much, we must take the liberty of flitting from one scene to another, rather faster than even the most improved means of locomotion would carry us, and of gathering here one feature, and there another, lest we be hindered in the purpose we have in view, of presenting to the stranger a general sketch, approximating, if possible, in some degree to the reality. By way of commencement, let us make our exit from an omnibus, somewhere in the centre of the Strand, say at twelve o'clock at noon. The first rather startling phenomenon that greets the ear of a stranger who drops thus suddenly into the arms of the metropolis, is the uninterrupted and crashing roar of deafening sounds, which tell of the rush of the current of London's life-blood through its thousand channels-a phenomenon, however, of which the born Londoner is no more unpleasantly conscious, than is the Indian savage, cradled at the foot of a cataract, of its everlasting voice. The sound of ever-rumbling wheels is to the one what the ever-dashing water is to the other; both are neutralized by long habit, which makes things which are as though they were not. But the eye of the stranger is assailed no less forcibly by the rushing tide of population along the foot-ways, and he is apt to imagine, as hundreds have done before him, that he has arrived at the precise moment when some monster meeting has just broken up, and perchance he may instinctively turn aside to let the crowd disperse before he pursues his way. But we shall not allow him to pause under any such delusion. Passing on eastwards, and leaving Waterloobridge, and Somerset House, with its college, public offices, and Royal Society, at our right; and leaving various musty old streets on our left; leaving, too, a clergyman, in a white surplice, reading amid the crash and racket of the Strand, the burial-service to a bald-headed sexton and one mourner in a rusty brown-black cloak, who, we fear, can hear very little of its impressive truths and wondering why, in the middle of the nineteenth century, people are buried in the middle of the street because it happens to be a churchyard; we pass on towards Temple-bar. We catch a glimpse now and then, through the quiet down-hill streets to the right, of the silver Thames, on the breast of which the boats are passing and repassing; and at every step we take, a world of new faces flit in rapid succession before our eyes, all vivid with an eager purpose, and vital with some definite and present object. The shops are thronged with customers, and the windows are crowded with their best display. There is not an instant's ebb in the flow of populationnot a moment's pause in the roar of traffic. A glimpse or two up the mal-odorous courts leading away to Clare-market, and beyond that to Clement's-inn and Lincoln's-inn, and we are at Temple-bar-an ornament, if you will, and timehonoured in treasonable and barbarous associations, but an unquestionable obstruction to the public thoroughfare. Now from Bell-yard and Chancerylane visions of blue bags and red tape, and black gowns and horsehair wigs, mingle with the human torrent that pours incessantly along. The Temple with its quiet retreats, and restored Norman church, where, stretched and stiff amidst the clamour of modern London, the old Knights Templars lie cross-legged on the cold stones; and where a hundred or two of briefless barristers vegetate in upper stories, and labour hard with ink and goose-quill to earn by literature that necessary competence which the law denies them; where the fresh and sparkling fountain plays; and where, in the gardens fronting the river, the children gambol and the pale student wanders-the Temple, endeared and abhorred in the memory of multitudes, lies on our right. Fleet-street is before us, with all its host of reminiscences, with its numerous courts, in one of which Johnson loved to dwell, and where the coffee-house wits, and his friends and cronies the literary men of his time, had their meetings and their pleasures. The genius of Business has long ago driven the Muses from these their old-fashioned abodes, and in all of them now, money-making, and that alone, is the order of the day. Whitefriars, the ancient asylum of rogues and assassins, now the abode of industry and enterprise, but at which we cannot tarry to glance, lies down at our right. As we enter on Ludgate-hill, the crowd thickens and the hurry increases: we may scarcely pause an instant to gaze at the splendid shops that line the way; idling is impracticable, and standing still out of the question. On we go with the current, through St. Paul's-churchyard, and, leav ing "the Row," with all its responsibilities, behind us, debouch into Cheapside. In the middle of a fine summer's day, this, the oldest of the London marts, and still at all times the most frequented, is so overcrowded with human life, that-in spite of the admirable and accommodating system of walking instinct among Londoners, by which every one, by a tacit agreement, keeps the right side of the pavement-it is yet impossible to get on but at a slow and fitful pace. Here, as we slowly advance, we are flanked on either side by such accumulations of the world's material wealth as perhaps can scarcely be witnessed at any other spot on its sur face. Dazzling stores