that the chief object of their Sunday morning's
sojourn is the buying or selling of
some articles of merchandise. From old
Simon Rybeck of Bremen, who from his
dress and piteous look you would not take
to be worth twopence-halfpenny, but who
from the depths of his greasy overcoat
produces dazzling bracelets, and rings of
price and necklaces such as a princess might
covet, and as you, my dear sir, would like
to present to your bride that is to be ;
from Mr. Levi, who wants to dispose of a
brocaded petticoat formerly in the wardrobe
of Queen Anne ; from Mr. Belasco, who has
some humming-birds, unstuffed, to sell ; and
brings them out, by handsful, till the table is
covered with iris-tinted feathers ; from these
down to Jewish lads and striplings, willing
to swop, buy, sell, or speculate on anything
in a small way — bargaining is the rule,
quiet consumption of grog or beer with no
reservation the exception. Old Mr. Rybeck
has just brought out of his waistcoat pocket
(after much fumbling and diving, and bringing
up rusty keys and bladeless penknives) a
dirty screw of paper which you would take,
haply, to contain a pennyworth of tobacco,
but which, unscrewing, Mr. Rybeck shows to
contain loose diamonds — four or five hundred
pounds' worth perhaps. From dirty hands to
dirty hands are passed about massive golden
chains and weighty arguments ; and in some
of the greasy, frayed, battered pocket-books,
which are from time to time produced, lurk
several of those autographs of Mr. Matthew
Marshall, the sight of which is so good for
sore eyes.

One parting glance we give at these strange
Sunday customers — these olive faces and
glistening eyes, and moist, red, pulpy lips.
Look around, ere you leave, at an engraving
on the parlour wall, of the New Synagogue
and the Jews' Asylum; at the passover
cakes over the mantel-piece, kept there from
year's end to year's end; and, finally, into the
dim snuggery in which Mrs. Cosher fried the
fish. It is very dark and very narrow; but
there is a rich Turkey carpet and handsome
furniture, and a great cupboard, making a
brave show of plate and linen. Among the
dinner-party damask you would find, I dare
say, a significant garment — Mr. Cosher's
shroud, which he wears over his clothes, and
walks about City streets in on the day of the
"White Fast."

A sporting public-house. Have you any
curiosity, gentle reader and student of beer in
its varieties to peep at the interior of a
"fighting- house." You have: then let us
stop our chariot before the sign below
depicted.

It is evening. The " mill " between Lurky
Snaggs and Dan Pepper (the " Kiddy"), for
one hundred pounds a side, is due on the
proximate morning. The parlour of the
fighting-house, where the whereabouts of
the fight is to be notified, is thronged by
professional and amateur members of the
Fancy. Hard talking has rendered these
gentlemen's throats rather dry. Beer is
indignantly repudiated as something too
drouthy and thin-bodied by these noble sportsmen;
and steaming "fours " of gin and " sixes"
of brandy troop into the room on the waiter's
tray in succession, as rapid as the flowers
from the inexhaustible hat of Herr Louis
Döbler. The parlour itself is a pugnacious-
looking apartment, grimed with smoke, the
paper torn from the walls in bygone scuffles and
punchings of heads. Belcher, Mendoza, and
Molyneux the black spar ominously at the
spectator from muddled mezzotinto plates in
shabby black frames; while a tarnished gilt
frame, on the surface of which a thousand
flies had given up the ghost, surrounds a
portrait, in oils, of Mr. Coffin himself, his
muscles spasmodically developed, murderous
highlows on his feet, and a gay Belcher
handkerchief twisted round his waist; the whole
painted by Archy M'Gilp (a clever man, but
given to drinking). This work of art is flanked
by a shadowy, evanescent engraving of Mr.
Figg the fighter, stripped to box for the
championship in the reign of Queen Anne. There
is a door, on the back of which divers accusations
of unpaid drams are scored in chalk,
against members of the Prize Ring. There is,
wheezing before the fire, an elderly bull-dog,
blind of one eye, and with a face so scratched
and scarred, and beaten out of shape in former
combats, so crafty, savage, and villanous of
aspect, that were I to see it on human
shoulders and in a felon's dock, a thought
very like " fifteen years across the water
for you, my man," would pass through my
mind. The parlour tables are dinted by
angry pewter pots; the parlour chairs are
dislocated by angry men who have used
them as weapons of offence and defence, or
who have exhibited feats of dexterity and
strength with them; — such as balancing
them on the tips of their noses, swinging
them on their little fingers at arms' length,
or holding them between their teeth. The
parlour company is numerous and not select.
In a corner, tossing for half-crowns in a hat
with Spanks the omnibus-proprietor, is a
Lord — a live lord, ye knaves! one of the
few live lords who yet support the P. R. He
is in a rough great-coat, every hair of which
stands on end like quills upon the fretful
porcupine, and known in sporting circles, I
believe, from its resemblance to the outer
envelope of a shaggy dog, as a " bow-wow
coat." This is Lord Shortford, Lurky Snaggs's
"backer." His noble father, the Earl of
Absentaroo (whose broad lands were recently
brought to the judicial hammer in the
Encumbered Estates Court, in the island of
Ireland), is a zealous admirer of the " noble
art of self-defence," even at this time of day;
he being on the wrong side of seventy, and
very paralytic. At his lordship's Villa-
Fisterati, near Cufficina, Tuscany, his lordship's