back of the opposite seat, some with theirs stretched out to their utmost length on the floor, some going out, others coming in, all talking, laughing, lounging, coughing, owing, questioning, or groaning, presenting a conglomeration of noise and confusion to be met within no other place in existence, not even accepting Smithfield on a market day or a cockpit in its glory. But let us not omit to notice Bellamy's kitchen, or in other words the refreshment room, common to both houses of Parliament, where ministerialists and oppositionists, wigs and tories, radicals, peers and destructives, strangers from the gallery, and the more favored strangers from below the bar, are alike at liberty to resort, where divers, honourable members prove their perfect independence by remaining during the whole of a heavy debate, solacing themselves with the creature comforts, and whence they are summoned by whippers in, when the house is on the point of dividing, either to give their conscientious votes on questions of which they are conscientiously innocent of knowing anything whatever, or to find the vent for the playful exuberance of their wine inspired fancies in boisterous shouts of divide, occasionally varied with a little howling, barking, crowing, or other abulations of senatorial pleasantry. When you have ascended the narrow staircase, which, in the present temporary House of Commons, leads to the place we are describing, you will probably observe a couple of rooms on your right hand with tables spread for dining. Neither of these is the kitchen, although they are both devoted to the same purpose. The kitchen is further on, to our left, up these half dozen stairs. Before we ascend the staircase, however, we must request you to pause in front of this little bar-place with the sash windows, and beg your particular attention to the steady, honest-looking old fellow in black who is its sole occupant. Nicholas, we do not mind mentioning the old fellow's name, for if Nicholas be not a public man who is, and public's men's names are public property. Nicholas is the butler of Bellamy's, and, as hell, the same place, dressed exactly in the same manner, and said precisely the same things ever since the oldest of its present visitors can remember. An excellent service, Nicholas, is an unrivaled compounder of salad dressing, an admirable preparer of soda water and lemon, a special mixer of cold grog and punch, and, above all, an unequaled judge of cheese. If the old man have such a thing as vanity in his composition, this is certainly his pride, and if it be possible to imagine that anything in this world could disturb his impenetrable calmness, we should say it would be the doubting his judgment on this important point. We need to tell you all this, however, for if you have an atom of observation, one glance at his sleek, knowing-looking head and face, his prim white neckerchief with the wooden tie into which it has been regularly folded for twenty years past, merging by imperceptible degrees into a small, plated shirt-frill, and his comfortable-looking form encased in a wide-brushed suit of black would give you a better idea of his real character that a column of our poor description could convey. Nicholas is rather out of his element now. He cannot see the kitchen as he used to in the old house. There one window of his glass case opened into the room, and then, for the edification and the hoof of more juvenile questioners, he would stand for an hour together answering deferential questions about Sheridan and Percival, and Castle Ray and Heaven knows who besides, with manifest delight always inserting a mister before every commoner's name. Nicholas, like all men of his age and standing, has a great deal of the degeneracy of the times. He seldom expresses any political opinions, but we managed to ascertain, just before the passing of the reform bill, that Nicholas was a thorough reformer. What was our astonishment to discover shortly after the meeting of the first reformed parliament that he was a most inveterate and decided Tory? It was very odd. Some men changed their opinions from necessity, others from expediency, others from inspiration, but that Nicholas should undergo any change in any respect was an event we had never contemplated and should have considered impossible. His strong opinion against the clause which empowered the metropolitan districts to return members of parliament to was perfectly unaccountable. We discovered the secret at last, the metropolitan members always dying at home, the rascals. As for giving additional members to Ireland, it was even worse, decidedly unconstitutional. Why, sir, an Irish member would go up there and eat more dinner than three English members put together. He took no wine, drank table beer by the half-gallon, and went home to Manchester Buildings or Millbank Street for his whiskey and water. And what was the consequence? Why, the concern lost, actually lost, sir, by his patronage. A queer old fellow is Nicholas, and as completely a part of the building as the house itself. We wonder if he ever left the old place and fully expected to see in the papers the morning after the fire a pathetic account of an old gentleman in black of decent appearance who was seen at one of the upper windows when the flames were at their height and declared his resolute intention of falling with the floor. He must have been got out by force. However, he was got out. Here he is again, looking as he always does, as if he had been in a band-box ever since the last session. There he is at his old post every night, just as we have described him, and as characters are scarce and faithful servants scarcer, long may he be there, say we. Now, when you have taken your seat in the kitchen, and duly notice the large fire and roasting-jack at one end of the room, the little table for washing glasses and draining jugs at the other, the clock over the window opposite St. Margaret's Church, the deal-tables and wax candles, the damask tablecloths and bare floor, the plate and china on the tables, and the grid-iron on the fire, and a few other anomalies peculiar to the place, we will point out to your notice two or three of the people present whose station or absurdities render them the most worthy of remark. It is half past twelve o'clock, and as the division is not expected for an hour or two, a few members are lounging away the time here in preference to standing at the bar of the house or sleeping in one of the side-galleries. That singularly awkward and ungainly-looking man in the brownish-white hat with the straggling black trousers which reach about halfway down the leg of his boots, who is leaning against the meat-screen, apparently deluding himself into the belief that he is thinking about something, is a splendid sample of a member of the House of Commons concentrating in his own person the wisdom of a constituency. Observe the wig of a dark hue but indescribable colour, for if it be naturally brown, it has acquired a black tint by long service, and if it be naturally black, the same cause has imparted to it a tinge of rusty brown, and remark how very materially the great blinker-like spectacles assist the expression of that most intelligent face. But seriously speaking, did you ever see a countenance so expressive of the most hopeless extreme of heavy dullness or behold a form so strangely put together? He is no great speaker, but when he does address the House, the effect is absolutely irresistible. The small gentleman with the sharp nose who has just saluted him is a member of Parliament, an ex-Alderman and a sort of amateur fireman. He and the celebrated fireman's dog were observed to be remarkably active at the conflagration of the two Houses of Parliament. They both ran up and down and in and out, getting under people's feet and into everybody's way, fully impressed with the belief that they were doing a great deal of good and barking tremendously. The dog went quietly back to his kennel with the engine, but the gentleman kept up such an incessant noise for some weeks after the occurrence that he