"Ah, that's the difficulty," said Brumpton.
"In 1808, it was proposed to remove the
market to the ' open fields '—Clerkenwellfields;
but, twenty years afterwards, there
was not a blade of grass to be seen near the
place. It was covered with bricks and
mortar. Rahere-street—in the midst of a
dense neighbourhood—now stands on the very
spot that was suggested. Again, only last
year a field between Camden-town and
Holloway was proposed; but since then, houses
have been built up to the very hedge that
incloses it."

"Islington market seems not to answer."

"No; I think it lies too low. They can't
drain it properly."

"What is to be done, then?"

"I 'll tell you what I think would be best.
Let a good site be fixed upon; and don't rest
contented with that. Fence off, also, a certain
space around it with appropriate approaches.
Let these be kept sacred from innovating
bricks. Deal with a new cattle-market as the
Board of Health proposes to deal with
cemeteries. Isolate it. Allow of no buildings,
except for market purposes—of no encroachments
whatever—either upon the area itself
or its new approaches."

Mr. Bovington was about to hazard a
remark about abattoirs, when deafening cries
again arose in the street.

"Mad bull! mad bull! mad bull!"
resounded from Smithfield-bars.

"Mad bull! mad bull! " was echoed from
the uttermost ends of St. John Street.

Bovington looked out of window. A fine
black ox was tearing furiously along the
pavement. Women were screaming and
rushing into shops, children scrambling out
of the road, men hiding themselves in doorways,
boys in ecstacies of rapture, drovers as
mad as the bull tearing after him, sheep getting
under the wheels of hackney-coaches, dogs
half choking themselves with worrying the
wool off their backs, pigs obstinately connecting
themselves with a hearse and funeral, other
oxen looking into public-houses—everybody
and everything disorganised, no sort of animal
able to go where it wanted or was wanted;
nothing in its right place; everything wrong
everywhere; all the town in a brain fever
because of this infernal market!

The mad bull was Mr. Bovington's West
Highlander. He was quite prepared for it.
When he saw him going round the corner,
and at the same moment beheld a nursemaid,
a baby, and a baked potato-can, fly into the air
in opposite directions, he was horrified, but not
surprised. He followed his West Highlander.
He followed the crowd tearing after his West
Highlander, down St. John Street, through
Jerusalem-passage, along Clerkenwell Green,
up a hill, and down an alley. He passed two
disabled apple-women, a fractured shop-front,
an old man being put into a cab and taken to
the hospital. At last, he traced the favourite of
his herds into a back parlour in Liquorpond
Street, into which he had violently intruded
through a tripe-shop, and where he was being
slaughtered for his own peace and for the
safety of the neighbourhood; but not at all to
the satisfaction of an invalid who had leaped
out of a turn-up bedstead, into the little yard
behind. The carcass of the West Highlander
was sold to a butcher for a sum which paid
about half of what was demanded, from its
owner, for compensation to the different
victims of its fury.

Mr. Bovington returned to Long Hornets
a 'wiser,' though certainly not—commercially
speaking—a 'better' man. His adventures
in Smithfield had made a large hole in a
50l. note.

Some of his oxen were returned unsold.
Two came back with the ' foot disease,' and
the rest did not recover their value for six
months.

Mr. Bovington has never tried Smithfield
again. He regards it as a place accursed.
In distant Reigns, he says, it was an odious
spot, associated with cruelty, fanaticism,
wickedness and torture; and in these later days
it is worthy of its ancient reputation. It is
a doomed, but a proper and consistent stronghold
(according to Mr. Bovington) of prejudice,
ignorance, cupidity, and stupidity:—

On some fond breast its parting soul relies,
Some pious alderman its fame admires;
Ev'n from its tomb, the voice of Suff'ring cries,
Ev'n in its ashes live its wonted Fires!

THE MINER'S DAUGHTERS.—A TALE OF THE PEAK.

IN THREE CHAPTERS.

CHAP. I.—THE CHILD'S TRAGEDY.

THERE is no really beautiful part of this
kingdom so little known as the Peak of
Derbyshire. Matlock, with its tea-garden
trumpery and mock-heroic wonders; Buxton,
with its bleak hills and fashionable bathers;
the truly noble Chatsworth and the venerable
Haddon, engross almost all that the public
generally have seen of the Peak. It is talked
of as a land of mountains, which in reality are
only hills; but its true beauty lies in valleys
that have been created by the rending of the
earth in some primeval convulsion, and which
present a thousand charms to the eyes of the
lover of nature. How deliciously do the
crystal waters of the Wye and the Dove rush
along such valleys, or dales, as they there are
called. With what a wild variety do the
grey rocks soar up amid their woods and
copses. How airily stand in the clear
heavens the lofty limestone precipices, and
the grey edges of rock gleam out from the
bare green downs—there never called downs.
What a genuine Saxon air is there cast over
the population, what a Saxon bluntness
salutes you in their speech!

It is into the heart of this region that we
propose now to carry the reader. Let him