against machinery and cheaper labour, and
struggles against overwhelming odds. Will
you step round and see a family engaged in
this desperate encounter?"

"Is there no remedy? " we ask, as we go
out together.

"A very simple one. In the country—say
in Suffolk, where we have a hand-weaving
factory—food is cheaper and better; both
food for the stomach, and food for the lungs."

"The air is better, so less money, you think,
would be spent in drink?"

"Undoubtedly. Fancy yourself stewed up in
a stifling room all day; imagine the lassitude
into which your whole frame would collapse
after fourteen hours' mere inhalation of a
stale, bad, atmosphere —  to say nothing of
fourteen hours' hard work in addition; and
consider what stern self-denial it would require
to refrain from some stimulant—a glass of
bad gin, perhaps—if you could get it. On the
other hand, the fresh air which plays around
country looms, exhilarates in itself, and is
found to be a substitute for gin."

"I have also heard that the atmosphere of
London is positively detrimental to the
manufacture of silk. Is that so?"

"Why, sir," replies Mr. Broadelle, stopping
short, and speaking like a deeply-injured man,
"the two-days' fog we had in December last,
was a dead loss to me of one hundred pounds.
The blacks (London genuine particular) got
into the white satins, despite the best
precautions of the workpeople, and put them
into an ugly, foxy, unsaleable half-mourning,
sir. They would not even take a dye,
decently. I had to send down, express, to our
Suffolk branch to supply the deficiency; and
the white satins, partly woven there on the
same days, came up as white as driven snow."

Considering that both the worker and the
work are deteriorated by an obstinate tenure
of the present dense and unfit site, it seems
wonderful that the weavers themselves are
not as anxious to remove from a noxious and
unprofitable neighbourhood, as their
wellwishers can be to effect their removal.
From fourteen to seventeen thousand looms
are contained in from eleven to twelve
thousand houses—although, at the time at which
we write, not more than from nine to ten
thousand of them are at work. The average
number of houses per acre in the parish is
seventeen; and the average per acre for all
London being no more than five and a fifth,
Spitalfields contains the densest population,
perhaps, existing. Within its small boundaries,
not less than eighty-five thousand
human beings are huddled. " They are," says
Mr. Broadelle, " so interlaced, and bound
together, by debt, marriage, and prejudice, that,
despite many inducements to remove to the
country establishments of the masters they
already serve, they prefer dragging on a
miserable existence in their present abodes.
Spitalfields was the Necropolis of Roman
London; the Registrar-General's returns show
that it is now the grave of modern
Manufacturing London. The average mortality is
higher in this Metropolitan district than in
any other."

"And what strange streets they are, Mr.
Broadelle! These high gaunt houses, all
window on the upper story, and that window
all small diamond panes, are like the houses
in some foreign town, and have no trace ol
London in them—except its soot, which is
indeed a large exception. It is as if the
Huguenots had brought their streets along
with them, and dropped them down here.
And what a number of strange shops, that
seem to be open for no earthly reason, having
nothing to sell! A few halfpenny bundles ot
firewood, a few halfpenny kites, halfpenny
battledores, and farthing shuttle-cocks, form
quite an extensive stock in trade here.
Eatables are so important in themselves, that there
is no need to set them off. Be the loaves never
so coarse in texture, and never so
unattractively jumbled together in the baker's dirty
window, they are loaves, and that is the main
thing. Liver, lights, and sheep's-heads, freckled
sausages, and strong black puddings, are
sufficiently enticing without decoration. The
mouths of Spitalfields will water for them,
howsoever raw and ugly they be. Is its
intellectual appetite sharp-set, I wonder, for
that wolfish literature of highly-coloured
show-bill and rampant wood-cut, filling the
little shop-window over the way, and covering
half the house? Do the poor weavers, by the
dim light of their lamps, unravel those
villanous fabrics, and nourish their care-worn
hearts on the last strainings of the foulest
filth of France? " "I can't say," replies Mr.
Broadelle; " we have but little intercourse
with them in their domestic lives. They are
rather jealous and suspicious. We have tried
Mechanics' Institutions, but they have not
come to much."

"Is there any school here?"

"Yes. Here it is."

An old house, hastily adapted to the
purpose, with too much darkness in it and too
little air, but no want of scholars. An infant
school on the ground floor, where the infants
are, as usual, drowsily rubbing their noses, or
poking their fore-fingers into the features of
other infants on exploratory surveys.
Intermediate schools above. At the top of all, in
a large, long, light room—occupying the width
of two dwelling-houses, as the room made for
the weaving, in the old style of building,
does —  the "ragged school."

"Heaven send that all these boys may not
grow up to be weavers here, Mr. Broadelle,
nor all these girls grow up to marry them!"

"We don't increase much, now," he says.
"We go for soldiers, or we go to sea, or we
take to something else, or we emigrate
perhaps."

Now, for a sample of the parents of these
children. Can you find us a man and wife
who should be in Lancashire, or Suffolk, or