fast of the Ramadan, which precludes them for the | going on, the open doors were barricaded with space of a new moon from indulging, from sunrise cross-bars, so as to prevent the castle being taken to sundown, in even a drop of water to assuage by storm, which it certainly would have been but their thirst. During the daytime the streets had for this precaution. Matters being thus arrangbeen deserted and noiseless, but now that the houred, the coffee-house keeper, after scrutinizing his for breaking the fast was nigh at hand, everything citadel like a careful general, prepared water for his was bustle and confusion. Shrill voices of angry ablutions, and spread his carpet ready for his even. and hungry women scolding within doors, famished ing devotions. children screaming without, sedate-looking longbearded Turks hustling and jostling each other in the streets-some running, some walking, and all talking-presented altogether a most ludicrous and novel spectacle, and one very much at variance with the ordinary decorum observed in oriental towns. Each man was as anxious as his neighbour to emerge from the confined and close streets into the open freshness of the suburbs, and there amuse himself until the warning cry from the minaret's top should apprise him of the agrecable fact that Sol had taken his departure for the day, and that he was consequently at liberty to eat, drink, and smoke as much as he liked till sunrise next morning.

On arriving at the gates of the town, the crowd was so dense as to impede for a few minutes our outward progress. Rushing forward, however, we galloped into the open country, and, following the banks of a winding river, arrived in a few minutes at the desired point towards which the multitudes we had encountered were hastening with all possible speed. This was a noted Turkish coffee-house, celebrated amongst the Moslems for furnishing exquisite Mocha coffee and the very best procurable tobacco and timbuc-all three luxuries to the Turk, and articles of which he alone may be said to be a connoisseur. The keeper of this coffeehouse was himself a strict hadji; he had twice performed the pilgrimage to the Prophet's tomb, and had consequently been dubbed with the title and assumed the garb to which such a pilgrimage entitled him, namely, a green turban and a green sash. Much respected was the hadji Achmet by all the Moslems, and very much dreaded by others. He was a thorough revolutionist, and at his coffeehouse many had been the tumults planned and plotted. We, however, being Europeans, were rather held in terrorem by him than otherwise, for we could write and had elchis (ambassadors) at Stamboul. Although, therefore, his blind fanaticism caused him to detest us, fear made him pretend to love. He never, however, would open his coffee-house by day during the Ramadan, and declared he would not do so for a bagful of golden

coins.

Meanwhile, the banks of an adjoining river were lined with an expectant people. As soon as the muezzin ery resounded from the minaret, giving the signal that the fast was over, then a mighty splashing was heard in the stream, as though a dozen water-wheels had suddenly started into play. After this, all was silent for the space of ten minutes; but no sooner had the required forms been gone through, than the air was rent with such acclamations of delight as a parcel of schoolboys might evince on being suddenly let loose for a holiday. Having left the river, on they came helter-skelter, "first come, first served," being the pass-word for the day. Old gentlemen with long grey beards, and portly withal, ran as though their lives depended upon the race. The seats were soon rapidly filled and every inch of ground occupied; those who were furthest off and last in the race beckoning frantically to their more fortunate friends to secure places for them. Meanwhile the coffeeshop keeper and his servants enjoyed anything but a sinecure. The demands of the guests were incessant. Some wanted fire, some coffee, some wished their pipes replenished; and as the crowd increased, so the noise and the shouting became more clamorous. Hemmed in on all sides, the servants, with extended pipes in hands, would shout, "Who wants this?" while a host of voices would quickly reply, "I do! I do!" "Oh! give it to me, Mustapha!" One would clamour for a preference on the score that he was a better patron of the coffee-house than others; another on account of his age; a third on the ground of his rank; while the scuffle usually terminated in the lastcomer availing himself of the turmoil to whisper to some friend to hand him over the pipe, and so getting possession of the much-coveted delicacy, There was one very stout old gentleman who must have lived at the further end of the town, judging from his late arrival; but to see him running and puffing along the banks of the river was really, in connexion with the rest of the scene, worthy of the pencil of a Hogarth. When he did arrive, however, he was more fortunate than his neigh bours, for many of the first-comers had satiated themselves and were returning to their wives and families, so that there was ample room for all. After smiling at this ludicrous spectacle, we remounted our nags and cantered into the town again, for the dark mists of night were rapidly gathering around.

