of one or two particularly frowsy alleys forced
themselves upon the eye and nose of the
passers-by, they were treated with the
indifference usually accorded to such places by
Londoners, and the miserable dens behind
were ignored or forgotten. One of the many
original eel pie shops; the establishment of the
philanthropist, always anxious to supply the
colonies with second-hand clothing, and who
loudly proclaimed his readiness to pay a larger
price than any other dealer; the emporium of
the ingenious gentleman who sold the magic
donkeys, which jerked convulsively in the shop
window at intervals from ten to four; several
eating-houses, with all the contents of the larder
displayed in the window; a mysterious
dark-looking house, suggestive of the old Star
Chamber, approached by a long flight of steps,
standing back from the Strand, and forming
one side of a little open square, one corner of
which was occupied by the proprietor of a stall
for the sale of curious and unpleasant looking
shell-fish, with clutching claws like the Income
Tax collectors of the deep; the shop of the
high priest of pills; the large printers' and
newspaper office close by; these were the chief
objects of interest between Temple-bar and
St. Clement's church. Turning to the right
and passing through the archway—a task
usually rendered difficult by the crowd of
wretched boys, who swarmed and hovered
there, like wasps round the entrance of a
nest—two ways were open. The road to
the left led into Clement's-inn; that to the
right into some of the worst slums in all this
part of London. A glance at the ruffians
loitering about the doors of the miserable gin
shops; at the women, but one degree less
ruffianly and repulsive than the men; at the
youths in the inevitable greasy caps, and with
the furtive sidelong looks, slinking walk, and
close cut hair, of the genuine London thief,
was enough to warn the passenger that it
would be well for him to walk, if he must
needs go that way, warily and swiftly, and
with a careful eye to any articles of value in
his pockets. But, as the circuit of the
commissioners' land might be made by another
way, the traveller would probably avoid the
narrow fetid streets—filthy beyond description
or belief, considering that they were allowed to
exist in a civilised metropolis—where the crazy
houses themselves had a guilty, police-fearing
look, not unlike the wretched creatures who
swarmed about their squalid thresholds, and
from their over-crowded rooms showered fever
and cholera broadcast through the town.
Clement's-inn (though perhaps not the most
desirable place of abode in the world) enjoys
the advantage of light and air, and offered for
a time a welcome refuge from the filth and
squalor outside. Once through the inn,
however, matters were as bad as ever. The poor
little beetle-browed shops of Clare-market,
and the poverty-stricken customers cheapening
stale meat and rotten vegetables (refuse
of other markets) in the narrow gutter, were
but little better than the disgraceful
neighbourhood on the east of Clement's-inn; to
reach Carey-street it was necessary to pass a
network of streets, where all the evidences of
misery and squalor, destitution and crime,
were repeated at every step. Once round the
corner, by King's College Hospital, which rose
suddenly before the adventurous traveller like
some great lighthouse of beneficence and hope,
and safely in Carey-street, civilisation was
again approached. For, if many shady
businesses were transacted thereabout, and if
a good many very queer customers were to
be found in the upper storeys of some of
the Carey-street houses, the influences of
neighbouring Lincoln's-inn were strong upon
it, and the odour of law calf and clean new
books fresh from the printer's, took the place
of the complicated variety of evil smells
prominent in the regions left behind. The
solid volumes in the law publishers'
windows; the legal wig-makers, with puisne
judges, and even chief justices' wigs displayed
temptingly in the window, exciting secret hopes
in the hearts of sanguine juniors, but looked
upon more coldly by disappointed seniors;
these, and the passing fat red bags full of
anything but faggot briefs, diffused an air of
respectability and peace highly soothing to the
casual passer-by—unless, indeed, he happened
to have legal business of his own to transact in
the neighbourhood. So, a sense of something
legal in the air was noticeable in Bell-yard,
albeit the law publishers in that precinct were
to be found in the low company of newspaper
vendors, coffee houses, cobblers, oyster shops,
and all those smaller trades that seem to
flourish in narrow, airless streets. Bell-yard
was a great resort also of furniture brokers;
and the stimulating aroma of fresh varnish
flavoured the yard. Although the furniture
displayed was chiefly of a business nature
—office stools and desks, writing tables and
bookshelves, being the chief articles in stock—it
was generally supposed that any furniture
dealer in Bell-yard could furnish a house,
large or small, in the first style of fashion
in half an hour. So, under the arch by the
pawnbroker's, the wanderer from New Zealand
or elsewhere, came out into the busy tide of
Fleet-street. And at the little barber's shop
on the north side of Temple-bar, the circuit
of the Carey-street site was completed.

No time was lost in commencing the work
of demolition. The Strand front went first.
Lot 1, Lot 2, and so on, soon took the places
of the names of the old occupiers. Windows
disappeared, doors vanished, fittings of all kinds
were cleared off, and then adventurous men
were seen balancing their bodies far up on
tottering walls, and apparently bent on pickaxing
their very foothold from under themselves.
Lot 1 and the rest of the lots were carted off as
old building materials; foot passengers were
rather inclined to give that portion of the
Strand a wide berth to avoid the clouds of dust
and mortar, and the falling bricks that came
rattling down like hail, and occasionally shot
over the protecting hoarding on to the pavement.