became a positive nuisance. As no more parliamentary fires have occurred, however, and as he has consequently hit no more opportunities of writing to the newspapers to relate how, by way of preserving pictures he cut them out of their frames and performed other great national services, he has gradually relapsed into his old state of calmness. That female in black, not the one whom the Lord's Day Bill Baranette has just chucked under the chin, the shorter of the two is Jane, the heave of Bellamy's. Jane is as great a character as Nicholas in her way. Her leading features are a thorough contempt for the great majority of her visitors. Her predominant quality, love of admiration, as you cannot fail to observe, if you mark the glee with which she listens to something that young member near her mutters somewhat unintelligibly in her ear, for his speech is rather thick from some cause or other, and how playfully she digs the handle of a fork into the arm with which he detains her by way of reply. Jane is no bad hand at repartets, and showers them about with a degree of liberality and total absence of reserve or constraint which occasionally excites no small amazement in the minds of strangers. She cuts jokes with Nicholas too, but looks up to him with a great deal of respect, the immovable stolidity with which Nicholas receives the aforesaid jokes and looks on at certain pastoral friskings and rompings, Jane's only recreations, and they are very innocent too, which occasionally take place in the passage, is not the least amusing part of his character. The two persons who are seated at the table in the quarter at the farther end of the room have been constant guests here for many years past, and one of them has feasted within these walls many a time with the most brilliant characters of a brilliant period. He has gone up to the other house since then, the greater part of his boon companions have shared Yorick's fate, and his visits to Bellamy's are comparatively few. If he really be eating his supper now, at what hour can he possibly have dined? A second solid mass of rump steak has disappeared, and he eat the first in four minutes and three quarters by the clock over the window. Was there ever such a personification of false staff? Mark the air with which he gloats over that stilton as he removes the napkin which has been placed beneath his chin to catch the superfluous gravy of the steak, and with what gusto he imbibes the porter which has been fetched expressly for him in the pewter-pot. Listen to the hoarse sound of that voice, kept down as it is by layers of solids and deep drafts of red wine, and tell us if you ever saw such a perfect picture of a regular gourmand, and whether he is not exactly the man whom you would pitch upon as having been the partner of Sheridan's parliamentary carouses, the volunteer driver of the hackney-coach that took him home, and the involuntary upsetter of the whole party. What an amusing contrast between his voice and appearance, and that of the spare squeaking old man who sits at the same table, and who elevating a little cracked benton sort of voice to its highest pitch invokes damnation upon his own eyes or somebody else's at the commencement of every sentence he utters. The captain, as they call him, is a very old frequenter of Bellamy's, much addicted to stopping after the house's up, an inexpeable crime in Jane's eyes, and a complete walking reservoir of spirits and water. The old peer, or rather the old man, for his peerage is of comparatively recent date, has a huge tumbler of hot punch brought him, and the other dams and drinks and drinks and dams and smokes. Members arrive every moment at a great bustle to report that the Chancellor of the Exchequers up, and to get glasses of brandy and water to sustain them during the division, people who have ordered supper countermanded and prepared to go downstairs, when suddenly a bell is heard to ring with a tremendous violence and a cry of division is heard in the passage. This is enough. Away rush the members' pell-mell. The room is cleared in an instant. The noise rapidly dies away. You hear the creaking of the last boot on the last stair, and are left alone with a leviathan of rump-stakes. End of Section 25. Sketches by Boz. Section 26. All public dinners, from the Lord Mayor's annual banquet at Guildhall, to the Chimney Sweepers anniversary at White Conduit House, from the Goldsmiths to the Butchers, from the Sheriffs to the Licensed Victuallers, are amusing scenes. Of all entertainments of this description, however, we think the annual dinner of some public charity is the most amusing. At a company dinner the people are nearly all alike, regular old-stagers who make it a matter of business and a thing not to be laughed at. At a political dinner everybody is disagreeable and inclined to speachify, much the same thing by the by, but at a charity dinner you see people of all sorts, kinds, and descriptions. The wine may not be remarkably special to be sure, and we have heard some hard-hearted monsters grumble at the collection, but we really think the amusement to be derived from the occasion sufficient to counterbalance even these disadvantages. Let us suppose you are induced to attend a dinner of this description, indignant orphan's friend's benevolent institution we think it is. The name of the charity is a lighter too longer, but never mind the rest. You have a distinct recollection, however, that you purchased a ticket at the solicitation of some charitable friend, and you deposit yourself in a hackney coach, the driver of which, no doubt that you may do the thing in style, turns a deaf ear to your earnest entreaties to be set down at the corner of Great Queen Street, and persists in carrying you to the very door of the Freemasons, round which a crowd of people are assembled to witness the entrance of the indignant orphan's friends. You hear great speculations as you pay the fare, on the possibility of your being the noble lord who was announced to fill the chair on the occasion, and are highly gratified to hear it eventually decided that you are only a vocalist. The first thing that strikes you on your entrance is the astonishing importance of the committee. You observe a door on the first landing carefully guarded by two waiters, in and out of which stout gentlemen with very red faces keep running, with a degree of speed highly unbecoming the gravity of persons of their years and corpulency. You pause, quite alarmed at the bustle, and thinking in your innocence that two or three people must have been carried out to the dining-room in fits at least. You are immediately undeceived by the waiter. Upstairs, if you please, sir, this is the committee room. Upstairs you go, accordingly, wondering, as you mount, what the duties of the committee can be, and whether they ever do anything beyond confusing each other and running over the waiters. Having deposited your hat and cloak, and received a remarkably small scrap of pasteboard in exchange, which, as a matter of course, you lose before you require it again, you enter the hall down which there are three long tables for the less distinguished guests, with a cross-table on a raised platform at the upper end for the reception of the very particular friends of the indignant orphans. Being fortunate enough to find a plate without anybody's card on it, you wisely seat yourself at once, and have a little leisure to look about you. Waiters with wine-baskets on their hands are placing decanters of sherry down the tables at very respectable distances. Melancholy-looking salt-sellers and decayed vinegar-cruits, which might have belonged to the parents of the indignant orphans in their time, are scattered at distant intervals on the cloth, and the knives and forks look as if they had done duty at every public dinner in London since the accession of George I. The musicians are scraping and grating and screwing tremendously, playing no notes but notes of preparation, and several gentlemen are gliding along the sides of the tables, looking into plate after plate with frantic