of costly gems and the precious metals, displayed in glittering profusion, look out upon us from the shop windows; and all that industry, ingenuity, and the rarest talent can furnish to the demands of luxury, is here offered to its acceptance. All the ends of the earth have sent in their choicest contributions; and whatever the treasures of the natural world, controlled and combined by the skill of man, can supply for the satisfaction of his most urgent wants or his slightest caprice, is here gathered together and submitted for his approval. From Cheapside, past the Guildhall, where Gog and Magog, those abstinent witnesses of so many banquets, keep faithful watch and ward, and through the Poultry, long ago plucked of its feathers, we emerge into the grand central area, matched in commercial importance by no other spot of less or greater extent upon the surface of the globe. Oh, for the glance of an Argus, clearly to see, and for a paragon pen faithfully to record, all that is now going on upon the scene around us! Then should the mysteries of the Stock Exchange, the recondite wisdom of the Mansion House, the craft of Capel-court, and the hidden resources of the Bank of England, all figure in our columns in their true aspect, and the world be made wiser than it is ever likely to be on these matters. But we must be content to look on with common eyes, and make the best of them. The Mansion House, as usual, looks heavy and glum, and is clustered round with omnibuses, and crowds on foot, and plastered with proclamations, and the magistrate within has enough to do to get through the business of the hour. The Exchange is populous with burly forms and anxious and stolid faces; and stock-brokers and their slim clerks are flitting to and fro, and, with little oblong square papers in their hands, are bursting through doors made to open noiselessly either way, and appearing with outstretched necks again in a minute, and disappear ing as fast. Cabs are rushing up, and dropping their fares, who fly out with a leap and bury themselves instanter in the jaws of a share-office. Omnibuses are rolling off, and more are rolling in, and each one comes laden with the sons of commerce bound for this central shrine. The Bank of England to-day is a general house of call. Thousands are flocking into its inky precincts; some going straight to their mark, and transacting their business at once, and others wandering about and losing themselves, and finding themselves at last in the wrong department, where they are angrily boring the wrong person to do what he is not justified in doing, and could not do if he would. Notes by the ream and sovereigns by the shovelful are flying and rustling and jingling about; corpulent pocket-books suddenly collapse into flat. ness, and lean ones grow stout with a moment's feeding. In all these localities Commerce has very much the aspect of a gentleman: his garb is refined and unexceptionable, his manners bland and polite, his voice subdued and persuasive; and if at times he is a little hasty, and at others a little abstracted, it may be said in apology for him that the old gentleman has got upon his shoulders matters far more weighty and of more importance to the interests of the world (whatever statesmen may think to the contrary) than ever perplexed a prime minister or puzzled a cabinet council. His diplomacy, if it centre more exclusively in Number One than that of the statesman, has a wider range and more extensive ramifications than that of governments can boast of. Far-off nations, whom our laws cannot influence, he can rally round his banner with a word: he feeds and clothes the naked and hungry savage, marshals his untaught hordes in the ranks of industry, and despatches them into the bowels of the earth, or the depths of the sea, or over the barren sands of the desert, or across the pathless snows of the arctic regions, to do his bidding. As we wander thoughtfully among these grand and noble edifices, his messages, winged by lightning, are flashing beneath our feet with the speed of thought to distant cities and foreign lands. He has but to lay his hand on the magic wires of the electric telegraph, and he can feel the pulse of the three kingdoms which regulate half the business of the world. Around him is the aggregate of half that world's wealth, and more than half its influence: there, just round the corner, in silent Lombard-street, where the poor stall-woman sells her fruit, and messengers in neat white aprons, worn solely for distinction, wait for employ there, in dim and spacious halls, he stores his vast resources; and day by day, and hour by hour, sends them forth on errands of usefulness and increase, and adds to their undiminished hoards fresh products of his prophetic foresight and unwearied effort. Away now at one bound from one extreme of the commercial scale to another-from the men of unlimited capital, who turn over thousands in a morning, to those who toil in "sun and sweat" the livelong day for pence. Here we are, then, three miles at least from where we stood a moment ago-in one of the outlying suburbs, far from the crash and din of the city, which now comes upon the ear like the swell of the sea-surge beating upon a pebbly shore when it is heard far inland. That distant boom