CHAPTER XVIII.STREET AMUSEMENTS.

“The early cockThat gather’d them together in a flock.”

And you might then have seen the Wife of Bath, leaning aside and listening as she sat in her saddle, for she could not hear very well, as she tells us Jankin, her fifth husband, had given her such a blow,

“For that she rent out of his book a leaf,That of the stroke her ear was always deaf.”

Let those who have never read Chaucer, and who wish to become acquainted with the most minute and beautiful painting of character which poetry ever produced, only read the Prologue to hisCanterbury Tales; it scarcely occupies more than twenty moderate pages of print.If, after reading these, they are not tempted to proceed further, it will be because “they have no poetry in their souls.” In no work can we find such a faithful description of the dress, manners, customs, and language of our forefathers, as in the pages of Geoffrey Chaucer.

Nor is the “Talbot,” as it is now called, the only ancient inn in the Borough. There are others which contain their surrounding galleries, and spacious yards open to the sky. Some years ago we glanced at other portions of this ancient Borough—especially that part called the old Mint. This is now fast disappearing; many of the houses that escaped the fire in 1676 have of late been pulled down. The following is a description which we wrote seven years ago, after visiting the remains of this dilapidated neighbourhood. Stretching from St. George’s Church, in the Borough, into the high road which leads to the cast-iron bridge of Southwark, are no end of narrow courts, winding alleys, and ruined houses, which a bold-hearted man would hesitate to thread after dusk. Here stand numbers of houses which are unroofed and uninhabited. Years ago they were doomed to be pulled down, and it was resolved that a wide, open street should be built upon the space they now occupy: years may still roll away before they are removed. There is no place like this in the suburbs of London—no spot that looks so murderous, so melancholy, and so miserable. Many of these houses, besides being old, are very large and lofty. Many of these courts stand just as they did when Cromwell sent out his spies to hunt up and slay the Cavaliers, just as they again were hunted in return, after the Restoration, by the Royalists, who threaded their intricacies, with sword and pistol in hand, in search of the fallen Roundheads. There is a smell of past ages about these ancient courts, like that which arises from decay—a murky closeness—as if the old winds which blew through them in the times of the Civil Wars had become stagnant, and all old things had fallen and died just as they were blown together, and left to perish. So it is now. The timber of these old houses looks bleached and dead; and the very brick-work seems never to have been new. In them you find wide, hollow-sounding, decayed staircases, that lead into great ruinous rooms, whose echoes are only awakened by the shrieking and running of large black-eyed rats, which eat through the solid floors, through the wainscot, and live and die without being startled by a human voice. From the Southwark-bridge Road you may see the roofs of many of these great desolate houses; they are broken and open; and the massy oaken rafters are exposed to the summer sun and the snow of winter. Some of the lower floors are still inhabited; and at the ends of those courtsyou will see standing, on a fine day, such characters as you will meet with nowhere beside in the neighbourhood of London. Their very dress is peculiar; and they frequent the dark and hidden public-houses which abound in these close alleys,—places where the gas is burning all day long. Excepting the courts behind Long-lane, in Smithfield, we know no spot about London like this, which yet fronts St. George’s Church, in the Borough.

Southwark, as all remember who are at all acquainted with history, beside containing Shakspeare’s Theatre, at Bankside, was, in former days, famous for its Bear-garden; which, we fear, was often more crowded than the spot where the author of “Hamlet” so frequently played.

What a different feature does the Southwark entrance to London Bridge present to what it did only a few brief years ago! Every few minutes omnibuses are now thundering to and from the railway terminus; while passengers think no more of journeying to Brighton and back, and remaining eight or ten hours there, on a long summer’s-day, than they formerly did of travelling to Greenwich; for it took the old slow stage-wagons as long to traverse the five miles to the latter as our iron-footed and fire-fed steed can with ease drag the five hundred passengers at his heels, and land them within sight of the wide, refreshing sea.

Were it possible to revive again the forms of those old Canterbury Pilgrims, and, instead of sending them out of the Tabard-yard on horseback, to place them in an express train, then start them off with all the quaint, queer notions which haunted their living brains, what strange conclusions they would come to. Even the “perfect knight,” who had fought in “fifteen battles,” and seen many a strange sight in heathen lands, would, with all his wisdom, think he had at last fallen into the hands of the evil one, while gentle Chaucer would renounce his disbelief in fairy lore, and be ready to admit that the land was now filled with greater wonders than

“In old days of the King Arthur,Of which the Britons speak great wonder;When all the land was filled full of faery—The Elf-Queen, with her jolly company,That danced full oft in many a green mead.”Wife of Bath’s Tale.