eagerness, the expression of their countenances growing more and more dismal as they meet with everybody's card but their own. You turn round to take a look at the table behind you, and, not being in the habit of attending public dinners, are somewhat stuck by the appearance of the party on which your eyes rest. One of its principal members appears to be a little man with a long and rather inflamed face, and grey hair brushed bolt upright in front. He wears a wisp of black silk round his neck without any stiffener, as an apology for a neckerchief, and is addressed by his companions by the familiar appellation of Fitz, or some such monosyllable. Near him is a stout man in a white neckerchief and buff waistcoat with shining dark hair, cut very short in front, and a great round, healthy-looking face on which he studiously preserves a half sentimental simper. Next him again is a large-headed man with black hair and bushy whiskers, and opposite them are two or three others, one of whom is a little round-faced person in a dress-stock with blue under waistcoat. There is something peculiar in their air and manner, though you could hardly describe what it is. You cannot divest yourself of the idea that they have come for some other purpose than mere eating and drinking. You have no time to debate the matter, however, for the waiters who have been arranged in lines down the room, placing the dishes on table, retire to the lower end, the dark man in the blue coat and bright buttons, who has the direction of the music, looks up to the gallery, and calls out a band in a very loud voice, outbursts the orchestra, up-rise the visitors in March 14, stewards, each with a long wand in his hand, like the evil genius in a pantomime. Then the chairman, then the titled visitors, they all make their way up the room as fast as they can, bowing and smiling and smirking and looking remarkably amiable. The applause ceases, grace is said, the clatter of plates and dishes begins, and every one appears highly gratified, either with the presence of the distinguished visitors, or the commencement of the anxiously expected dinner. As to the dinner itself, the mere dinner, it goes off much the same everywhere. Tourines of soup are emptied with awful rapidity, waiters take plates of turbot away to get lobster sauce, and bring back plates of lobster sauce without turbot. People who could carve poultry are great fools if they own it, and people who can't have no wish to learn. The knives and forks form a pleasing accompaniment to Auber's music, and Auber's music would form a pleasing accompaniment to the dinner if you could hear anything besides the cymbals. The substantials disappear, moulds of jelly vanish like lightning, hearty eaters wipe their foreheads, and appear rather overcome by their recent exertions. People who have looked very cross hitherto become remarkably bland, and ask to take wine in the most friendly manner possible. Old gentlemen direct your attention to the ladies' gallery, and take great pains to impress you with the fact that the charity is always peculiarly favoured in this respect. Everyone appears disposed to become talkative, and the hum of conversation is loud and general. Pray, silence, gentlemen, if you please, for non-nobus, shouts the Toastmaster with stentorian lungs, a Toastmaster's shirt-front waistcoat and neckerchief, by the by always exhibit three distinct shades of cloudy white. Pray, silence, gentlemen, for non-nobus, the singers whom you discover to be no other than the very party that excited your curiosity at first after pitching their voices immediately begin to two-ing most dismally on which the regular old-stagers burst into occasional cries of waiters, silence waiters, standstill waiters, keep back waiters, and other exorcisms delivered in a toad of indignant remonstrance. The grace is soon concluded, and the company resumed their seats. The uninitiated portion of the guests applauded non-nobus as vehemently as if it were a capital comic song, greatly to the scandal and indignation of the regular diners, who immediately attempted to quell this sac-religious approbation by cries of hush-hush, whereupon the others, mistaking these sounds for hisses, applaud more tumultuously than before, and by way of placing their approval beyond the possibility of doubt, shout encore most vociferously. The moment the noise ceases, upstarch the Toastmaster. Gentlemen, charge your glasses, if you please, decanters having been handed about, and glasses filled. The Toastmaster proceeds in a regular ascending-scale. Gentlemen, are you all charged? Pray silence, gentlemen, for the chair. The chairman rises, and after stating that he feels it quite unnecessary to preface the toast he is about to propose, with any observations whatever, wanders into a maze of sentences and flounders about to the most extraordinary manner, presenting a lamentable spectacle of mystified humanity, until he arrives at the words constitutional sovereign of these realms, at which elderly gentlemen exclaim, Bravo! and hammer the table tremendously with their knife-handles! Under any circumstances it would give him the greatest pride, it would give him the greatest pleasure, he might almost say it would afford him satisfaction, cheers, to propose that toast. What must be his feelings, then, when he has the gratification of announcing that he has received Her Majesty's commands to apply to the treasurer of Her Majesty's household for Her Majesty's annual donation of twenty-five pounds in aid of the funds of this charity. This announcement, which has been regularly made by every chairman, since the first foundation of the charity forty-two years ago, calls forth the most vociferous applause. The toast is drunk with a great deal of cheering and knocking, and God Save the Queen is sung by the professional gentleman, the unprofessional gentleman joining in the chorus, and giving the national anthem an effect which the newspapers with great justice describe as perfectly electrical. The other, loyal and patriotic toasts having been drunk with all due enthusiasm, a comic song having been well sung by the gentleman with the small neckerchief and a sentimental one by the second of the party, we come to the most important toast of the evening. Prosperity to the charity. Here again we are compelled to adopt newspaper phraseology and to express our regret at being precluded from giving even the substance of the noble lord's observations. Suffice it to say that the speech which is somewhat of the longest is rapturously received, and the toast having been drunk, the stewards, looking more important than ever, leave the room, and presently return, heading a procession of indignant orphans, boys and girls, who walk round the room, curtsying and bowing and treading on each other's heels, and looking very much as if they would like a glass of wine apiece to the high gratification of the company generally, and especially of the lady-patronesses of the gallery, excellent children and re-edger stewards, each with a blue plate in his hand. The band plays a lively air, the majority of the company put their hands in their pockets, and look rather serious, and the noise of sovereigns rattling on crockery is heard from all parts of the room. After a short interval, occupied in singing and toasting, the secretary puts on his spectacles, and proceeds to read the report and list of subscriptions, the latter being listened to with great attention. Mr. Smith, one guinea. Mr. Tompkins, one guinea. Mr. Wilson, one guinea. Mr. Hickson, one guinea. Mr. Nixon, one guinea. Mr. Charles Nixon, one guinea. Here, here. Mr. James Nixon, one guinea. Mr. Thomas Nixon, one pound one. Tremendous applause. Lord Fitz Binkle, the chairman of the day, in addition to an annual donation of fifteen pounds, thirty guineas, prolonged knocking, several gentlemen knock the stems off their wine-glasses in the vehemence of their approbation. Lady Fitz Binkle, in addition to an annual donation of ten pound, twenty pound, protracted docking and shouts of bravo, the list being at length concluded, the