rises, however, but at intervals, when there is a pause in the shrill, loud, deep, and halfmusical cries vibrating almost incessantly in the air around us; some clear and sonorous, ringing over an area of half a mile, others short, gruff, and shot forth fitfully from dry and husky throats. It is now that the main substance of the vast daily importations into the morning markets of London, chiefly into Billingsgate and Covent-garden, are, in the charge of thirty thousand costermongers, traversing, it may be, a hundred thousand miles of streets, to supply the daily consumption of the inhabitants. The coster's equipage comprehends every variety of turn-out, from the substantial cart and well-fed and neatly-harnessed horse, down to the half-starved and miserable "moke,' whose raw and bleeding sides are galled with the knots of an old rope, by which it is clumsily made fast to a few rotten planks mounted upon a couple of ricketty wheels of differing size and colour-and down still lower than that, to the rotten basket borne on the head of its ragged proprietor. But whatever his equipage, the coster is abroad with his voice and his wares, and some quarter of a million of attentive ears are listening for his wellknown accents, and as many hands are busy in the kitchen preparing for his arrival :-"Gooseberries, three-pence a quar-ar-art!-Fine cauliflowers!→ Rhubarb!"-"Soles, oh! Live haddick, live haddick!-Ee-ee-eels alive, oh !"-" Green peas, young peas, sixpence a peck !"-"Mackareel! `mack-makmakareel!" Such are a few of the cries, in every possible variety of voice and tone, which reverbe rate along the quiet ways. The costers may be said almost to monopolize the public ear till dinner is over and done; and we may remark that they know perfectly well the hour at which any particu lar street on their beat goes to dinner, and you seldom find them crying green-peas, or green anything, when the time for cooking the article is past. Among these dealers, though not in the road, but on the pavement, walks the peripatetic tradesman, calling quietly upon his "connection," if he has any, and now and then lifting up his voice with the view of creating or extending it. There is the chair-mender, swaddled in split-canes, followed by his weary wife carrying an old bottomless chair, which she has picked up somewhere during the morning calls, and on the edge of which she will rest herself for a moment or two, while her bigger half knocks at a door and solicits custom. There is the knife-grinder, who startles the neighbourhood with a noise like the springing of fifty watchmens' rattles, and which stills for a moment tubes. One emptics himself into an ophicleide, all other noises, and which he produces by applying the rusty blade of an old butcher's cleaver to the rough side of his rotating grindstone. Thus he spares his lungs, which are not generally in the best possible order, seeing that from his grinding many things dry, he gets the particles of steel into them. There is the umbrella-mender, with his faggot of crippled umbrellas, of questionable parasols, and apochryphal whalebones at his back, and his leathern bag of tools and knicknacks round his waist, to say nothing of his fishing-rods and walking-sticks, both of which it is odds but you will find in the involutions of his fat faggot, if you should happen to want them. There is the basketmaker, who this morning measures exactly eighteen feet in circumference, and consequently occupies the whole of the pathway, so that you are obliged to step into the road to pass him. He moves with a slow and dignified step in his framework of manycoloured wicker, but he splits it in two and lets himself out in an instant, at the call of a customer, through whose garden-gate he must enter before he can get at him. There is the band-box-maker, shouldering a huge palanquin of purple-splashed receptacles of all sizes, but of that precise shape and pattern which lies in your garret among the fluff under Betty's bed, and in which her best Sunday's bonnet, with its plain neat ribbons, lies eclipsed all the week. There is the bird-cagemaker, with his bright brass-wired cages domed at the top, just the thing for your tame canary; and a big one, with a Great Exhibition transept, large enough to accommodate your talking parrot, with a perch as thick as a mop-stick, exactly fitting the grasp of Polly's claws. There is the garden-fitter, with his stock of bright-green splints and contrivances for sticking your sweet-peas and supporting your plants; and there is the gardener himself, with his geraniums, and balsams, and ice-plants, and cactuses, and musks, and flowers of all colours and odours, and "all a-growin' and a-blowin'!" as he says loud enough for everybody to hear, while he peers about upstairs and down, and makes a dead stop wherever he discovers the signs and tokens of a fondness for his merchandise. Then there is a cry of "Oranges, oranges!" as the market-girl lounges by, with her heavy basket on her arm. There is the little Jew-boy with his lemons, which he holds up between his fingers as he passes the parlour windows, content with that silent appeal, nor caring to let his voice be heard; and there is the older Jew, with his patriarchal beard, his triple tiara of castaway beavers, and corpulent