What a change! to look up the ascent which led to that old London-bridge, with its Traitor’s-gate and ghastly heads grinning above the vaulted gateway, and the scene that now meets the eye! Living heads piled high on moving omnibuses, and journeying inevery direction, for twopenny or threepenny fares; steamboats passing from east to west, and carrying passengers for one halfpenny per head; such changes has the old square tower of St. Saviour’s overlooked—such things has the wonder-working hand of man accomplished. And yet the world is believed by many to be still in its infancy; that two more centuries will see mankind as far advanced and improved as the last two have placed us in the lead of our forefathers. That the London of the present day will then be as great a matter of curiosity to some future antiquary as old London-bridge and the ancient borough of Southwark is to us; that others will follow and exclaim as we do now:

“The race of yore,Who danced our infancy upon their knee,And told our marvelling boyhood legends storeOf their strange ventures happ’d by land or sea,How are they blotted from the things that be.”—Scott.

AT different times several ephemeral little treatises have appeared professing to teach the inhabitants of London how to live upon 50l., 100l., and divers other sums a year, not one, however, pointing out the way by which any of these incomes were to be obtained. Mrs. Glasse went very differently to work when she attempted to throw a new light upon the economy of cooking, by advising her readers to “first catch their hare,” thereby conveying most sensible information in one brief unmistakable sentence, and leaving them to proceed with the receipt, or not, just as they were or might be provided with the animal treated of. Although this introduction is hardly to the point, it will serve to lead us to the ways and means hundreds have recourse to of obtaining a livelihood, by appealing to our eyes and ears, by the sights and sounds which they produce in our busy streets; causing those within doors to curse their deafening clamour, and those without, who are interrupted by the assembled crowd, and prevented from passing on their way, to utter any thing but blessings upon their “devoted heads,” proving the moral of the old fable, that what is fun to one is death to another, by one class being amused at the expense of another’s annoyance.

For our part we look on these street performers with a very lenient eye, knowing that they are struggling to live in the best way they can, and that their humble endeavours to please afford amusement to thousands. Look how the little urchins run at the first sound of Punch’s well-known voice; what a pattering there is of shod and unshod feet from every court and alley in the neighbourhood as soon as his “chuck, chuck, churee” is heard, startling the silence of thestreet! They whip up their marbles, and start off with their pegtops half wound to get a front place; for the hardened old rogue was a favourite with their forefathers, and they are never weary of seeing him bang Judy with his truncheon. They have a keen relish for his rather coarse jokes—the only objectionable point in this old exhibition. How they dance round an Italian boy with his organ, forgetting all their poverty and hunger for the moment, while some little rascal, the raggedest in the group, keeps excellent time with his castanets, which are four bare bones placed between the fingers of each hand, and rattled over his head with laughter and delight, while he thinks himself the chief contributor to the amusement.

But Punch and Judy are the chief characters in our sketch. Punch was a different performance in our youthful days: then he went out, got drunk, came home and quarrelled with his wife; from words they got to blows, and there used to be a tremendous fight between them, and sorry we are to say the drunken old rascal swore dreadfully. At last he struck Judy a tremendous blow with his truncheon, and she fell down senseless, as if dead. Then the conscience of the hump-backed villain smote him, and he wept and wailed over her, until at last the doctor came, felt her pulse, and pronounced her dead. Punch was inconsolable for her loss, pronounced the doctor a quack, and then they went at it. Oh, what a fight that was between Punch and the Doctor! but the man of physic fell beneath the truncheon of the hooked-nosed old blackguard, and appeared as if dead. Punch was next tried, and knocked the judge off the bench for finding him guilty of murder, and sentencing him to be hanged. Then the gallows was brought out, and you made sure that the old villain’s career of crime was ended; but not a bit of it; like Mat Prior’s thief, he

“Now fitted the halter, now traversed the cart,And often took leave, but was loth to depart.”

He seemed willing enough to be hanged, but did not know how to place his neck in the halter; sometimes he put his arms through the noose, then half his body, but never by any chance did he allow the cord to touch his neck. At length he succeeded in persuading Jack Ketch to shew him the right way: the hangman did so, placed his own neck in the noose, received a crack on the head with the staff and a kick behind, and there he hung and swung to the delight of every beholder. Then came the Devil, horned, hoofed, tailed, saucer-eyed, and black as ebony; but Punch was game to the back-bone, and fought with all his might, causing the Devil himself to retreat several times before he would give in. Nor did we ever think the Devil beat him fairly; for he came behind, like a sneaking thief as heis, pinioned both the arms of Punch, while the latter had his face turned towards us in triumph, and bore him away on his back: we could even hear the prominent-paunched old hero swearing, as his horned antagonist vanished with him below the green baize.