chairman rises, and proposes the health of the secretary, then whom he knows no more zealous or essenable individual. The secretary, in returning thanks, observes that he knows no more excellent individual than the chairman, except the senior officer of the charity, whose health he begs to propose. The senior officer, in returning thanks, observes that he knows no more worthy man than the secretary, except Mr. Walker, the auditor, whose health he begs to propose. Mr. Walker, in returning thanks, discovers some other essenable individual, to whom alone the senior officer is inferior. And so they go on toasting and lauding and thanking the only other toast of importance being the Lady Patroness is now present, on which all the gentlemen turn their faces towards the Lady's gallery, shouting tremendously, and little priggish men, who have imbibed more wine than usual, kiss their hands and exhibit distressing contortions of visage. We have protracted our dinner to so great a length, that we have hardly time to add one word by way of grace. We can only entreat our readers not to imagine, because we have attempted to extract some amusement from a charity dinner, that we are at all disposed to underrate either the excellent of the benevolent institutions with which London abounds, or the essenable motives of those who support them. End of Section 26. Now, ladies, up in the sky, parlor, only once a year if you please, young lady with brass ladle. Sweep, sweep, sweep. Illegal watchword. The first of May. There is a merry freshness in the sound, calling to our minds a thousand thoughts of all that is pleasant in nature, and beautiful in her most delightful form. What man is there, over whose mind a bright spring morning does not exercise a magic influence, carrying him back to the days of his childish sports and conjuring up before him the old green field with its gently waving trees, where the birds sang as he has never heard them since, where the butterfly fluttered far more gaily than he ever sees him now in all his ramblings, where the sky seemed bluer, and the sun shone more brightly, where the air blew more freshly over greener grass and sweeter smelling flowers, where everything wore a richer and more brilliant hue than it is ever dressed in now. Such are the deep feelings of childhood, and such are the impressions which every lovely object stamps upon its heart. The hearty traveller wanders through the maze of thick and pathless woods, where the sun's rays never shone, and heaven's pure air never played. He stands on the brink of the roaring waterfall, and giddy and bewildered watches the foaming mass as it leaps from stone to stone and from craig to craig. He lingers in the fertile plains of a land of perpetual sunshine, and revels in the luxury of their balmy breath. But what are the deep forests, or the thundering waters, or the richest landscapes that bounteous nature ever spread, to charm the eyes and captivate the senses of man, compared with the recollection of the old scenes of his early youth. Magic scenes, indeed, for the fancies of childhood dress them in colours brighter than the rainbow, and almost as fleeting. In former times spring brought with its not only such associations as these, connected with the past but sports and games for the present, merry dances round rustic pillars adorn with emblems of the season, and reared in honour of its coming. Where are they now? Pillars we have, but they are no longer rustic ones, and as to dancers, they are used to rooms and lights and would not show well in the open air. Think of the immorality too. What would your Sabbath enthusiast say to an aristocratic ring encircling the Duke of York's column in Carleton Terrace, a grand pussette of the middle classes round Alderman Waithman's monument in Fleet Street, or a general hands-for round of ten-pound householders at the foot of the obelisk in St. George's Fields. Alas, romance can make no head against the riot act, and pastoral simplicity is not understood by the police. Well, many years ago we began to be a steady and matter-of-fact sort of people, and dancing in spring, being beneath our dignity we gave it up, and in course of time it descended to the sweeps, a fall certainly because those sweeps are very good fellows in their way, and moreover very useful in a civilized community, they are not exactly the sort of people to give the tone to the little elegances of society. The sweeps however got the dancing to themselves, and they keep it up, and handed it down. This was a severe blow to the romance of springtime, but it did not entirely destroy it either, for a portion of it descended to the sweeps with the dancing, and rendered them objects of great interest. A mystery hung over the sweeps in those days. Legends were in existence of wealthy gentlemen who had lost children, and who after many years of sorrow and suffering had found them in the character of sweeps. Stories were related of a young boy, who having been stolen from his parents in his infancy, and devoted to the occupation of chimney sweeping, was sent in the course of his professional career to sweep the chimney of his mother's bedroom, and how, being hot and tired, when he came out of the chimney, he got into the bed he had so often slept in as an infant, and was discovered and recognized therein by his mother, who once every year of her life thereafter requested the pleasure of the company of every London sweep at half past one o'clock to roast beef, plum-putting, porter, and sixpence. Such stories as these, and there were many such, threw an air of mystery round the sweeps, and produced for them some of those good effects which animals derive from the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. No one, except the masters, thought of ill-treating a sweep, because no one knew who he might be, or what noblemen's or gentleman's son he might turn out. Chimney sweeping was, by many believers in the marvellous, considered as a sort of probationary term, at an earlier or later period of which divers, young noblemen, were to come into possession of their rank and titles, and the profession was held by them in great respect accordingly. We remember, in our younger days, a little sweep about our own age, with curly hair and white teeth, whom we devoutly and sincerely believed to be the lost son and heir of some illustrious personage, an impression which was resolved into an unchangeable conviction on our infant mind by the subject of our speculations informing us one day and reply to our question, propounded a few moments before his ascent to the summit of the kitchen chimney, that he believed he'd been born in the vercus, but he'd never known his father. We felt certain from that time forth that he would one day be owned by a lord, and we never heard the church bell's ring or saw a flag hoisted in the neighborhood without thinking that the happy event had at last occurred and that his long-lost parent had arrived in a coach and six to take him home to Grovener Square. He never came, however, and at the present moment the young gentleman in question has settled down as a master sweep in the neighborhood of Battlebridge, his distinguishing characteristics being a decided antipathy to washing himself and the possession of a pair of legs very inadequate to the support of his unwieldy and corpulent body. The romance of spring having gone out before our time, we were fain to console ourselves as we best could with the uncertainty that enveloped the birth and parentage of its attendant dancers, the sweeps, and we did console ourselves with it for many years. But even in this wicked source of comfort received a shock from which it has never recovered, a shock which has been in reality its death-blow. We could not disguise from ourselves the fact that whole families of sweeps were regularly born of sweeps in the rural districts of Somers Town and Camden Town, that the eldest son succeeded to the father's business, that the other branches assisted him therein and commenced on their own account that their children again were educated to the