bag ejaculating solemnly at regular intervals, "Clo', clo', clo' !" and glancing round ever and anon, with flashing eye, for the slightest visible movement in the regions of the kitchen. And then there is his rival, the china-man, who, having no licence, cannot lawfully hawk his goods, but professing to give a new tea-service for an old coat, effects an exchange very different from that, if you let him catch you attempting a bargain. At the heels of the travelling tradesmen come the wandering street-minstrels, who give you sweet sounds for the chance of your sympathies and coppers. First comes a band of stunted Germans in green surtouts, puffing as if for their lives (and it is really for nothing less) into enormous brazen clawing it the while convulsively, as though it were some savage beast; another is feeling for the right note in a curly French horn; a third is showing fight to the chimney tops with a battered trombone; a fourth is talking through his nose by means of a bandaged clarionet; and the rest are making faces at the sky. All, however, make admirable music of the good old harmonies of the fatherland, and find that honest John Bull is not ungrateful for it. Then comes a grinder with a barrel organ, who vacillates between a grave tune and a jig; then another grinder with a barrel-piano, who adds to it the charm of his voice, and groans rather than sings an Italian song to an English tune. He is followed by a whole family on pilgrimage, preceded by a cracked violoncello on one leg, the rear being brought up by a couple of infants in white pinafores, who are but just big enough to go alone. What next? A travelling tinker swinging his pot of live coal, and growling, "Pots to mend, kittles to mend !" A wandering voice rising from the rear of a hand-cart, and ejaculating with the earnestness of an orator, Penniwinkles, penniwinkles, wink, wink, WINK! Ladies, now's your time!" A sorrowful, heartbroken wail from a decrepit old man bearing a few boxes of lucifers clutched in his long bony fingers, who tries to intonate the word "Lucifers," but breaks down at the first syllable, and looks around piteously for that compassion which he is too feeble even to demand by a word-and then suddenly the burst of trumpets, the bang of big drums, and the clamorous bray of brass, as the advertising van prances up, to let the wondering world know where pantaloons are to be had. Thus wags the world by day in the London suburbs. We must again change the scene. We start this time from Tower-hill, and leaving the Tower at our right, without a thought just now of its grim secrets and murderous injusticeand leaving the Mint at our left, never heeding either aught that is there done in connexion with those interesting initials, £. s. d.-we push on our way through a wilderness of oddly-mixed merchan dise which obtrusively blocks our path-through groups of seamen's chests daubed with tar and smelling of new paint, emigrants' tents pitched in the open air, canvass trousers, tarpaulin cloaks, bear-skin overcoats, bruised telescopes, disabled quadrants, second-hand sou'-westers-past dirty shops crammed with cobwebs and dilapidated ma rine wares-past yawning beer-cellars and reeking spirit-shops-past the sloppy cab-stand and a furlong or two of dead-wall, and all the way through a swarm of hurrying passengers, the crush of heavy wagons, the rattle of dingy cabs, the bawling of drivers, and the clatter of horses' feetand turning short to the right, of a sudden make a descent upon St. Katherine's Docks. Here is another strange phase of London's daily life. We seem at first in a land of barrels, all new and clean, the very elysium of coopers. On we go through an acre of port-wine, every cask brimming full with its mouth open, down which inquisitive fellows are poking long sticks, to measure the capa city of their stomachs. On again through a couple of acres of brandy, in bran-new barrels, undergoing the same ceremony-then another acre of wine, | forbidden ground. A young gentleman, who has port and sherry, mingled with madeira in its taper, paid seventy pounds for his passage, is administervase-like casks-and then on to the wine-vaults, ing a scold to the agent for breach of contract, and where, in a cavern of some ten acres in extent, and loudly demanding an exchange of cabins. Tompiled upon iron tram-like supports, of which about kins is jumping about like one distracted for the thirty miles in length is laid down, is stored in loss of his luggage, all packed away in the entrails bond the produce of the grape. of a stage cart, which ought to have come on board yesterday. His wife has padlocked the three children in his berth, and there they are all three, with their dirty little faces at the grill, blubbering to be let out of the dark hole. Sailors are rigging up the long-boat to serve as a pig-stye, as the pigs will arrive on board to-morrow: the fowls, a good many of them, are already in durance vile, but, despairing of being heard in such a clamour, are quietly reserving their voices for a fitter opportunity. A knot of country girls, seated in a circle round the mainmast, are discussing some home topic which brings tears into the eyes of most of them. Lascars, brown, lean, thin, undersized, and hungry-looking, loll lazily about, as