The dog Toby is a modern innovation. He belonged not to the Punch and Judy of our boyish days.

But our picture is not complete without the spectators. Look at that ragged woman holding up her dirty child. The little rogue claps his tiny hands, and crows again at every blow Judy receives; and that poor mother is more delighted with the pleasurable expression of her dirty darling’s countenance than she is with the exhibition, for her heart and eyes are fixed on her child. But for Punch sounding in the street, the urchin would probably have been creeping about the house, or seated upon the hearth crunching the cinders he picked up from under the grate. Even that thin pale-faced girl, who holds up a baby half as big as herself, and throws the long loose hair aside which fell over her clear blue eyes, as she came running and panting up with her heavy burden, stands looking on delighted. That respectable-looking old gentleman also halts, though half ashamed of being seen in such a motley assembly; then passes on with a smile on his face, for he remembers pausing many a time, when going or returning from school with his books swung idly over his shoulder, to look at Punch and Judy; and while he walks along his mind turns back to the days of other years. Then the drum—what a spirit-stirring sound it makes! and the shrill pandean pipes, stuck in a stock of faded crimson velvet, how clear and shrilly they sound!—the man’s head seems as if placed on a swivel, and he hammers and blows away as if for very life.

But whither is the crowd running? To see an organ-boy and his monkey. What an excellent tumbler Jocko is! his long tail seems no incumbrance to him, but head over heels he goes. What a strange language his jabbering seems, a running of one word into another! and he looks at us as if pitying our ignorance for not understanding him. There is something about his countenance conducive to merriment; something so old-manish in the expression of his face, that we cannot forbear laughing at him. See how he cracks that nut,—how nimbly he plies his fingers, and how knowingly he looks up at us all the time, as if wondering whether he shall get another or not when that is eaten. What a living caricature he is of our race; now an indignant ugly old man, jabbering and spitting out his vexation; then a mischievous boy, playing all kinds of tricks, and, though grumbled at, liked by every body. Poor fellow! we almost regret that he was ever caught and shoved into that scarlet jacket, to add to our street

amusements; and when we see him looking sorrowful, we fancy that we can read his thoughts, can imagine that his memory has wandered far away, to where he hung upon his “old ancestral trees” by his prehensile tail, before the days of his captivity, chattering to his brother monkeys, who could comprehend every word he uttered, or pelting his venerable old grandfather with nuts from the topmost bough of the highest tree that waved amid his native forest. Heigho! The longer we look the more do we feel convinced that we in a thousand ways resemble him, for we are all of us more or less monkeys. Mary Howitt says that he gambolled about and played the very devil in the ark, without bestowing a thought on the wind and rain that blew and beat on the roof; and no one living can contradict her.

But what have we here? A caravan, and a wonderful fat boy in it: charge for admission, one halfpenny. What dodging they have to elude the police—pulling up at the end of every street, if it be only for five minutes—for the fat boy must be fed: were he to get thin, the whole establishment would be ruined. All, saving himself, are thin, the horse almost a skeleton. We can picture the fat fellow crying out that he is falling off pounds if his dinner is delayed an hour behind the usual time—and what a running about there must be to supply him with food! He looks a lazy rascal—a human hog. Dwarfs also, in our eyes, always look spiteful,—little morsels of humanity that would pinch and bite us, if they dare. And well they may be: we should feel so ourselves were we caught, imprisoned, and shewn to all comers at sixpence or threepence a head.

Look at that little girl in the spangled frock; she is brought out like another Samson, to make sport for the Philistines. How prettily she dances on that board—four feet by three! Through dirt and wet she is compelled to trudge; for she and that unsailor-like fellow, who dances the sailor’s hornpipe, have to supply the whole party with bread. He who drums and pipes also contributes his share. The other two shout, and go round to the crowd, hat in hand, to obtain what they can. Sometimes a similar party is accompanied by a tumbler,—a man whose feet appear to be of no other use to him than to kick them about in the air,—who can walk best on his hands,—and who, we fancy, must be many years in wearing out a pair of shoes. Into what shapes does he twist his body! He seems lithe as a serpent—must have been born without a spine—is all skin—all angles—the spokes of a wheel—a worm rolling in salt—a monkey’s tail that has been thrust into the fire. One would hardly be surprised to see such a limber elf jump clean out of his skin, rattle his bare bones like castanets for a few seconds to amuse us, then slip into his hide again, with less trouble than we could put on our coat.

