OUR last paper concluded, if we recollect right, with a polite bow to that desirable class of society, equally remote from the superfluity of wealth or pecuniary embarrassment, whose good taste and well regulated minds dictate their style of living, dress, and equipage, compensating in a degree for the deficiencies of fortune, and procuring that deferential respect which never fails to attend the judicious adaptation of ends to means: that harmony and keeping which in society, as in the arts, is the never-failing source of gratification of eye and mind.

We now resume our essay on neighbourhoods. Low genteel neighbourhoods, we need hardly say, are drugs in the market. The New Road, Paddington, Pimlico, Bayswater, Clapham, Upper Clapton, may serve as illustrations. Boarding houses abound, furnished lodgings are the staple commodity, and omnibuses pass the doors for your accommodation every five minutes. Hereabouts, if you believe the advertisements, there are always to be found, for next to nothing, "really comfortable homes," "liberal tables," and houses" replete with every convenience:" here the hospitable deities delight to dwell: "society, musical and select, with or without harp and piano," is thrown open for your acceptance: here the situations are remarkably "healthy and pleasant," and a "limited number" of inmates, meaning a number limited only by the success of the puffs in the papers, received: here widowers with two or more wives, and single ladies whose spouses are at sea, are acquisitions; wine-merchants, whose trade is limited to the number of odd bottles required for the use of the company; gentlemen holding "situations under Government," the na ture whereof Joseph Ady would be puzzled to discover; French counts, and disguised dancing-masters preponderate.

Equivocal neighbourhoods are those where private residences, shops, and manufactories, are intermingled in heterogeneous confusion. Lambeth, the Borough, Vauxhall, and the regions ge

nerally included in the "over the water" category, belong to this unenviable description. Those only who have no choice pitch their tents in a transportive neighbourhood; nor did we ever hear of any body who knew any body on the Surrey side, where indeed we would fain hope that the existence of human beings is merely conjectural!

So much for private neighbourhoods. Of public and professional we have already said much, and much remains to be said. Public or official neighbourhoods not being, as in Paris, Vienna, Rome, St Petersburg and elsewhere, congregated beneath one roof, but diffused over the city, attract divided attention, and demand separate notice. The Mansion-house, a stately pile, rises in severe majesty, the palatial residence of the city. Guildhall represents the Whitehall of the east-the halls of the several companies, scattered every where, have, every one, something worthy of attention-the florid oak carvings, the decorated windows, the grim portraits of civic dignitaries, and the monastic seclusion of their claustral courts, contrast well with the business, bustle, and noise of the jostling world without. Somerset house and Whitehall almost monopolize the Government machinery; but we cannot point with pride to our Admiralty, with its lanky, ill-proportioned pediment, or to our Treasury, supporting an ambuscaded attic upon a row of needless columnsone of the creations of Sir John Soane, of Baotian celebrity, who, together with Nash, has done so much to deprave our metropolitan taste in architecture, that another invasion of the Goths and Vandals were more to be desired than deplored.

Downing Street, alas, is down! The snug little public-house at the corner, where the treasury expectants of small places were accustomed to solace their tedious hours of attendance upon men in power, is levelled with the ground; the official residences of the first lord of the treasury, and the principal secretaries of state, are no longer confronted with the range of scrubby brick buildings, whose occupants, like

their betters, dated their despatches from Downing Street. Here we delight occasionally to walk with a measured gait, our countenance expressive of deep concerns of state, our right thumb gracefully inserted in the corresponding arm-hole of our waistcoat, in the manner of a great statesman; nor is our constitutional vanity at all repressed by sundry touchings of the hat from the expectants of tide-waiterships in waiting, doubtless mistaking us for a great man-an error into which the public are liable to fall with respect to individuals more prominently before them than ourselves.

Thus is the congregating principle developed throughout all society; throughout nature the law holds good -birds and bipeds of a feather flock together. The artist cannot handle a brush save in the vicinity of Soho or of Fitzroy Square; hatters flourish only in Southwark; goldsmiths, watchmakers, and jewellers, in Clerkenwell; the Hebrew is at home nowhere save in Houndsditch, St Mary Axe, and Petticoat Lane; hawkers, pedlars, caravan drivers, showmen, still resort to Lambeth, as the alche mists and astrologers used in the olden time.