66

On the present occasion the doors had just been opened as we alighted, and some score of servants and hangers-on (who worked for the consideration of a cup of coffee) were busily occupied ranging all kinds of seats in front of the coffee-house for the accommodation of the Moslem multitude. Fires were being lit by dozens and heaped up with charcoal, to supply lights for the various smokers. Water too, by caldronfuls, was boiling; while diminutive coffee-pots and firepans, brightly scoured up, were ranged in martial array upon all kinds of sideboards. Then came the important operation of Accordingly, after partaking of our evening re loading some fifty or sixty pipes, so as to be pre-past, we proceeded to the bazaar, where everything pared for the general assault that was expected in betokened festivity and mirth. As though ashamed a very few minutes' time. While all this was that daylight should witness such gambols, the

This is a strange method of doing penancea curious picture of fasting and affliction," observed the friend who accompanied us, on once more regaining the gates of the town. "It is only the commencement," we replied, "of a series of amusements."

night was converted into the period for indulging in a variety of childish games. The streets were illuminated, and so were the mosque and the minarets. The coffee-houses resounded with discordant Arab music, and dances were a-foot. Amid the uncertain gloom a huge camel would protrude himself into the scene of revelry, and, stretching out his long neck, commit a felony on some man's store of sugarGaily-caparisoned horses and riders were numerons, and the veiled women thronged to and fro, talking, laughing, and commenting on all they saw or heard. Whirligigs, as they term them, and other swings, were not wanting, neither was there any lack of confectionery and good cheer. Thus the Moslems passed that night, and thus they passed every night of the thirty constituting the Ramadan.

cane.

SUBTERRANEAN LONDON. THERE is meaning in the old saying, that "London streets are paved with gold;" and it is perfectly true that a good many of them might be paved with gold, beaten thin, at a much less expense than they are at present paved with granite under the liberal but wise economy of the corporation of the city. Some of them are subjected to such tremendous and unceasing assaults, from the grinding of ponderous wains, the cataract of rattling, rumbling wheels, and the grappling feet of iron-shod steeds, that unless they were cased in a suit of armour something more than battle-axe proof, they would not be able to hold their own for a day. So they are swaddled in granite cut into square scales a foot thick, and in a manner overlapping each other It often happens that the Ramadan, which is a like those of the armadillo; and this is occasionally moveable fast, falls on the very hottest month of done at a cost which it would hardly be safe to the year, and then the sufferings of the more bi-mention. The amount of hard cash that is exgoted and strict Moslems must be intense, espe- pended, for instance, in cutting out a jacket and cially in places like Cairo, where the thermometer fitting it on, for London-bridge alone, is something often stands at 100° Fahrenheit in the shade. The alarming to think of. Well may the paviours sigh, more wealthy and rigorous observers of this fast as they always do, when consigning so much capiusually confine themselves to the precincts of their tal to inevitable destruction, the nearness or rehouses, where they sleep away the livelong day, or moteness of which is dependent in a great degree else seek shelter in the dampest vaults and cellars upon the proper performance of their responsible in the neighbourhood. Most acute, however, must duty. But we are not just now going to write be the agony of thirst suffered by the poorer classes, about the London pavements, though we pay this whom necessity compels to attend to their every-passing tribute to their excellence: we are going day avocations. These poor benighted creatures, to rip them up-which, strong as they are, we can especially in the larger towns inhabited by mixed do with a stroke of the pen-and see what lies populations, are exposed to momentary temptations beneath. to break through the rigid observance of the penance imposed upon them by their false prophet. They see, for instance, the nominal Christian population indulging themselves in neighbouring shops, or in the open thoroughfare, with deliciously iced sherbets, or eating fruit and other cooling delica cies, while they themselves are prohibited from taking the smallest relief till the appointed hour arrives.