profession, and that about their identity there could be no mistake whatever. We could not be blind, we say, to this melancholy truth, but we could not bring ourselves to admit it nevertheless, and we lived on for some years in a state of voluntary ignorance. We were roused from our pleasant slumber by certain dark insinuations thrown out by a friend of ours to the effect that children in the lower ranks of life were beginning to choose chimney-sweeping as their particular walk, that applications had been made by various boys to the constituted authorities to allow them to pursue the object of their ambition with the full concurrence and sanction of the law, that the affair in short was becoming one of mere legal contract. We turned a deaf ear to these rumours at first, but slowly and surely they stole upon us. Month after month, week after week, day after day at last did we meet with accounts of similar applications. The veil was removed, all mystery was at an end, and chimney-sweeping had become a favorite end-shows in pursuit. There is no longer any occasion to steal boys, for boys flock and crowds to bind themselves. The romance of the trade has fled, and the chimney-sweeper of the present day is no more like unto him of thirty years ago, than is a Fleet Street pickpocket to a Spanish brigand, or Paul Pry to Caleb Williams. This gradual decay and disuse of the practice of leading noble youth into captivity, and compelling them to ascend chimneys, was a severe blow, if we may so speak, to the romance of chimney-sweeping, and to the romance of spring at the same time. But even this was not all. For some few years ago the dancing on May Day began to decline. Small sweeps were observed to congregate in twos or threes, unsupported by a green, with no my lord to act as master of the ceremonies, and no my lady to preside over the exchequer. Even in companies where there was a green it was an absolute nothing, a mere sprout, and the instrumental accomplishments rarely extended beyond the shovel and a set of pan-pipes better known to the many as a moth-organ. These were the signs of the times, portentious omens of a coming change, and what was the result which they shadowed forth, why the master-sweeps, influenced by a restless spirit of innovation, actually interposed their authority in opposition to the dancing, and substituted a dinner, an anniversary dinner at White Conduit House, where clean faces appeared in lieu of black ones smeared with rose-pink, and necords and top superseded nanking drawers to rosetta-chews. Gentlemen who were in the habit of riding shy horses, and steady-going people who have no vagrancy in their souls, lauded this alteration to the skies, and the conduct of the master-sweeps was described beyond the reach of praise. But how stands the real fact? Let any man deny, if he can, that when the cloth had been removed, fresh pots and pipes laid upon the table, and the customary loyal and patriotic toast proposed, the celebrated Mr. Sluffin of Adam and Eve Court, whose authority not the most belignant of our opponents can call in question, expressed himself in a manner following. But now he'd coach the chairman's eye, he wished he might be jolly well blessed if he weren't a-going to have his innings, which he would say these here observations, that how some mischievous coes has known nothing about the concern had tried to set people again the master-sweeps, and take the shine out of their business, and the bread out of the traps of the precious kids by a make-and-all this year remark, as chimblies could be as well swept by cheaters by boys, that by making use of boys for that their purpose was barbarous, for as he had been a-jummy, he begged his chairman's pardon for using such a vulgar expression, more nor thirty-year he might say he'd been bored in a-chimbly, and he know'd uncommon well, as cheatery was, was, nor, or no use, and as to curwelty to the boys, everybody in the chimbly lying know'd as well as he did, that they like the climbin' better nor nothin' as was. From this day we date the total fall of the last lingering remnant of May Day dancing among the elite of the profession, and from this period we commence in a new era in that portion of our spring associations which relates to the first of May. We are aware that the unthinking part of the population will meet us here, with the assertion that dancing on May Day still continues, that greens are annually seen to roll along the streets, that youths in the garb of clowns proceed them, giving vent to the ebullitions of their sportive fancies, and that lords and ladies follow in their wake. Granted, we are ready to acknowledge that in outward show these processions have greatly improved. We do not deny the introduction of solos on the drum. We will even go so far as to admit an occasional fantasia on the triangle, but here our admissions end. We positively deny that the sweeps have art or part in these proceedings. We distinctly charge the dustmen with throwing what they ought to clear away in the eyes of the public. We accuse scavengers, brick-makers, and gentlemen who devote their energies to the costar-mongering line, with obtaining money once a year under false pretenses. We cling with peculiar fondness to the custom of days gone by, and have shut out conviction as long as we could, but it has forced itself upon us, and we now proclaim to a deluded public that the May Day dancers are not sweeps. The size of them alone is sufficient to repudiate the idea. It is a notorious fact that the widely-spread taste for register stoves has materially increased the demand for small boys, whereas the men who, under a fictitious character, dance about the streets in the first of May nowadays would be a tight fit in a kitchen-flu to say nothing of the parlour. This is a strong presumptive evidence, but we have, positive proof, the evidence of our own senses, and here is our testimony. Upon the morning of the second of the merry month of May, in the year of our Lord 1,826, we went out for a stroll with a kind of forlorn hope of seeing something or other which might induce us to believe that it was really spring, and not Christmas. After wandering as far as Copenhagen House, without meeting anything, calculated to dispel our impression that there was a mistake in the Almanacs, we turned back down Maiden Lane with the intention of passing through the extensive colony lying between it and Battlebridge, which is inhabited by proprietors of donkey carts, boilers of horse flesh, makers of tiles, and sifters of cinders, through which colony we should have passed without stoppage or interruption if a little crowd gathered round a shed had not attracted our attention and induced us to pause. When we say a shed, we do not mean the conservatory sort of building, which, according to the old song, loved teneted when he was a young man, but a wooden house with windows stuffed with rags and paper, and a small yard at the side with one dust cart, two baskets of few shovels, and little keeps of cinders and fragments of china and tiles scattered about it. Before this inviting spot we paused, and the longer we looked, the more we wondered what exciting circumstance it could be that induced the foremost members of the crowd to flatten their noses against the parlor window in the vain hope of catching a glimpse of what was going on inside. After staring vacantly about us for some minutes, we appealed, touching the cause of this assemblage, to a gentleman in a suit of tarpaulin who was smoking his pipe on our right hand, but as the only answer we obtained was a playful inquiry whether our mother had disposed of her mangle, we determined to await the issue in silence. Judge of our virtuous indignation when the street door of the shed opened and a party emerged therefrom, clad in the costume and emulating the appearance of May Day sweeps. The first person who appeared was My Lord, habited in a blue coat and bright buttons, with guilt paper tacked over the seams, yellow knee-bridges, pink cotton stockings and shoes, a cocked hat ornamented with threads of various