with the success I anticipate, I promise to raise
some memorial tablet in the sewer under the
palace, to mark my gratitude and the royalty of
the channel. If any reader think the mechanical
part of this story impossible, let me tell him
that two friends of mine once got into the
vaults of the House of Commons through the
sewers.

Soon after we left this spot, we came upon a
punt that had been poled thus far up the stream
to meet us, and carry us down to the Thames.
I took my seat with Agrippa, while the other
guides pushed at the sides and stern of the boat,
and I thought this was a good time to put a few
questions to the men about the treasures usually
found in the sewers. The journey was wanting
in that calmness, light, and freshness, which
generally characterise boat voyages; and while
there was a good deal of Styx and Charon about
it in imagination, there was a close unpleasant
steam about it in reality. Still, for all this, it
furnished an opportunity not to be thrown away,
and I at once addressed Agrippa.

"Well," he said, "the most awful things we
ever find in the sewers is dead children. We've
found at least four of 'em at different times;
one, somewhere under Notting-hill; another,
somewhere under Mary'bone; another, at
Paddington; and another at the Broadway,
Westminster."

"We once found a dead seal," struck in one
of the men pushing the boat.

"Ah," continued Agrippa, "so we did. That
was in one of the Westminster sewers—the
Horseferry-road outlet, I think, and they said it
had been shot at Barnes or Mortlake, and had
drifted down with the tide. We find musheroons
in great quantities on the roof, and icicles
as well growing amongst 'em."

"Icicles!" I said; "why, the sewers are warm
in winter. How do you account for that?"

"I don't mean what you call icicles," he
replied. "I mean those white greasy-looking
things, like spikes of tallow."

"Oh, stalactites," I said.

"Yes," he answered, "that's the word. We
sometimes find live cats and dogs that have got
down untrapped drains after house-rats; but
these animals, when we pick 'em up, are more
often dead ones."

"They once found a live hedgehog in
Westminster," said another of the men. "I've heard
tell on it, but I didn't see it myself."

"Of course," continued Agrippa, confidentially,
"a good deal may be found that we never
hear of, but there's lots of little things picked
up, and taken to the office. We've found lots
of German silver and metal spoons; iron
tobacco-boxes; nails, and pins; bones of various
animals; bits of lead; boys' marbles, buttons,
bits of silk, scrubbing-brushes, empty-purses;
penny-pieces, aud bad half-crowns, very likely
thrown down the gullies on purpose."

"We've found false teeth—whole sets at a
time," said one of the men, "'specially in some
of the West-end shores."

"Ah," continued Agrippa, "and corks; how
about corks? I never see such a flood of corks,
of all kinds and sizes, as sometimes pours out of
this sewer into the Thames. Of course we find
bits of soap, candle-ends, rags, seeds, dead rats
and mice, and a lot of other rubbish. We enter
these things in our books, now and then, but
we're never asked to bring 'em afore the Board."

"Do any thieves, or wanderers, get into the
sewers," I asked, "and try to deprive you of
these treasures?"

"Very few, now-a-days," he replied. "Some
of 'em creep down the side entrances when the
doors are unlocked, or get up some of the
sewers on this side when the tide is low, under
the idea that they're going to pick up no end of
silver spoons. They soon find out their mistake;
and then they take to stealing the iron traps off
the drains."

By this time our bark had floated out of the
broad archway of the sewer—an arch as wide
as any bridge-arch on the Regent's Canal, and
we were anchored in that pea-soup-looking open
creek that runs for some distance along the side
of the Equitable Gas Works at Pimlico. The
end of this creek, where it enters the Thames,
is closed with tidal gates which are watched by
a kind of sewer lock-keeper who lives in a
cottage immediately over the sewer. He
cultivates flowers and vegetables at the side of the
channel, and his little dwelling is a model
of cleanliness and tasteful arrangement. His
health is good, and he seems satisfied with his
peculiar position; for, instead of reading
pamphlets on sewers and sewage-poison in the
intervals of business, he cultivates game-cocks,
and stuffs dead animals in a very creditable
manner:

   He dwells amongst the untrodden-ways
     Beside the spring of Dove—
   A spring that very few can praise,
     And not a soul can love!

Let us hope that the sewer-doctors and their
theories will never reach him, or they might
painfully disturb his mind.

NEW WORK
BY SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON.
NEXT WEEK
Will be commenced (to be completed in six months)
A STRANGE STORY,
BY THE
AUTHOR OF "MY NOVEL," "RIENZI," &c. &c.

Now ready, in 3 vols. post 8vo,
GREAT EXPECTATIONS.
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.