When a Turk travels, or is sick, he is exempted from the observance of this fast, with the stipulation that when recovered, or when arrived at his journey's end, he shall make amends for the privilege enjoyed. Of late years, however, there are hundreds in every Moslem town who are hypocrites, and who, while they make every outward demonstration of a mind and body afflicted, secretly revel in all the indulgences of this life, at the same time that they are nothing loth to join in the nocturnal carousals already described.

The scene which we have thus painted from actual observation carries, we need hardly say, its own obvious lesson. It wants that which constitutes the element of a true religious fast-unfeigned sorrow for sin. How different in all respects is it from the ordinance which the pen of inspiration has drawn:

"Is not this the fast that I have chosen?

To loose the bands of wickedness,

To undo the heavy burdens,

And to let the oppressed go free,

And that ye break every yoke?

Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry,

A being who should be gifted with a sufficient degree of clairvoyance to see through the solid ground would, upon investigating the substratum of the metropolitan ways, discover four grand arterial systems: three of which, ramifying in hundreds of thousands of branches, are employed in the never-ending performance of functions essential to the health, comfort, and convenience of a civilized existence; the fourth might strike him as a comparatively insignificant affair, consisting as it does but of a single slender line protected by a casing not broader than your hand, and projecting but here and there a branch to the world above-ground; but that slender thread is the path the lightning travels, which man has tamed to his purpose and confined in the soil beneath his feet-an obedient gnome to carry messages at his will to the ends of the earth. Considering, for our present purpose, these four subterranean agencies consecutively, we shall devote a few paragraphs to the sewerage, the supply of water, the gas, and the electric telegraph in London.

The sewers of London, as they are unquestionably the most important in a sanitary point of view, so are they the chief of the underground offspring of the necessities of a crowded metropolis. Important as they are, however, and though thousands of years ago their sanitary agency was recognised in ancient Rome, their construction in Britain was not attempted until a comparatively recent period. Not to go very far back-the London of Shakspeare and Ben Jonson had no sewers; and we may come down to the time of

And that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy Milton and Cromwell, and find it still in the same

house?

When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him;

And that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?"

condition. It was not, in fact, until the reign of Charles the Second that the first sewer, which

was made by order of the lord keeper Guildford, has been done in this matter in times past has been was constructed in Chancery-lane, which probably based upon a wrong principle, and that much of it had its outlet in the neighbouring Thames. Not will have to be done over again before a satisfactory withstanding the evident advantage which must result is obtained. Hitherto the advantage of have resulted from the first experiment, the system getting rid of the sewerage has been held to be of draining by sewers was, from its expense and cheaply purchased by poisoning the river into other causes, of such slow growth, that even a which it is all drained; but a wiser economy has century later, in Hogarth's time, as we may very shown that the refuse thus ejected through inreadily gather from his pictures, it had made but numerable channels into the Thames, to the devery partial progress. It is difficult at the present struction of our home fisheries, might be made a time to realize, even in imagination, the aspect of treasure to the agriculturist, and a source of revethe London streets as they existed even at the nue to the city. We learn, from a report of the commencement of the last century, when in many court of sewers published in 1845, that the ordiparts of the city the dust and nuisances of the nary daily amount of sewerage discharged into the houses were piled in heaps before the door, await- Thames on the north side of the city has been ing the coming of the scavenger, who gave notice calculated at 7,045,120 cubic feet, and on the of his approach by banging a wooden clapper, south side 2,457,600 cubic feet, making a total of warning the inhabitants to thrust forth their re- 9,502,720 cubic feet, or a quantity equivalent to a fuse. At that time, the sewerage was suffered to surface of more than thirty-six acres in extent and accumulate in wells, which, when they were full, six feet in depth. All this, under the present were emptied into the kennels of the streets. It system of sewerage, we throw away, and at the was then that the average of deaths in the metro- same time we are despatching vessels to foreign polis was greater in healthy scasons than it is now countries for guano to manure our fields. There under the visitation of cholera, and the slaughters is no great risk in prophesying that, at a period of typhus during a wet autumn committed more not very distant, we shall exercise a little more ravages than an invading army. In rainy weather, practical wisdom in this particular, and that, like the water from the roofs came cascading into the the economical Chinese, we too shall fertilize our streets through gaping spouts of metal projecting soil with the refuse of our cities. beneath the eaves, and passengers quarrelled for the wall, where a comparative shelter was obtained, because they grudged the politeness that cost a ducking. With the advance of civilization, science came to the aid of the medical art; cleanliness was discovered to be a preservative from disease, and pure air a preventive of contagion. With the recognition of these truths came the determination to practise the lessons they taught. The streets were ripped up and excavated on all sides: main sewers were built in the larger thoroughfares, and tributaries in the side streets. Acts of parliament were passed, compelling builders to provide drainage: a court of sewers for Westminster and Middlesex was established, under whose direction vast labours were undertaken and accomplished; and, by degrees, the fetid accumulations in the highways disappeared from view, the foul smells which engendered loathsome diseases became less and less perceptible, and the average duration of human life in London rose from the fearful level of the battle-field to what it is at present.