It must not be supposed, however, that streets and houses of the world of London alone present marked and distinctive characters; by their natives shall ye know them. What can be more marked and decided in character, to the man who has attained the faculty of looking beyond the end of his nose, than the wealthy citizen and the opulent west-ender? the former broadshouldered and burly, physically and commercially a man of weight and substance; his black suit of the finest cloth, but no way particular as to cut; his hat rather low-crowned and broad in the brim; a bunch of old-fashioned seals dangling below his ample vest; his aspect that of a careful, though not care worn, intelligent though unlearned, grave not severe, man; his step solid, deliberative, firm, and rather slow than quick: hurrying through the streets he leaves to idlers and young men beginning business. From time to time, as he passes through the narrow alleys of the city, he extracts from his ample pocket a leathern case, containing sundry slips of promissory paper; he dips into the counting houses as he goes along, ever and

anon glancing at his watch with the economical air of a man with whom time is money, and money life.

Contrast with him the lounging idler of Bond Street-tall and thinhe exhibits to advantage a coat of easy but unobtrusive cut, and sober tint; his hat sits jauntily on his head, and the daily arrangement of his hair, by the hand of the valet, is sufficiently evident; his expression of countenance is indicative of ennui, or at most of a careless indifference to sublunary things-his gait easy, undecided, and negligent: he, too, glances frequently at the watch, no thicker than an oyster shell, which a Trichinopoly chain connects, in golden fetters, with a button of his waistcoat; but it is with the air of a man less anxious to employ than to kill the enemy. The tradesman, too, a practised eye will find no more difficulty in detecting, even when he leaves his counter: you will observe that, although overdressed, there is a want of keeping in his turn-out; a pair of clubbish boots, a spick-andspan new hat, or a staring waistcoat, betray him : he trots rather than walks along the street, threading his devious way as if time was an object to nobody but himself: his attitude is that of a man stooping over a counter; his eye has an expression of mingled servility and cunning: ere he opens his lips, you have already anticipated that he is about to tell you "he has a heavy bill to take up on Wednesday, and hopes he is putting you to no inconvenience by soliciting a settlement of his little account." The characteristic outlines of the mechanic and labourer, are too strong to escape the least penetrating eye; but there abound in the streets of London vast numbers of equivocal characters, not to be detected save by the practised eye of one who has followed them into their haunts, or watched them narrowly when they suspect not they are observed.

Who would suppose, for example, that those young men at the corner, dressed in the height of the Cockney fashion, bedizened with mosaic jewellery, and puffing their cigars, are members of the swell mob-thieves, in short, and pickpockets? They are exchanging cards: truly so they are; but, if you observe, the cards are pawnbrokers' duplicates of the plunder of the preceding day-yet you say it is.

impossible: they are young, of genteel address, and look like gentlemen; how is it you can at once detect their dishonest calling? At this moment a policeman is turning the corner-mark with what instinct of self-preservation the crumpled duplicates are crammed into their respective pockets; how they huddle together into a little knot, like chickens when the sparrowhawk hovers in the air; although they are not yet" wanted,"-that is to say, although no warrant may have been issued for the apprehension of any one; yet the officer of justice knows as well that they are thieves, as he does that upon him sooner or later will devolve the duty of their apprehension; he fixes a keen stern eye upon themthey look timidly round-raise an affected laugh, and one by one slide away from before the face of the dreaded myrmidon of the law, as snow melts before the rays of the sun.

Poor devils! let those who have property to lose regard them with apprehension or hate; we never think of them without a sigh, or look upon them without pity. Talk of ruined abbeys and mouldering castles, for sooth, and the ivied picturesque of stone and mortar! behold the wreck of God's own image, hopeless of repair; see a human being hastening, through the wide avenues of crime, to an eternity of shameful pain; behold the ruin of an immortal soul, and be sad. We lament the crooked industry, the idle business, the talent ill applied of the sons and daughters of crime;' and we are driven, from the constitution of society, to protect ourselves from their depredations. Nor is there a sight more lamentable and sorrow-creating ⚫ than a youth, endowed with the elements of good, pursuing the unprofitable paths of petty plunder upon his neighbour; to-day flourishing at singing-rooms and playhouses, adorned like a fool by the profits of a knave, to-morrow in the mournful prison garb, with close-cropped hair, paying for his short-lived enjoyment by a tour upon the "mill;" or, at last, when the patience of the law is worn out, wending his weary way over the waters in a convict hulk, never to behold his native country more. His crime is expiated-he is dead to society-he injures us no more; we have no pity for his fate, because the law prescribes it, and we obey the