The next are the balancers,—from a feather to a fir-tree, nothing comes amiss. That fellow will balance a sword on his naked chin with the point downward; you look under his throat, and expect to see it come through every minute, and are greatly disappointed to behold it spinning round without making an incision. Now he takes a ladder, high enough to reach a second-floor window, and up it goes on his chin, as if it were no heavier than the straw he has just thrown down. Mercy on us! whatever is he going to do with that little boy in the harlequin dress? See, the daring child steps from the balancer’s shoulder to the ladder: higher the little fellow goes, slowly, cautiously—the ladder still on the man’s chin. It looks dangerous, and (self-preservation) you begin to think that if the ladder were to fall, it would be much safer to stand a few feet farther back.

The Stilt-dancers are not so common in our London streets as they were a few years ago, when they came popping up suddenly at our first-floor windows, and startled us in some occupation which we had no wish to be overlooked,—perchance trying on a peruke, so well-made, that all our friends gave us credit for wearing our own hair. Then, perhaps, they understood not a single word of English; and if you bade them go to Old Harry and shake themselves, they still kept smiling and smirking at you through the window, until their immovable goodnature overcome your slight anger, and you sent them away quite happy, and perfectly unconscious that you had given utterance to one angry word. We also miss the pipe and tabor, and those droll back-kneed fellows the dancing-dogs: these the new police act have driven away, or they are only to be met with in the far-off country.

To what different objects the telescope is now turned from what Horace Walpole describes witnessing, when the heads of unfortunate rebels were placed on Temple Bar: for a penny we may peep at the mountains in the moon, or hear a poor but intelligent man describe the wonders of the

“Spacious firmament on high,”

instead of paying to peep at those mangled and goary heads—a great improvement on those old barbarous street-sights. White mice and guinea-pigs are still to be met with as “plentiful as blackberries” in the yellow month of October; and from the sound of hurdy-gurdies and the droning of bagpipes, who has not prayed to be delivered? while from our hearts we pity those poor white-haired, pink-eyed mortals, who go winking and blinking hand in hand along the crowded pavements, gazed at in wonder even by the swarthy Lascars, who are ever thrusting tracts in our faces.

Nor must we forget the “chummies,” with their Jack-in-the-green, who, instead of sooty garments, cover in May their “innocent blackness” with spangles and tinsel. How Jack reels and staggers in the midst of his green portable arbour towards the close of the day! lurching aside like the massy trunk of a tree buried in ivy, which you expect every minute to fall; reminding us of Orpheus, and the life he put into the timber toes of the hoary old oaks when the forest trees stood bough linked with bough as they danced a merry reel, making all their green array of leaves to tremble again. Merrily does the “Sweepess,” or “Jackess” of the green, jingle her bright brass ladle before the doors; and freely is the produce of that day spent in gin, until the drinking and fighting is ended, when, disrobed of their tinselled trappings, they snore happily on a couch of soft soot.

Guy Fawkes still forms one of our London street amusements, though we regret to say that Guy is now oftener personated by some great hulking gin-drinking lazy fellow, than the old, uncouth stuffed figures which were frequently carried about, with one foot hanging down before and the other behind.

THE cries of “All a-blowing! all a-growing!” are the first sounds with which the spring-flowers are ushered into the streets of London; and although not uttered by the lips of such fabled nymphs as the poets of old clothed in the richest hues of their imagination, and sent forth as attendants on blossom-bearing Spring, the voices still come like gentle greetings from old friends, all the sweeter through having been so long absent. Sometimes we see a pretty face looking out, through the homely bonnet, and behold a light and graceful form, and hear a clear musical voice calling out “Sweet primroses!” Another hurries along from street to street with the little basket balanced on her head, while with one hand she ever keeps throwing back the long silky hair that falls down and veils her deep violet-coloured eyes; and we think how some such figure haunted the poet’s fancy when he peopled the vales of Arcady with the “sweet spirits of the flowers.”

Now windows, which have been closed throughout the long winter, are again thrown open, and the pleasant breeze which has come from “far away o’er the sea,” again blows freshly into those close and unhealthy-smelling rooms. Over dead walls and high houses has the refreshing air climbed—escaping from courts in which there was no thoroughfare. Through the steam of suffocating sewers it struggled; it shook off the malaria that clung to its skirts, as it swept over dark and stagnant ditches; over bone-boiling houses it hurried, and left the old poison behind to float around the places where it was first engendered; and, though somewhat shorn of its sweetness and its strength, it comes like a welcome guest in at theopen doors and uplifted casements of the poor. By it the grey hairs of that thin, pale-faced old man are uplifted; it tosses aside the long brown locks of the little grandchild that stands between his knees, fatherless and motherless; for the wind an hour ago blew over the empty house beside the black putrid ditch, where so many died during the past summer, and where that little orphan then lived. Even the imprisoned lark that hangs by the window feels his plumes ruffled by the breeze, and fancying for a moment that he is free, sends out his voice through the wiry cage, and sings as if he were again shivering his wings in some silvery cloud high above the opening daisies.