colored paper on his head, a bouquet the size of a prize cauliflower in his buttonhole, a long belcher handkerchief in his right hand, and a thin cane in his left. A murmur of applause ran through the crowd, which was chiefly composed of his lordship's personal friends, when this graceful figure made his appearance, which swelled into a burst of applause as his fair partner in the dance bounded forth to join him. Her ladyship was attired in pink crepe over bed furniture, with a low body and short sleeves. The symmetry of her ankles was partially connected by a very perceptible pair of frilled trousers, and the inconvenience which might have resulted from the circumstances of her white satin shoes being a few sizes too large was obviated by their being firmly attached to her legs with strong tape sandals. Her head was ornamented with a profusion of artificial flowers, and in her hand she bore a large brass ladle wherein to receive what she figuratively denominated the tin. The other characters were a young gentleman in girls' clothes and a widow's cap, two clowns who walked upon their hands in the mud, to the immeasurable delight of all the spectators, a man with a drum, another man with a flageolet, a dirty woman in a large shawl, and a box under her arm for the money, and last, though not least, the green animated by no less a personage than our identical friend in the Tarpaulin suit. The man hammered away at the drum, the flageolet squeaked, the shuttles rattled, the green rolled about, pitching first on one side and then on the other, my lady threw her right foot over her left ankle, and her left foot over her right ankle alternately, my lord ran a few paces forward and butted at the green, and then a few paces backward upon the toes of the crowd, and then went to the right and then to the left, and then dodged my lady round the green, and finally drew her arm through his, and called upon the boys to shout, which they did lustily, for this was the dancing. We passed the same group accidentally in the evening. We never saw a green so drunk, a lord so quarrelsome, no, not even in the house of peers after dinner, a pair of clowns so melancholy, a lady so muddy, or a party so miserable. How has May Day decayed? When we affirm that broker shops are strange places, and that if an authentic history of their contents could be procured, it would furnish many a page of amusement and many a melancholy tale, it is necessary to explain the class of shops to which we allude. Perhaps when we make use of the term broker shop, the minds of our readers will at once picture large, handsome warehouses exhibiting a long perspective of French polished dining tables, rosewood chiffonières, and mahogany wash handstands with an occasional vista of a four-post bedstead and hangings, and an appropriate foreground of dining-room chairs. Perhaps they will imagine that we mean a humble class of second-hand furniture repositories. Their imagination will then naturally lead them to that street at the back of Longacre, which is composed almost entirely of broker shops, where you walk through grows of deceitful, showy-looking furniture, and where the prospect is occasionally enlivened by a bright red-blue and yellow hearth rug embellished with the pleasing device of a male coach at full speed, or a strange animal supposed to have been originally intended for a dog, with a mass of worsted work in his mouth which conjecture has likened to a basket of flowers. This, by the by, is a tempting article to young wives in the humble ranks of life who have a first-floor front to furnish. They are lost in admiration and hardly know which to admire most. The dog is very beautiful, but they have a dog already on the best tea-tree, and two more on the mantelpiece. Then there is something so genteel about that male coach and the passengers outside, who are all hat, give it such an air of reality. The goods here are adapted to the taste, or rather to the means of cheap purchasers. There are some of the most beautiful-looking Pembroke tables that were ever beheld. The wood is green as the trees in the park, and the leaves almost as certain to fall off in the course of a year. There is also a most extensive assortment of tent and turnip bedsteads made of stained wood and innumerable specimens of that base imposition on society, a sofa bedstead. A turnip bedstead is a blunt, honest piece of furniture. It may be slightly disguised with a sham drawer, and sometimes a mad attempt is even made to pass it off for a bookcase, ornamented as you will, however, the turnip bedstead seems to defy disguise and to insist on having it distinctly understood that he is a turnip bedstead and nothing else, that he is indispensably necessary and that, being so useful, he disdains to be ornamental. How different is the demeanor of a sofa bedstead. Ashamed of its real use, it strives to appear an article of luxury and gentility, an attempt in which it miserably fails. It has neither the respectability of a sofa nor the virtues of a bed. Every man who keeps a sofa bedstead in his house becomes a party to a willful and designing fraud. We question whether you could insult him more than by insinuating that you entertain the least suspicion of its real use. To return from this digression, we beg to say that neither of these classes of broker-shops forms the subject of this sketch. The shops to which we advert are immeasurably inferior to those on whose outward appearance we have slightly touched. Our readers most often have observed in some by-street in a poor neighbourhood a small dirty shop exposing for sale the most extraordinary and confused jumble of old, worn-out, wretched articles that can be well imagined. Our wonder at their ever-having been bought is only to be equal by our astonishment at the idea of their ever being sold again. On a board, at the side of the door, are placed about twenty books, all odd volumes, and as many wine-glasses, all different patterns, several locks, an old earthenware pan, full of rusty keys, two or three gaudy chimney ornaments cracked, of course, the remains of a luster without any drops, a round frame like a capital O, which has once held a mirror, a flute complete with the exception of the middle joint, a pair of curling irons, and a tinder-box. In front of the shop window are ranged some half dozen high-backed chairs with spinal complaints and wasted legs, a corner-covered, two or three very dark mahogany tables with flaps like mathematical problems, some pickle- jars, some surgeon's ditto with guilt-labels and without-stoppers, an unframed portrait of some lady who flourished about the beginning of the thirteenth century by an artist who never flourished at all, an incalculable host of miscellaneous of every description, including bottles and captets, rags and bones, fenders and street door-knockers, fire-irons, wearing apparel and bedding, a hall-lamp and a room-door. Imagine, in addition to this incongruous mass, a black doll in a white frock with two faces, one looking up the street and the other looking down, swinging over the door, a board with the squeezed-up inscription, Dealer in Marine stores, in lanky white letters, whose height is strangely out of proportion to their width, and you have before you precisely the kind of shop to which we wish to direct your attention. Although the same heterogeneous mixture of things will be found at all these places, it is curious to observe how truly and accurately some of the minor articles which are exposed for sale, articles of wearing apparel, for instance, mark the character of the neighborhood. Take Drury Lane and Covent Garden, for example. This is essentially a theatrical neighborhood. There is not a pot-boy in the vicinity who is not to a greater or less extent a dramatic character. The errand boys and Chandler shop-keeper sons are all stage-struck. They get-up plays in back-kitchens hired for the purpose, and will stand before a shop window for hours contemplating a great starring portrait of Mr. Somebody, or rather, of the Royal Coburg Theatre, as he appeared in the