law; but the humane and benevolent mind looks back upon his sad career with regret, and would fain know how misfortune, necessity, or temptation first indicated to him the ways of folly, or seduced him to the paths of vice. Men are not all evil; the richest soils, if neglected, quickest run to waste; we see a criminal stand trembling in the dock-we regard him with fear or dread. Could we review the pastcould we forget what he is in what he might once have been, the current of our thoughts would flow in pity of his misfortunes. Perhaps he never knew a father's or a mother's care; the very name he bears was bestowed upon him, perhaps, by some parish-officer, or his fate may have been even more full of misery. It may be that the author of his being was his instructor in crime, and that, before the tender mind could comprehend the difference between right and wrong, he may have been employed as the unconscious instrument of evil.

You see those countrymen lounging listlessly along the street, the one in a smock-frock and carter's hat, the other in shooting jacket and leathern galligaskins? They look plain honest rustics newly arrived from the country, and disappointed it would seem of work in town; yet Proteus hath not a more complete and rapid power of transformation than that promising pair, nor Mercury himself a lighter finger. They are buttoners by profession; by which you will not understand us to indicate button-makers: buttoners are those accomplices of thimbleriggers, and other gamblers of the fairs and race courses, whose duty it is to act as flat-catchers or decoys, by personating flats: one day they will appear sailors on the spree-another time drovers, navigators, or, as they now exhibit themselves, simple clodhoppers: in the intervals of their creditable avocations, they frequent certain neighbourhoods in town, whence they issue to do a little business in the way of shoplifting; they are now reconnoitring the streets as they go along, and it will be hard if they return to their dens at night without having purloined a ham, a cheese, or some article of wearing apparel, or at least without "ringing the changes" on a couple or so of bad half sovereigns.

We are far from proposing to fob

our readers off with the partial and deceptive glance we may have of character as it passes along the public thoroughfares; we will follow, in the proper places, through its several windings and turnings, and record the routine of checkered life, whether at Almack's or St Giles's. At present, to preserve as far as we can our preconceived arrangements, we return to the general ideas a stranger will most readily acquire of the World of London, not contemplated individually, but in the mass.

Already we have referred to its apparent illimitability, and its inexhaustible variety: the industry of its mighty population will no less excite the wonder and respect of the astonished spectator. The hum of industrial thousands never ceases from this mighty hive: the vast majority of our population hold, with Crusoe, that "the whole world is in motion, rolling round and round; all the creatures of God-heavenly bodies and earthly are busy and diligent; why should we be idle? there are no drones in the world but men, wherefore should we be of that number?" London has her drones, no doubt; but she has her thousands upon thousands of busy bees also. No period of life is exempt; the child begins to work and to earn as soon as it is able to stand upon its legs; the town boy goes to a place ere the country lout goes to school; the youth, the man, and even decrepit age, find something wherewith to make into profit the passing hour tender infancy is even let out to hire to sturdy beggars by the day, at a shilling or eighteenpence a-head, according to quality, for the purpose of exciting commiseration and procuring money. The education of the infant for the one thing needful (making money) begins with the earliest period when intelligence or perception develops itself; a farthing is put into the creature's tiny fingers as soon as he is able to clutch it; this exchanged for almond rock, brandyballs, or lollypops, introduces his innocent mind to an acquaintance with the important truth, that "money is power:" he has not heard that know ledge is power, nor, if the schoolmaster himself said so, would he believe a word of it; he sees with his own eyes that knowledge will not buy brandyballs, almond rock, or lollypops: he

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knows, as well as if he had read it in a treatise of natural theology, that the schoolmaster himself, with all his knowledge, would not be able to lay his hands upon a halfpenny worth of sweet stuff without the halfpenny; thus, by syllogistic deduction, the urchin arrives at the incontrovertible conclusion, that halfpence is power; à fortiori, the reasoning is good as to pence, shillings, and pounds sterling, and upon this principle the education of your Cockney urchin begins, proceeds, and terminates.

The precocity of these children of Mammon often approaches the ridiculous: we have seen a babe of two years old lying in a costermonger's cart, coupled by a leathern strap to a ferocious bull-dog, which, grinning and barking at every one who approached the cart, nevertheless found time, in the intervals of his watchful care, to lick and fondle with apparent affection the child of his master: we have been sufficiently amused with another urchin, the infant of a cad, who had the little fellow strapped to the "bus," and took the greatest delight in instructing him to hold up his tiny finger, and to cry, at the top of his squeaking voice, "Oney tickspence to te Bank,-oney tickspence to te Bank!"

