best of us. But misfortune, neglect, injustice,
crime, what you will, have degraded him to the
level of the brutes; though I know of no lower
animal who looks so low as that man looks.
He is charged with deliberately tearing up his
clothes in the workhouse. He is a bad subject,
a very bad subject, but his degraded condition is
pitiful in the last degree. Justice in her sternest
moods cannot fail to be moved by such a spectacle.
It made me weep—in bitterness rather than in
pity—I was angry witli some one—I was ready
to strike some one. Oh, will you tell me with
whom I have cause to be angry, whom I ought to
strike! God surely made that man in his own
image, and kept a place in heaven for him! He
may sit beside you or me above; why does he
stand so far away from us here below?

For two or three hours a day it is the Lord
Mayor's painful task to sit in that chair and be
a witness to every form of human misfortune,
misery, and crime; his the stern duty to reprove
when reproof seems a cruelty; to condemn, when
fate has condemned already. No man of feeling
can sit in that chair with an unwrung heart.

When the luncheon-hour arrives, the jailer
is still diving into the box for another plague,
and it seems as if Misfortune were aiding him to
perform the inexhaustible bottle trick. Every
time he puts in his hand, she has a plague ready for
him, a pickpocket—a starving creature who has
stolen a loaf of bread—a misguided apprentice,
who has robbed his master—a fraudulent clerk.
When we all thought that the box was cleared
at last, the officer managed to fish up from its
depths, a little mite of a boy, who was charged
with cruelty to a pony. The pony, yoked to a
little costermonger's cart, was at the door for
inspection. The boy, crying bitterly, said the
pony was his, and it was the first time he
had brought it out. He was not aware that it
had a sore place. On inspection, the sore place
was found to be a very trifling matter, and had
probably been made that morning by the collar,
which did not fit the new pony's neck. So the
juvenile proprietor was dismissed with a kindly
admonition. One sees odd things in a justice-room.
Here was a boy "whose head scarcely
reached above the dock," as the reporters
picturesquely say, who was owner of a pony and
cart, and a trader on his own accoun— just the
sort of boy, I thought, who might become Lord
Mayor of London. If he should ever attain to
that high dignity, I hope he will be indulgent to
the small boys who are brought before him.

Lunch is on the table. Where is the Lord
Mayor? Busy in the justice-room signing
commitments. We go to lunch without him, and
his lordship does not appear for half an hour.
When he comes in, looking careworn and
pre-occupied, the turtle soup is all gone, the pullets
are mangled and cold, the pies are exhausted.
Never mind, he will have a chop. And we, his
family and his guests, having feasted upon all
the delicacies of the season, and having talked
about plays and amusements, retire to the
drawing-room, leaving his unfortunate lordship
to eat his plain chop and potato, while his
private secretary reads over to him the letters
which have come in by the mid-day post.
Meantime, the business parlour is full of visitors,
clamorously waiting for an audience.

It is a very elegant, luxurious drawing-room;
but come to the window and look out between
those rich lace curtains. What is that below
in the street? The prisoners' van. Everywhere
amid the splendour, start up the skeleton and
the death's head.

Mr. Gibbs, his lordship's private secretary, a
gentleman well versed in all the routine of the
office, well versed, too, in the history and
antiquities of the City, finds a few spare moments
to show us the cells. They are below stairs,
quite close to Aladdin's cave, within hearing of
the chink of silver and gold, within nose-shot of
the roasting baron of beef and the simmering
pâté. Cages of Tantalus! Look! Behind the
bars, huddled up in a corner, crouches the
shivering pauper in the branded sackcloth. In
the next cage, is an idle and dishonest apprentice.
Did he ever dream of being Lord Mayor of
London and living in the Mansion House?
Poor lad, he has entered the Palace in the City
by the wrong gate.

Mr. Gibbs is well acquainted with every
nook and corner of the palace—for palace it is,
and a very magnificent one too. Was not its
noble Egyptian Hall built after the model of the
wonderful Egyptian Hall described by Vitruvius?
We may trace its proportions, here,
among the wine-cellars. There are streets of
wine-cellars, their sombre doors looking like the
entrances to tombs. Only there are no " dead
men" in those tombs. Here we come upon
another of the Lord Mayor's cares. The
foundation of the Mansion House, laid down before
concrete was understood, has lately been giving
way. Workmen have for some time been
engaged in laying a new basis. In the process of
excavation they turned up many curious things,
amongst others, the smallest horned ox's head
ever seen. Perhaps the animal fell a victim to
mediæval Rinderpest. Item, a human skull with
the finest set of teeth ever seen. I don't fancy
that the owner of that skull could have been an
alderman, for his grinders seem to have found
exercise on the very hardest of food. Vol-au-vent
and patties were not known, I should say,
in his time, or, if they were, they did not fall to
his share.

Passing once more through the Cocket Office,
Mr. Gibbs directs our attention to the bill of
costs and charges for the banquet on Lord
Mayor's Day:

Dinner and wine ..................   £1600   0    0

Fancy that! Altogether the expenses of that
grand day were £3102. 11s. 4d.

Some of the items are curious. I will note a
few:

Pickford and Co., cartage of
armour   ................................     £41    0    0
Gas  ......................................     100    0    0
Hire of looking-glasses ..........       40    0    0
Insurance of pictures, &c .....           5    7    3
Wands and decorations ........        70    7    6
Gravelling the streets  ...........         7  10    0
Decorating Ludgate-hill ..........      40    0    0