Still, though much has been done, much more remains to do. Within the limits of the city proper, it has been calculated that there are fifty miles of streets, alleys, and courts, and that in these there are not less than forty-seven miles of sewerage; so that, with regard to the city itself, little more appears necessary beyond the maintenance in good repair of the works already laid down. But the " city" forms now but a comparatively small portion of the huge Babylon clustered round St. Paul's, and we all know that there are numerous neglected and low-lying districts in the suburbs, where the business of drainage has been so shamefully overlooked that its object is altogether defeated, and the wretched inhabitants, surrounded by filth and noxious exhalations, are ready to fall a prey to the first inroad of an advancing pestilence. More than this, our ruling powers are just awakening to the apprehension of the fact, that all that

We cannot walk the streets of London many days together without encountering evidences of the estimation in which the subject of sewerage is held by the ruling authorities. At one time we are startled by the spectacle of a narrow street, the houses of which are shored up with an elaborate frame-work of enormous beams and ponderous timbers, to prevent their coming down with a crash, in case the excavations, carried to a depth which the eye cannot penetrate, should loosen their foundations. At another, it is the blockade of Holborn or the Strand, and the turning of the swift current of their traffic out of its main channel into the back streets and by-ways; while a numerous gang of labourers, principally Irish, are employed day and night in sinking or raising the arched brick drain to a new level, which a fresh survey has found to be necessary. The prosecution of these works during the night affords a spectacle singularly picturesque: the swart faces of the workmen in their white shirts, lit up by the light of flaring torches; the cavernous gloom of the narrow pit in which they sink rapidly out of sight, to emerge again bending beneath a heavy load; the gleaming fire-flash upon their glittering im plements as they rise fitfully out of the darkness; the dusky forms of figures dimly visible through the black shadows cast by the mounds of soil and rubbish which line the edges of the chasm,-these are some of the elements of the picture, which, contrasted with the cold and quiet starlight overhead, make up a scene at which a stranger will pause instinctively and gaze with interest. Not very long ago the good people of London were puzzled by the spectacle of a sort of watch-box perched upon the gilded cross of St. Paul's; and, at the same time, groups of men with scientific instruments were observed performing some myste rious ceremony upon the pavement in various parts of the town-north, south, east, and west-with a persistency which for some month or two never

relaxed. These strange fellows, from whom nobody could extract a word, were perpetually peeping through two holes in two boards at the watch-box on the top of St. Paul's. It was given out, by those who pretended to know something about it, that they were ascertaining the level at various points, in order to determine the proper inclination of the sewers; but friend Figgins the grocer knew better than that: as he very sagely observed, "People don't go to the top of St. Paul's when they want to dig a ditch in the street." Nevertheless, it certainly came to pass that there was a great deal of sewer digging shortly after, and simple folks suppose to this hour that the watch box had something to do with it-which perhaps it had, for simple folks are sometimes in the right.