The blessed breeze and the sweet sunshine have aroused the poor children who vegetate in courts and alleys; and these dirty images of innocence have descended from the close, high attics, and climbed out of the low, damp cellars, and now, bare-headed and barefooted and scantily clad, they are chasing each other like swallows, and appear as happy as if neither rags nor hunger existed in this great city of palaces, poor-houses, and prisons. A drum battledore with its gilded shuttlecock they never saw, nor would such things make them happier than those they have manufactured out of the corks they picked up among the sweepings of the gin-shop, and the feathers from the stall of a distant poulterer; while the bottom of a saucepan, or the crown of a hat, even the fire-shovel (if nothing else is to be had) furnish them with battledores. Somewhere those little ones have been and thrust their tiny arms through the railings where a lilac-tree was in leaf, and they have dug up the stones in the court, and stuck the green lilac-twigs in the ground, and made themselves a garden, which they are watering out of oyster-shells and broken bits of pots; for the same instinct that leads a bird to build its nest causes them to imitate the making of gardens. They collect the leaves of the turnip-tops which the greengrocer has thrown into the street, and, placing them on their little bare heads, march up and down the court, crying “All a-blowing! all a-growing!”

You peep through the open doors of little houses, at the fronts of which men and women are bartering old garments for roots or flowers, and through those open doors you see a little sunless spot between two dead walls, by the side of which a small portion of dark damp mould is portioned off, somewhere about a yard in width by eight feet in length, and those are the two garden-beds into which the “penny roots” will be stuck. Here they grow mustard-and-cress, on which the cats fight, and over which Cinderella shakes her doormats, while scores of little black flies play at hide and seek amongst the leaves; nor will all the washing in the world cleanse your saladfrom these little superfluities. Then, just as the penny wallflower had struck, and the two roots of daisies, which cost per ditto, were beginning to try to open, and the hollyhock looked as if it might live, and the lupin had still a few leaves left, and the Canterbury-bell had one live shoot on,—just as “the garden” was really promising to rear at least one root, the woman that lived in the two-pair back hung a heavy coverlet on the clothes-line (the line itself consisting of six separate pieces), and it broke, and every root broke too, and not one again raised its head. Then Billy was always bowling his hoop, and could never turn it without going on the other bed; and the dustman had placed his basket on the two scarlet runners that were coming up; and where the nasturtiums were set earwigs were ever creeping in and out, and long-bodied wire-worms, that looked up at Billy as if they would like to taste of his little bare legs, and from which he always ran in screaming. Then they had told Mrs. So-and-so to save her soapsuds, to pour on the roots of the little bit of grape-vine which only shewed a leaf here and there; and she, wishing to oblige her landlady, had put the suds in the saucepan again, blown the fire, and emptied the contents, boiling hot, into the hole she made by the grape-vine!

“All a-blowing! all a-growing!” Saw you that poor woman turn round at the well-known sound? Had you been nearer you might have heard the low sigh she heaved. See, she has purchased with her last halfpenny a bunch of bluebells and primroses, and these she will place in water on her window-sill; and, while her face rests upon her hand, she will see miles beyond the little back yard, with its water-butt and cinder-heap, which her window overlooks, even as far off as the home of her childhood. The little cottage beside the wide open common, which was yellow with gorse and broom in summer, and purple with heath-bells in autumn, will again rise before her. In fancy she will hear the bees murmur as they went to and fro from her father’s garden—will see the beds of flowers which she called her own; the old apple-tree, robed in white and crimson blossoms; hear the very chirp of the sparrows that built in the thatched roof, under which the honeysuckle climbed. She will again picture the rustic stile—the walk along the green lane, when the hedges were white with May, when his arm was placed gently around her waist, who is now working in chains in some penal settlement. He, who was so good and so kind to her, until he was allured to London, where he met with evil companions, and first starved, then, stupified with gin, went forth in the stilly dark night, and returned home a housebreaker. See! her eyes are closed—she has fallen asleep in her broken chair; a tear still lingers in her eyelashes, and a faint sadsmile rests on her wan lips—for she fancies that she again hears the village-bells ringing, and that she is walking between those rows of graves, beneath the avenue of elms, with her bible and prayer-book in her hand, and about to enter the humble pew in which her father and mother (long since dead) knelt beside her in prayer. She awakes with a sigh; the sunshine falls on the chimney-pot opposite. She hears the drunken dustman, who lives beneath her, again quarrelling with his wife; the cry of “Beer!” in the street, then the smell from the sewer ascends; and, bringing in her flowers, she closes the window, and sits down to earn one-halfpenny per hour at the needlework supplied to her by that heart of nether millstone, the Great Nebuchadnezzar, through whose fiery furnace so many are compelled to pass, and in which such numbers perish, as they yield to his stern decree, because they know no other way by which they can obtain bread; garments made beneath burning sighs and scalding tears, that seem hot enough to blister the backs of those who wear them. God help thee, poor woman! thou canst not see it, although we can; there is an angel’s face shining through every tear thou hast shed over those flowers, and looking upon thee with mild and pitying eyes.