though there was nothing for them to do, which is most likely the case. Jack-tar swings himself up over the heads of the country girls and bids them cheer up, and promises them all a husband a-piece in the golden land. The black cook is boiling his kettles over a blazing fire in the fore part of the vessel, and, surrounded by a part of the crew, is dishing out their dinner. Looking over the side, we are greeted by the apparition of a painter slung by ropes, with his pots on a plank, and stolidly daubing away at the ship's hull, as oblivious as the timbers he is at work upon of the world of cares, and aspirations, and hopes, and uncertainties around him. At this spot we present an order for admission, and, arming ourselves each with a portable lamp, with a handle half a yard in length, plunge, with the cooper for our guide, down one of the long dark avenues of this treasury of the vintage. Dim red lights, suspended from the roof and glimmering at long distances at the ends and turnings of the various passages, reveal in some degree the enormous extent of these national wine-cellars. Walls of barrels, heaped one upon another, line the way, and the odour of their contents impregnates the air and ascends into the brain. Here and there we happen unexpectedly upon a party of tasters, furnished with capacious bell-shaped glasses, and testing the flavour of the wines, with the accompaniments of biscuits and cheese. The guide elevates his lamp and points to the myriad festoons of cobwebs which, black with age and dust, droop in dense clustering tassels from the ceiling, and wave even with the impulse of our breath. We are at first sceptical about the existence of cobwebs, seeing no means of support for the spiders who must spin them; but he talks of a species of fly which engenders here in millions, and, lowering his lamp, shows where, amidst the moist exudations around the bung of a cask of old sherry, swarms of reddish-looking maggots are wriggling about, who must have had flies for their progenitors, and will be flies themselves in their turn. We are now at the limits of the vault: a ray of cool daylight shoots down the ventilating cavity through the long thickness of the wall, and, peeping out, we discern the ships lying in the docks. Declining an invitation to taste of last year's vintage, we return by another route, and, surrendering our lamps, are again in the open air. On again to the left, through another meadow of brandy-casks-through wildernesses of warehouses stored with sugar, and timber, and hides, and bales, and boxes, and packages, and every description of taxable goods-on, over stone quays and swinging bridges, overshadowed by a forest of masts and sails, amid the creaking of cordage, the hoarse song of the mariner, the cry of the sailor-boy aloft, and a host of other undefinable sounds, and up a flight of steps which hangs invitingly adown the hull of a tall ship of twelve hundred tons burden, and on to the deck of an emigrant vessel bound for Australia, and which is destined to warp out into the river at twelve o'clock to-night, and drop down to Gravesend, whence she takes her departure twenty-four hours later. The deck is alive with a various and motley population, all busily engaged in preparation for the impend ing voyage-young and old, the well-to-do and the very poor, children in arms and the fathers and mothers of families-some crying bitterly, more with woe-begone and bewildered looks, and many in unnaturally good spirits, artificially excited. Even at this last hour, carpenters are at work erecting additional berths, chiefly round the captain's cabin, and seriously encroaching on that Descending through the open hatchway into the steerage, we step into just such a scene as might be realized were twenty houses, with all their inhabitants and furniture, pitched out of windows pell-mell through the roof of an unlighted barnonly the poor humans seem to take it very patiently, being for the most part asleep, stretched on bundles of bedding on the floor, or on the shelves at the sides of the long chamber which is to be their home for the next four or five months. A good proportion of them are children; and of these, those not asleep are eating bread-andbutter with the evident expression of persons enjoying a luxury. Close under the hatchway are two elderly people, who are dictating to a young girl a joint epistle which she, sitting on the ground, and using a deal box for a writing-table, is blotting down on a crumpled sheet of black-bordered vellum. Some are busy in storing away in their narrow berths the articles and provisions which they will want during the voyage; and two or three of the crew are lowering through a trap-door in the floor bales and packing-cases, and iron and wooden implements, for which there can be no demand until the good ship has arrived at her destination. A blinking lantern, suspended from a cross-beam, lights them at their work, and in the gloomy cavity below burns another. While we are watching the process of stowage, down rushes Tomkins through the hatchway, dives into the dark hold, and, after a search of about three minutes, rises again, his face beaming with satisfaction, by which we are led to suppose that his luggage is all right, after all. The vision of the |