of flowers. There is such store of perfume in
them that they are reckless, and, besides making
the rooms within delicious, scatter largesse of rich
scent to the passer-by; sun-blinds gaily striped
are drawn down, but still through the laced
curtains glimpses may be seen of splendid decoration
in the interior of the house; something may
be observed, too, through the open door, for the
servants have discovered that it is of no use
shutting it, the callers being so frequent. So
they stand in groups in the hall and on the
threshold. The small broughams drawn by
ponies as the moment's fashion decrees that
they must be, the barouches in which ladies
recline at their ease, and all sorts of other
equipages which I would name if I had the
luck to be a coachmaker, flash about this
wonderful neighbourhood with a swift precision
which does equal credit to the hand and
the eye of the driver. The diplomatist jogs
by on a quiet ugly horse, which he looks upon
as a liver-shaking machine, and which costs far
more than the fiery animal bestridden by the
groom behind. The diplomatist sits very far
back in his saddle, does not rise in his stirrups,
rides with a loose rein and a seat to match, and
would certainly tumble off if his horse were to
shy. From the great high-mounted chariot
with the armorial panels, with the two footmen
behind, and the inevitable old lady with a wig
inside, to the buggy drawn by a high stepper
and driven by a minor with expectations, all is
brilliant and imposing; even the Hansom cabs
which frequent these regions have a brighter
look than other Hansom cabs, and affect tartan
panels and varnish, after a singular and
vainglorious sort. Nor have we done with the
different kinds of vehicles even yet, for, about
this neighbourhood, ladies will drive themselves
in little basket carriages: while the curricle and
the fogy are not unknown. Is it a fashionable
watering-place or a brilliant capital? Are care,
illness, sorrow, death, known in such a place?
Who are all these people, and how are all these
palaces maintained? Where do the inhabitants
— where does the money—come from?

Bright awnings quivering in the summer
breeze, echoes of gay voices, rollings of light
wheels, quick stepping of untamed horses,
distant echoings of military bands—pleasure,
luxury, extravagance, have it all their own way
here, and a jovial way it is.

But the sun, which brings out the perfumes of
Belgravian flower-vases, glances on the striped
awnings, twinkles on the silvered harness, casts
bright gleams here, and broad and luminous
shadows there, this same sun has in another
neighbourhood (about which we have something
to say) other and dirtier work to do. In a
certain other region of this town it has to illuminate
streets and lanes so narrow and so tortuous,
that it is a wonder its straight beams can ever
get to the ground. Strange it is that they
are not stifled, to begin with, among the
stacks of gnarled and ponderous chimneys,
for if the fire is a purifying agent and sends
the noxious vapours of a room up the chimney
with the smoke, it is certain that such chimney-
produce must present some obstacle to the
downward progress of those already sickening
rays, and taint them heavily as they descend.
From the roof where the foul rags wrung out in
foul water, hang to dry, the sunbeams shorn of
their glory somewhat, but in no wise of their
heat, pass down the dangling bit of rotten
clothes-line to the garret window. This chamber
being fireless, may be supposed to vomit out its
impurities quite unalloyed by the adulteration
of smoke. The dead child, the other and younger
child sickening of the fever which released the
first, the horrible clothing saturated with
humanity, the mounting odours of the whole ill-
drained house coming up to this undrained
room—all these things are let out to taint the
sunbeam whose course we are following, as
it passes on its way. Luckily it has not much
farther to go. These houses in Bethnal-green
are not of lofty stature, and the garret windows
are seldom more than three stories from the
street; sometimes the houses are only two, or
even one story above the pavement.

Each of these rooms, let and under-let,
tenanted by from four to eight times the
number of persons that could live in it with a
common regard to health or decency—each of
them casts forth its great volume of impurities
for the sunbeams to suck in, as they pass on
to the ground that lies parched and denied
beneath them. Of the particular horrors, either
moral or physical, which those dusty rays
reveal as they pass from one story to another,
it would be useless, if it were practicable, to
speak in detail. Violence, cruelty, immodesty,
uncleanness, are here unmitigated and almost
unconcealed. Everything is perverted. Childhood
is old and careful. Infants, imitating the
violence they have seen about them from their
earliest recollection, are shrill and shrewish
with the smaller infants placed under their
care. The home is perverted from being a
haven of rest, which the man longs to get to,
and is become an earthly hell which he has
cause to dread. The women are perverted
to be unwomanly, and the men, for the most
part, to be like the brute creation, with just
enough humanity to make them more elaborate
in brutishness than beasts can by their nature
be. The air is perverted to carry from window
to window the monstrous vapours encircled in
a compound interest of pollution as it passes
on. The sun's rays are perverted, and instead
of bringing wholesomeness and purity with
them, draw up new wealth of nastiness from
every nook and corner, and, heating it to fever-
pitch, breed Death far and near.

Of a certainty this is a strong contrast to the
region first described, and he who passes swiftly
from the one neighbourhood to the other may
fairly ask himself whether he be still in the
same world, instead of the same town.

How terrible the change. The sights and
sounds how cruelly different. The awnings
here, are represented by some streaming scrap
of rag drying at a window, or by the patched