See those old men and women “pottering” about the bit of ground before the almshouses; they also feel the cheering influence of spring. Although each plot or bed would but little more than make a grave, were a tolerable breadth of walk left between, they find a pleasure in cultivating so small a patch of earth, every inch of which brings something to remembrance as it is turned over: that root was given by old William, who is dead; the other by John, who is dying; from this, last summer, were cut the flowers he placed in a comrade’s coffin; that his wife, long dead, brought all the way from the country, when she went to see her daughter at Croydon, and was so poor, that she had to walk back—and that walk caused her death; for, while heated, she sat before the door in the cool, calm April evening—it “chilled” her, and she died. Honest old bedesman! I could kiss off the tear that fell on the blue sleeve of thy old coat, were it not for pride or shame. “Two years ago, sir; she was but seventy!” and thy heart still softens, and thy tears fall when her image rises before thee, for in thy eyes she never looked aged, but rose green and fresh through the memory of other years, even as when thou first didst woo her, walking between the quiet woods along the canal near Croydon, when the forget-me-not looked into the water at its shadow, and the crimson foxglove made a red streak like sunset in the crystal mirror, and no one then dreamed that a railway would bare its iron back where the silver water reflected bothyour images and the broad-branched oak, beneath which ye were then seated.

Spring brings with it Easter—the first holiday that brightens on the departing gloom of winter. Then we hear mingled with the cry of “All a-blowing! all a-growing!” the reedy notes of penny trumpets, and the beat of tiny drums, and the shrill pipings of yellow wooden whistles: and tired children walk home from Greenwich with little dolls on their arms; and mothers carry their sleeping babies without murmuring; and little feet, that “scarcely stir the dust,” come plodding on, just as their young fathers and mothers had done some three or four-and-twenty years ago. Here, one on each side clung to her gown, there he carried another pick-a-back, who kept grinding his organ as he rode; while the fourth slept, covered over with the shawl, regardless of the busy crowds that were hurrying to and fro. Surely there was no selfishness in the enjoyment of the day on the part of the parents, shared as it was by those dear dusty children, the eldest not five years old, the youngest not so many months; and two of them carried every inch of the five miles back. For days after will those children talk about what they saw in the park at Greenwich, in the fair, and on the road; and their dreams will be of gilt gingerbread horses, and swings high as the tall trees, and booths, and music, the distant river, old pensioners with wooden legs and spyglasses, donkeys on Blackheath, swarthy gipsies, drinks of beer, and the heads and tails of shrimps. They will mimic the sights, and try to imitate the sounds, and go sounding and drumming through the house until the trumpet refuses to speak, and the drum is burst, and not a wire is left inside the threepenny organ. Then their grandfathers and grandmothers (if they were not with them) will come and ask a hundred questions as to what they saw, and what they did, and whither they went; and, from the answers they receive, go away convinced that there are no other children in this huge overgrown London to be compared with their grandchildren. May heaven shower its blessings on the conceit, and they never have cause to think otherwise!

