saddle of mutton. Poor thing! she is anxious
to be at home and get Tom's supper ready for
him; and as for Tom, the sooner he gets away
from the public-house, where his wages are
paid him every Saturday night, the better it
will be for his wife and for him, too, I opine.
There are but few male purchasers of butcher's
meat. Stay, here is one—a little, rosy man, in
deep black, and with a very big basket, and
holding by the hand a little rosy girl, in black
as deep. He is a widower, I dare say, and the
little girl his daughter. How will it be, I
wonder, with that couple, a dozen years hence?
Will the little girl grow big enough to go to
market by herself, while father smokes his
pipe at home? or, will father marry again,
and a shrewish stepmother ill-treat the girl,
till she runs away and—Well, well! we have
other matters beside Butcher Row to attend
to. We can but spare a glance at that gaunt
old man, with the bristly beard and the red
eyelids, who is nervously fingering, while he
endeavours to beat down the price of those
sorry scraps of meat yonder. His history is
plain enough to read, and is printed in three
letters on his face. G. I. N.

On the pavement of this Butcher Row, we
have another market, and a grand one too.
Not confined, however, to the sale of any one
particular article, but diversified in an eminent
degree. Half-way over the curbstone and
the gutter, is an apparently interminable line
of "standings" and "pitches," consisting of
trucks, barrows, baskets, and boards on
tressels, laden with almost every imaginable
kind of small merchandise. Oysters, vegetables,
fruit, combs, prints in inverted umbrellas,
ballads, cakes, sweet stuff, fried fish,
artificial flowers,(!) chairs, brushes and brooms,
soap, candles, crockery-ware, ironmongery,
cheese, walking-sticks, looking-glasses, frying-pans,
bibles, waste-paper, toys, nuts, and firewood.
These form but a tithe of the contents
of this Whitechapel Bezesteen. Each stall is
illuminated, and each in its own peculiar
manner. Some of the vendors are careless,
and their lamps are but primitive, consisting of
a rushlight stuck in a lump of clay, or a turnip
cut in half. But there is a degree of luxury
in not a few; "Holliday's lamps," green paper
shades, "fishtail" burners, and, occasionally,
camphine lamps, being freely exhibited. I
don't think you could collect together, in any
given place in Europe, a much queerer assortment
than the sellers of the articles exposed,
were it not the buyers thereof. Here are
brawny costermongers by dozens, in the orthodox
corduroys, fur caps, and "king's man"
handkerchiefs. Lungs of leather have they,
marvellous eloquence, also, in praising carrots,
turnips, and red herrings. Here, too, are
street mechanics, manufacturers of the articles
they sell, and striving with might and main
to sell them: and you will find very few, or
rather, no Irish among this class. I see
women among the street sellers, as I move
along—some, poor widow souls—some, who
have grown old in street trading—some,
little puny tottering things, sobbing and
shivering as they sell. The buyers are of all
descriptions, from the middle to the very
lowest class, inclusive. Ruddy mechanics,
with their wives on their arms, and some
sallow and shabby, reeling to and from the
gin-shops. Decent married women, and comely
servant girls, with latch-keys and market-baskets.
Beggars, by dozens. Slatternly,
frowsy, drabs of women, wrangling with
wrinkled crones, and bating down the price
of a bunch of carrots fiercely. Blackguard
boys, with painted faces, tumbling head over
heels in the mud. Bulky costers, whose day's
work is over, or who do not care to work at
all. Grimy dustmen, newly emancipated from
the laystall. The bare-headed, or battered-bonneted
members of the class called (and
truly) unfortunate, haunt the other side of
the road. There is too much light and noise
here for them.

But the noise! the yelling, screeching,
howling, swearing, laughing, fighting saturnalia;
the combination of commerce, fun,
frolic, cheating, almsgiving, thieving, and
devilry; the Geneva-laden tobacco-charged
atmosphere! The thieves, now pursuing their
vocation, by boldly snatching joints of meat
from the hooks, or articles from the stalls;
now, peacefully, basket in hand, making their
Saturday night's marketing (for even thieves
must eat). The short pipes, the thick sticks,
the mildewed umbrellas, the dirty faces, the
ragged coats! Let us turn into the gin-shop
here, for a moment.

It is a remarkably lofty, though not very
spacious, edifice—the area, both before and
behind the bar, being somewhat narrow.
There are enormous tubs of gin, marked with
an almost fabulous number of gallons each;
and there are composite columns, and mirrors,
and handsome clocks, and ormolu candelabra,
in the approved Seven Dials style. But the
company are different. They have not the
steady, methodical, dram-drinking system of
the Seven Dials, Drury Lane, and Holborn
gin-shop habitués; the tremulous deposition
of the required three-halfpence; the slow,
measured, draining of the glass; the smack of
the lips, and quick passing of the hand over
the mouth, followed by the speedy exit of the
regular dram-drinker, who takes his "drain"
and is off, even if he is in again in a short
time. These Whitechapel gin-drinkers brawl
and screech horribly. Blows are freely exchanged,
and sometimes pewter measures fly
through the air like Shrapnel shells. The
stuff itself, which in the western gin-shops
goes generally by the name of "blue ruin"
or ' short," is here called, indifferently, "tape,"
"max," "duke," "gatter," and "jacky." Two
more peculiarities I observe also. One is,
that there are no spruce barmaids, or smiling
landladies—stalwart men in white aprons
supply their place. The second is, that there
are a multiplicity of doors, many more than