character of Tango the Denounced. The consequence is that there is not a marine-store shop in the neighborhood which does not exhibit for sale some fated articles of dramatic finery, such as three or four pairs of soiled buff-boots with turnover-red tops, here to forewarn by a fourth robber, or fifth mob, a pair of rusty broadswords, a few gauntlets, and certain resplendent ornaments which, if they were yellow instead of white, might be taken for insurance-plates of the Sunfire Office. There are several of these shops in the narrow streets and dirty courts, of which there are so many near the national theatres, and they all have tempting goods of this description, with the addition, perhaps, of a ladies' pink dress covered with spangles, white wreaths, stage shoes, and a tiara like a tin lamp reflector. They have been purchased of some wretched super-numeraries, or sixth-rate actors, and are now offered for the benefit of the rising generation who, on condition of making certain weekly payments, amounting in the whole to about ten times their value, may avail themselves of such desirable bargains. Let us take a very different quarter and apply it to the same test. Look at a marine-store, dealers, in that reservoir of dirt, drunkenness, and drabs, thieves, oysters, baked potatoes, and pickled salmon, rat-cliff highway. Here the wearing apparel is all nautical. Rough blue jackets with mother-of-pearl buttons, oil-skin hats, coarse-checked shirts, and large canvas trousers that look as if they were made for a pair of bodies instead of a pair of legs, are the simple commodities. Then there are large bunches of cotton-pocket handkerchiefs in colour and pattern unlike any one ever saw before. With the exception of those on the backs of the three young ladies without bonnets who passed just now. The furniture is much the same as elsewhere, with the addition of one or two models of ships, and some old prints of naval engagements in still older frames. In the window are a few compasses, a small tray containing silver watches in clumsy thick cases, and tobacco boxes, the lid of each ornamented with a ship, or an anchor, or some such trophy. A sailor generally pawns or sells all he has before he has been long ashore, and if he does not, some favourite companion kindly saves him the trouble. In either case, it is an even chance that he afterwards unconsciously repurchases the same things at a higher price than he gave for them at first. Again, pay a visit with a similar object to a part of London as unlike both of these as they are to each other. Cross over to the Surrey side, and look at such shops of this description as are to be found near the King's bench-prison and in the rules. How different and how strikingly illustrative of the decay of some of the unfortunate residents in this part of the metropolis. Imprisonment and neglect have done their work. There is a contamination in the profligate denizens of a debtor's prison. Old friends have fallen off. The recollection of former prosperity has passed away, and with it all thoughts for the past, all care for the future. First watches and rings, then cloaks, coats, and all the more expensive articles of dress have found their way to the pawnbrokers. That miserable resource has failed at last, and the sale of some trifling article that one of these shops has been the only mode left of raising a shilling or two to meet the urgent demands of the moment. Dressing cases and writing desks too old to pawn but too good to keep. Guns, fishing rods, musical instruments, all in the same condition, have been first sold, and the sacrifice has been but slightly felt. But hunger must be allayed, and what has already become a habit is easily when an emergency arises. Light articles of clothing, first of the ruined man, then of his wife, and last of their children, even of the youngest, have been parted with piecemeal. There they are, thrown carelessly together, until a purchaser presents himself old and patched and repaired, it is true, but the making materials tell of better days, and the older they are, the greater the misery and destitution of those whom they once adorned. CHAPTER XXII It is a remarkable circumstance that different trades appear to partake of the disease to which elephants and dogs are especially liable, and to run stark, staring, raving mad periodically. The great distinction between the animals and the trades is that the former run mad with a certain degree of propriety. They are very regular in their irregularities. We know the period at which the emergency will arise, and provide against it accordingly. If an elephant run mad, we are all ready for him, kill or cure, pills or bullets, calamel in conserve of roses, or lead in a musket barrel. If a dog happened to look unpleasantly warm in the summer months, and to trot about the shady side of the street with a quarter of a yard of tongue hanging out of his mouth, a thick leather muzzle, which has been previously prepared in compliance with the thoughtful injunctions of the legislature, is instantly clapped over his head by way of making him cooler, and he either looks remarkably unhappy for the next six weeks, or becomes legally insane and goes mad as it were by act of parliament. But these trades are as eccentric as comets, nay worse, for no one can calculate on the recurrence of the strange appearances which betoken the disease. Moreover, the contagion is general, and the quickness with which it diffuses itself almost incredible. We will cite two or three cases in illustration of our meaning. Six or eight years ago, the epidemic began to display itself among the linen drapers and haberdasher's. The primary symptoms were an inordinate love of plate glass, and a passion for gas lights and gilding. The disease gradually progressed, and at last attained a fearful height. Quiet, dusty old shops in different parts of town were pulled down, spacious premises with stuccoed fronts and gold letters were erected instead. Floors were covered with turkey carpets, roofs supported by massive pillars, doors knocked into windows, a dozen squares of glass into one, one shopping into a dozen, and there is no knowing what would have been done if it had not been fortunately discovered just in time that the commissioners of bankruptcy were as competent to decide such cases as the commissioners of lunacy, and that a little confinement and general examination did wonders. The disease abated, it died away. A year or two of comparative tranquility ensued. Suddenly it burst out again amongst the chemists. The symptoms were the same, with the addition of a strong desire to stick the royal arms over the shop door, and a great rage for mahogany, varnish, and expensive floor cloth. Then the hosiers were infected, and began to pull down their shop fronts with frantic recklessness. The mania again died away, and the public began to congratulate themselves on its entire disappearance when it burst forth with tenfold violence among the publicans and keepers of wine vaults. From that moment it has spread among them with unprecedented rapidity, exhibiting a concatenation of all the previous symptoms. Onward it has rushed to every part of town, knocking down all the old public houses and depositing splendid mansions, stoned balustrades, rosewood fittings, immense lamps, and illuminated clocks at the corner of every street. The extensive scale on which these places are established, and the ostentatious manner in which the business of even the smallest of them is divided into branches is amusing. A handsome plate of ground glass in one door directs you to the counting-house, another to the bottle department, a third to the wholesale department, a fourth to the wine promenade, and so forth, until we are in daily expectation of meeting with a brandy-bell or a whisky entrance. Then ingenuity is exhausted in devising attractive titles for the different descriptions of gin, and the dram-drinking portion of the community as they gaze upon the gigantic black and white announcements, which are only to be equalled in size by the figures beneath them, are