Besides such groups as these, the pavements were almost blocked up with little carts, in which many a kiss and many a scratch were exchanged, and in these children squalled and smiled as they were dragged part of the way to the fair. And the little nurserymaid, who still wore her workhouse dress, was compelled to turn round every few minutes and to threaten what she would do at the impudent but good-natured boys who would help to shove on the little chaise, and cram a portion of their oranges or gingerbread into the children’s mouths. Then one fine-looking, dark-eyed lad, after a harmless fightwith the little maid, by some kind of freemasonry, was a minute or two after helping her to draw the chaise, and they went on chatting and laughing together, while he divided his fairings with her. On looking at that lad more closely, we remembered that for a month he brought our water-cresses, that for a fortnight he knocked at our door and called “Butcher!” then we lost sight of him for some weeks, and when he made his appearance again he came with our daily newspaper, followed by a dog, which he set on our favourite cat. Times got worse, and he came with another boy; and they swept the snow from the pavement for a penny, and as much bread and cheese as they could eat. Then he opened and shut a shop, but had the misfortune to break a pane of glass; and as it was on Tuesday when the accident took place, and he was informed that the price of the pane would be stopped out of his week’s wages; and as he calculated what that would amount to, and found that it would swallow up his whole week’s earnings, why he went to breakfast, and never returned; and, just before Easter, he had raised a basket, and, either by money or credit, obtained a goodly show of roots and flowers, and, instead of “Water-cresses!” “Butcher!” or “Paper!” we heard his cheerful and well-known voice in the street, crying “All a-blowing! all a-growing!” He is now aspiring to a donkey and cart, and if we err not, to the little nursery-maid in the mob-cap and workhouse dress, and sweet smiling countenance (when pleased), which proclaims her to have come “of gentle kin.”

Now bundles of rhubarb, that run all to water in the pies and puddings, may be seen in the greengrocers’ shops; and little new waxy potatoes, that have no taste, are ticketed a shilling a pound; and small gooseberries, that have the flavour of green-tea leaves, given to the old charwoman, and which she has kept stewing on the hob for a full hour, are ditto per half pint; and asparagus, that looks like candle-wicks, is tied up in bundles; while little salads made of two radishes, a couple of onions, a few slices of beet-root, mustard, cress, and a halfpenny bunch of water-cresses, sit in little baskets marked sixpence, and try to tempt the passers-by to purchase. Now men, who smell of the aroma of old woods, stand before the doors of public-houses, with young honeysuckles and eglantine, the roots buried in moss; and violets and primroses, fresh and blowing in their own native earth, just as they were dug up on the sunny banks by Sanderstead, or in the tree-shaded lanes around Cobham.

Finally, old hats, boots, shoes, and cast-off garments of every description are routed out at the cry of “All a-blowing! all a-growing!” and exchanged for flowers, the bearers of which barter on the principle of getting all they can and giving as little as possible inreturn. Even the lady of the house cannot resist the entreaties of her children, who, attracted by the well-known call, and the sight of the basket of flowers outside the window, drag her to the door, and let her have no peace until she has purchased the lovely heath, the beautiful Iris, the pot of American primroses, or the gaudier group of gold and silver-coloured crocuses. The servant-girl must also have her flower-pot in the high attic window, and she looks at it the first thing in the morning and the last at night, and feels thankful, in the words of Solomon, that “the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”

THAT it was customary in ancient times to bury the dead outside the city-walls the holy Bible bears witness, even as far back as in the early chapters of the Book of Genesis, where it is recorded how Abraham bought the field of Macphelah of Ephron the Hittite, “and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, (and) that were in all the borders round about.” (Chap. xxiii.) Here we find a rural cemetery in a green field bordered with trees, in which the venerable patriarch buried his wife nearly four thousand years ago, while we, with all our boasted improvements, are in the present day thrusting the dead together in countless thousands, in the very heart of our close and over-crowded cities—where the living have scarcely room enough to breathe, and the dead of to-day are crammed amongst the remains which have been disinterred to give them a short lodgment; when they again in turn are cast out, and mysteriously consumed or pounded into the smallest possible compass under our very eyes, in so unfeeling, heartless, and brutal a manner, that we dare not shock our readers with the revolting details.

The head-stone, reared by the hand of pious affection, instead of pointing to the remains it was erected to commemorate, stands over the graves of strangers, and we shed our tears over those whom we never knew; while the sexton and the grave-digger grin at us behind the neighbouring tomb-stones, chinking the silver in their pockets, and laughing to think that the paupers whom they shoved into “our” grave on the previous night in a “huggermugger” way should be wept over by the broken-hearted mourner whom they have thus cheated. With these facts dinned into our ears every day by theuplifted voice of the press, are we not guilty of disrespect towards the dead by burying them in these ever-changing and common lodging-houses? We know not where their remains are to be found at the end of the year; cannot tell whether they have been removed to lay the foundation of a new road, or sold and ground up to manure some distant field.