which were very unclean and unhealthy times, London was supplied with water from the Fleetriver (which has long been converted into a covered drain, discharging itself into the Thames at Blackfriars-bridge), from the river Lea, from Walbrook, and from various wells, such as Holywell and Clerks Well, and from Tyburn. From the latter place water was first brought to the city towards the close of the 13th century. It was not, however, until three centuries later that an attempt was made to carry the water by pipes into men's houses, by means of an engine erected at Londonbridge by a Dutch mechanist: it is true, that a certain wax-chandler in Fleet-street did, so far back as 1479, craftily pierce an underground pipe, and let the water into his own cellar for his own convenience; but his innovation was resented by the We said above that the sewerage is all thrown corporation, who adjudged him to do penance by away and so it is; but yet, in its dark under-riding through the city with a conduit upon his ground passage to the river, there are, strange as head. The business of the water-carriers, who it may seem, a class of men who contrive to snatch fetched water from the public fountains or wells from it the means of a miserable subsistence ere it and sold it by the tankard, must have thriven well is lost in the bosom of old Father Thames. "There for many generations, seeing that it was not su is no accounting for tastes," said a friend to whom perseded by the domestic pipe system until the we once mentioned this circumstance. "And no commencement of the rule of the Georges. The accounting for dire necessities either, which are great undertaking of Sir Hugh Middleton, that of much more likely than tastes to drive men to such forming a new river to serve as a channel for the desperate resources for a living," we replied. One waters of the springs in the neighbourhood of Amof these subterranean explorers was once examined well and Ware, was completed in 1613; but it before a committee of the House of Commons. only brought the water to the principal thoroughThe tale he had to tell is too long for repetition: fares, and has never even to the present time been it is enough to say, that in order to live by his able to afford a continuous supply to the popula trade he had to work extremely hard, disgusting as tion dependent upon ita fact much to be rewas his occupation. He could only enter the sewer gretted, as the New River water stands deservedly at the time of low water; he then worked while the very high in public estimation. At the present tide flowed until it ebbed again; and if he miscal- moment there are seven water companies, all of culated the time, as, having no watch, and not being which have been for a long time in active operation, able to hear the clocks, he sometimes did, he had carrying the indispensable fluid to the homes of the to wait until another tide had ebbed before he was Londoners. Of these, five are on the north bank released. Being in total darkness, he had to carry of the river, and two on the south. It is an una lantern, and was further compelled to take an wholesome fact, that the major part of them deactive terrier with him to prevent his being rive their water from the Thames, into which some devoured alive by rats, which he described as fifty millions of gallons of sewerage are daily disswarming there in myriads. His occupation con- gorged, and which is thus made at once the cesssisted in grubbing beneath the open gulley-holes pool and the fountain of the metropolis. We have of the streets, and the small drains from private seen above that the city proper is far better prohouses, for such small articles as were accidentally vided with sewerage than any other part of Londropped or thrown away. He found more base don; the same may be said in regard to its water coin than anything else; sometimes a silver spoon; supply, of which not a drop is derived from the and once he, or one of the same trade, had found a Thames, but the whole from the New River, with valuable watch. Instances have occurred where the exception of about a thousand houses supthese men have been drowned by the rush of water plied from the river Lea. The quantity of water occasioned by a sudden and violent rain-storm; contributed for the daily use of the inhabitants and a more melancholy fate is recorded of one, who of all London is estimated at about forty-five venturing in without a dog, and being shut in by millions of gallons, giving about twenty-three galthe unexpected return of the tide, was devoured lons to each individual of the population-an alive by the rats, leaving his bones alone to adver- amount which, though it would be accounted enortise his fate to the next comer. mous in a continental city, is yet far from sufficient, considering the many purposes to which water may be applied, and the inequality of its distribution under the present system of management. It is found that, while nobody complains of having too much, there are thousands and tens of thousands of the habitations of the poorer classes in which it is not introduced at all-whole rows of them being supplied from one common waterbutt or cistern, and that frequently in a state not fit for The outcry on this subject has been of late years very loud and long-sustained, and costly

We are not aware of the actual extent of the sewers throughout the whole of the London districts: if calculated according to the same ratio as the city itself, there must be six or seven hundred miles in length of underground drainage; but as we have shown above that many of the districts are lamentably deficient, this may perhaps be something above the sum total.

Let us now take a glance at the water supply of London, the next underground subject on our list. In the "good old times," as they are called,

use.