left in a state of pleasing hesitation between the cream of the valley, the out-and-out, the no mistake, the good for mixing, the real knock me down, the celebrated butter gin, the regular flare-up, and a dozen other, equally inviting and wholesome liqueurs. Although places of this description are to be met with in every second street, they are invariably numerous and splendid in precise proportion to the dirt and poverty of the surrounding neighborhood. The gin-shops in and near Drury Lane, Holburn, St. Giles's, Covent Garden, and Claire Market are the handsomest in London. There is more of filth and squalid misery near those great thoroughfares than in any part of this mighty city. We would endeavour to sketch the bar of a large gin-shop and its ordinary customers for the edification of such of our readers as may not have had opportunities of observing such scenes, and on the chance of finding one well suited to our purpose we will make for Drury Lane, though the narrow streets and dirty courts which divided from Oxford Street, and that classical spot adjoining the brewery-house at the bottom of Tottingham Court Road, best known to the initiated as the Rookery. The filthy and miserable appearance of this part of London can hardly be imagined by those, and there are many such who have not witnessed it. Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper, every room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two or even three. Fruit and sweet stuff manufacturers in the cellars, barbers and red herring vendors in the front parlours, cobbers in the back, a bird fancier in the first floor, three families on the second starvation in the attics, Irishman in the passage, a musician in the front kitchen, and a charwoman and five hungry children in the back one, filth everywhere, a gutter before the houses and a drain behind, clothes drying and slops emptying from the windows, girls of 14 or 15 with matted hair walking about barefoot and in white great coats among their only covering, boys of all ages, in coats of all sizes and no coats at all, men and women in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel, lounging, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting and swearing. You turn the corner. What a change! All is light and brilliancy. The hum of many voices issues from that splendid gin shop which forms the commencement of the two streets opposite, and the gay building with the fantastically ornamented parapet, the illuminated clock, the plate glass windows surrounded by stucco rosettes and its profusion of gas lights and richly guilt burners is perfectly dazzling when contrasted with the darkness and dirt we have just left. The interior is even gayer than the exterior. A bar of French polished mahogany, elegantly carved, extends the whole width of the place, and there are two side aisles of great casks, painted green and gold, enclosed within a light brass rail, and bearing such inscriptions as Old Tom 549, Young Tom 360, Samson 1421, the figures agreeing we presume with gallons understood. Beyond the bar is a lofty and spacious saloon, full of the same enticing vessels with a gallery running round it, especially well furnished. On the counter, in addition to the usual spirit apparatus, are two or three little baskets of cakes and biscuits which are carefully secured at top with wicker work to prevent their contents being unlawfully abstracted. Behind it are two showily dressed damsels with large necklaces dispensing the spirits and compounds. They are assisted by the ostensible proprietor of the concern, a stote course fellow in a fur cap put on very much on one side to give him a knowing air and to display his sandy whiskers to the best advantage. The two old washer-women who are seated on the little bench to the left of the bar are rather overcome by the head-dressers and haughty demeanor of the young ladies who officiate. They receive their half-quarter of gin and peppermint with considerable deference, prefacing a request for one of them's soft business with a, just be good enough, ma'am. They are quite astonished at the impudent air of the young fellow in a brown coat and bright buttons who, ushering in his two companions and walking up to the bar it is careless a manner as if he had been used to green and gold ornaments all his life, winks at one of the young ladies with singular coolness and calls for a kervorton and three-out glass, just as if the place were his own. Gin for you, sir, says the young lady when she has drawn it, carefully looking every way but the right one to show that the wink had no effect upon her. For me, Mary, my dear, replies the gentleman in brown, my name ain't Mary as it happens, says the young girl, rather relaxing as she delivers the change. Well, if it ain't, it ought to be, responds the irresistible one. All the Mary's, as ever I see, was handsome gals. Here the young lady, not precisely remembering how blushes are managed in such cases, abruptly ends the flotation by addressing the female in the faded feathers who has just entered and who after stating explicitly to prevent any subsequent misunderstanding that this gentleman pays, calls for a glass of port wine and a bit of sugar. Those two old men, who came in just to have a drain, finished their third quarter a few seconds ago. They have made themselves crying drunk, and the fat, comfortable-looking elderly woman, who had a glass of rum-srib each, having chimed in with their complaints on the hardness of the times, one of the women has agreed to stand a glass round, jocularly observing that grief never mended to no broken bones, and as good people's worries scarce what I says is, make the most on them, and that's all about it, a sentiment which appears to afford unlimited satisfaction to those who have nothing to pay. It is growing late, and the throng of men, women, and children who have been constantly going in and out dwindles down to two or three occasional stragglers, cold, wretched-looking creatures in the last stage of emaciation and disease. The knot of Irish laborers at the lower end of the place, who have been alternately shaking hands with and threatening the life of each other for the last hour, become furious in their disputes, and finding it impossible to silence one man, who is particularly anxious to adjust the difference, they resort to the expedient of knocking him down and jumping on him afterwards. The man in the fur cap and the pot-boy rush out, a scene of riot and confusion ensues, half the Irishmen get shut out, and the other half get shut in. The pot-boy is knocked among the tubs in no time, the landlord hits everybody, and everybody hits the landlord, the barmaid scream, the police come in, the rest is a confused mixture of arms, legs, staves, torn coat, shouting, and struggling. Some of the party are born off to the station-house, and the remainder slink home to beat their wives for complaining and kick the children for daring to be hungry. We have sketched this subject very slightly, not only because our limits compel us to do so, but because, if it were pursued further, it would be painful and repulsive. Well-disposed gentlemen and charitable ladies would alike turn with coldness and disgust from a description of the drunken besotted men and wretched broken down, miserable women, who form no inconsiderable portion of the frequenters of these haunts, forgetting in the pleasant consciousness of their own rectitude the poverty of the one, and the temptation of the other. Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but wretchedness and dirt are a greater. And until you improve the homes of the poor, or persuade a half-famished wretch not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery, with the pittance which, divided among his family, would furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendor. If temperance societies would suggest an antidote against hunger, filth, and foul air, or could establish dispensaries for the gratuitous distribution of bottles of lefé-water, gin-palaces would be numbered among the things that were.