Let us not forget that when the heathen Greeks and Romans brought the remains of their heroes and poets into their ancient temples, the bodies were first burnt, and only the ashes preserved in richly sculptured urns, on which the achievements of the dead were pictured: their classical minds fashioned “a thing of beauty” out of the ashes of the departed; they gave to the dead a beautiful dwelling-place, and those who were buried unscathed by the funeral fire were interred in cemeteries where trees were planted over them, and marble monuments erected; and, idolators though they were, such places were held sacred, and were called “the silent cities of the dead,” and were ever remote from the abodes of the living.

I have before remarked, in myPictures of Country Life, that, amid the din and tumult of a populous city, the dead are sadly misplaced. I never look upon those close unhealthy corners, crowded with graves, without feeling that it is wrong to bury the dead there; that they ought to be removed from such shadowy and sunless spots to where the tall trees would make a soothing murmur above their heads, and all around them be “gentle images of rest.” Their business with this world is ended; they have finished their long day’s work; the roll of carriages, the tramp of busy passengers, and living voices, clamorous for gain, ever in my ear sound harshly when they come grating and jarring amongst the resting-places of the dead. The price of corn, the state of the money-market, or the rising and falling of the funds, are matters which ought to be discussed far away from those we followed, and wept over, and consigned to their silent chambers, there to sleep till the last trumpet sounds.

In the open Cemetery, we seem to walk through a land lettered with living affections, and strewn over with tokens of existing love. Our sympathies are divided between the mourned and the mourners; our sorrow is not alone for the dead; the flowers at our feet remind us that there are those behind us somewhere who come here now and then to weep. If we picture Grief standing there with bowed head, and hair unbound, “refusing to be comforted,” Pity seems to kneel before us at the same time; and, while she looks up timidly into the pale face of Grief, appears as if entreating of her to remember the mourners, who only survive to weep; while Memory, with downcast

HIGHGATE CEMETERY.HIGHGATE CEMETERY.

eyes and folded arms, seems musing over the flowers which Affection has planted on their graves. In a dimly-lighted, breathless City churchyard, such images are not seen: our affections are there fettered—the imagination is chained down, and endeavours in vain to soar heavenward. If we call up the dead, they seem to sit weeping with bent head and folded wings among the dark shadows of the mouldering monuments on which the sunlight seldom falls.

Against these unhealthy graveyards sentence has been pronounced: they are doomed to be closed. It is useless for selfish and mercenary men to oppose the fiat which has gone forth, for the air of this mighty city has too long been poisoned through men who live by the dead. Let us create a good out of this evil; and after these unhealthy churchyards have been closed long enough to destroy the injurious exhalations which have of late numbered so many of the living with the dead, then let the grounds be planted with trees and flowers, and they will become sweet breathing-places, like our squares, and amid the brick walls call up images of the far-away country. The old monuments need not be disturbed. To see the drooping branches of a green tree falling over them, will add to their beauty and solemnity; and in the centre of our cities we can wander among groves rendered sacred by the remains of our forefathers,—can in the dim twilight-shadows which the flickering leaves will ever make, hold communion with the spirit of John Bunyan, while we peruse his immortal work in the burying-ground of Bunhill-fields; for by such association would these spots become hallowed. Nor would the records of the dead, who sleep without the walls of the church, be held less sacred, if their names were engraven on marble tablets, and placed within the consecrated buildings around which their dust would repose, beneath beds of blowing flowers and close-leaved evergreens.

The old grey weather-beaten tombs of the founders of charities would look more venerable overtopped by the tall elm, the sable yew, or the weeping willow, that seems ever to droop sadly above the dead. No busy builder should ever be permitted to rear a wall within these sacred enclosures, or disturb the robin that would pipe his sweet anthem in autumn, or drive away the belted bee, that would come over the high houses from some distant meadow, to make a plaintive murmur in the heart of this vast city as he flew in and out among the flowers that waved above these old households of the dead.

Let us not sow these places with salt, nor strew them with lime, to destroy every trace of what they really are—spots sanctified by tears and prayers, and the bodies of our brother men; but, if necessity demands it, remove some of their remains tenderly to other places ofsepulture, and make gardens over the graves of those who are left undisturbed—spots above which the blue sky might be seen, while the sunshine slept below; amid which we could obtain glimpses of the face of heaven, while musing over the memory of those who have long since entered the gates of the “golden city.” Let not these old burial-grounds be closed with no more reverence than if we were shutting up a common sewer; let us not speak of them as loathsome, disgusting, and revolting, because they are made so by unfeeling, money-loving men—gnomes, who feed and fatten on the dead—who look on coffins as they do on cabbages—digging, planting, cutting down, and re-setting the ground, and only studying how to make more money; but let us remember that the mute and inoffensive dead contribute not unto the evils complained of until they are dislodged with brutal violence—that they cannot defend themselves, for

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