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The natural effect of this commer cial education is obvious, in a precocious astuteness, rarely or never to be found among the inhabitants of country places there the little children really are little children, here they are little men. Their ideas run solely upon money and money matters. They talk familiarly of" browns," "joeys,"" tanners," and "bobs," by which you are to understand current coins of the realm. Their ambition is to go to place as errand boys as soon as they are breeched, and to get "five bob" a-week and their "wittles." That there are objections to the education, as at present conducted, of the rising cockneys, we admit; but it is the objection of a good thing carried to excess, or rather pursued in exclusion of other things also good: but, when we consider that the business of life, with the mass of the population, is to gain a livelihood; and that, in a forced and highly artificial state of society, all human energies must be taxed to the utmost, it is clear that the education for this sort of life must

needs be less an education of principles than of habits: the misfortune is, that while habits of industry and economy are cultivated to excess, principles of religion and morality are sadly neglected; so that nothing is more common, in this vast metropolis, than honest rogues and industrious profligates.

The labour of London life is not only carried on by day and all hours of the day, but by night and all hours of the night:

"Nocturno versantur manu, versantur diurno."

Let us glance, superficially and cursorily, at the industry of a London twenty-four hours. Towards midnight, and by the time you have attained the luxurious oblivion of your first sleep, your breakfast-nay, your dinner and supper, of the coming day are being prepared; two or three hours before, thousands of your fellow creatures have been snatching hours froin rest, to cart and pack the vegetables that will form a portion of your principal meal; and, if you are wakeful, the ponderous rumbling of waggon wheels over the rocky pavement, apprize you of this transit to the vast emporium of Covent Gardenthan which, no garden of ancient or of modern times boasts earlier or riper fruits, or sooner rifles the budding treasures of the spring. From the north, droves of sheep, oxen, and swine, directed by the steady herds man and the sagacions dog, thread the suburban neighbourhoods on their way to Smithfield, where, long before dawn, they are safely penned, awaiting the purchase of the salesmen of Leadenhall and Newgate markets.

The river, in the dead hour of night, is alive with boats, conveying every variety of the finny tribe to Billingsgate; now are the early breakfast houses reaping their harvest, the bustling host, in his shirt sleeves, convey. ing refreshment to his numerous customers; here the shut out sot, and belated debauchee, are compelled to resort in conversation with the unfortunate and degraded of the other sex, to await the re-opening of their customary haunts of dissipation; now the footstep of the policeman, as he tramps slowly over his beat, awakes the slumbering echoes; every house

is shrouded in repose, and the city seems a city of the dead. All, soon again, is noise, bustle, and confusion; the carts of thousands of fishmongers, green-grocers, and victuallers, rattle along the streets, taking up their stands in orderly array in the immediate vicinity of the respective markets; loud is the noise of bargaining, chaffering, and contention. In a little while, however, they have completed their cargo for the day, and drive off; the waggons disappear, the markets are swept clean, and no trace remains, save in the books of the salesmen, of the vast business that has been done, as it were, in a moment.

Five o'clock gives some little signs of life in the vicinity of the hotels and coach-offices; a two-horse stage, or railway "bus," rumbles off to catch the early trains ; the street retailers of fish, vegetables, and fruit may be encountered, bearing on their heads their respective stocks in trade, to that quarter of the town where their customers reside; the nocturnal venders of "saloop" are busy dispensing their penny cups at the corners; and the gilded ball of St Paul's, lit up like a beacon by the earliest rays of the sun, while all below is yet shrouded in night, indicates approaching day.

Six o'clock announces the beginning of the working day, by the ringing of the bells of various manufactories. Now is the street crowded with the fustian-coated artizan, his basket of tools in his hand; and the stalwart Irish labourer, his short black pipe scenting the morning air with odours far different from those of Araby the Blest; the newspaper offices, busy during the night, now "let off" their gas-the sub-editors and compositors go home to bed, leaving the pressmen to complete the labour of the night. Now even the smoky city looks bright and clear, its silvery stream joining, as it were, in the general repose; the morning air is soft and balmy, and the caged throstle, lark, and linnet, captives though they be, carol sweet and melancholy lays.

There is an interregnum until eight; the shopkeeper then begins his day, the porter taking down the shutters, the boy sweeping out the shop, and the slipshod 'prentice lounging about the door; the principal comes in from his country box about nine;