sweeper munches a huge paralellopipedon
of bread and treacle, bestowed on him, no
doubt, by some kindly spinster in the
neighbourhood; the policeman leans somewhat
lazily against a railing, notwithstanding the
cold. He looks plethoric, dyspeptic. Goodness!
what number of supports has that municipal
officer consumed with what number
of cooks? How many puddings, in their
raw state, has he tasted? How many sly
little nuggets of noble joints have been broiled
for him? How many sausages—  links in that
chain which binds the turkey to our heart—
will be missing to-morrow, owing to his
Christmas Eve rapacity. Will X 99 dine? Of
course he will; and Mrs. Policeman X 99 is
at this moment concluding the purchase of
a mighty piece of pork and a colossal
amalgamation of cabbages, known in the
precincts of the Brill, Somers Town, where
the transaction takes place, as a "green:"
which pork and green will cheer the heart of
honest X 99 when he comes off duty.

As it grows later on Christmas Eve, hot
elder wine comes out at comers of streets.
A polished, brazen urn sends up a fragrant
steam in the midst of lamps, and glasses,
and heaps of rusks; while its proprietor,
boasting of its power to make the coldest
individual as warm as a toast in one moment,
swings his arms across his chest, and runs
to and fro, in front of his establishment,
with a blueness of nose that rather exposes
the weakness of his case to thoughtful
minds. I have time to turn down one of the
alleys in this neighbourhood. I have known
this part from childhood. It is not much
changed since I thought it a lawless place,
inhabited chiefly by boys with whom my
white collar and general cleanliness were
the unfortunate causes of much irritation.
Some weavers live in it; as frequent announcements
of "Rooms to let, with standing for
loom and quilling, at three shillings per week,"
will confirm. But the majority are cabinet-
makers—  sallow men, whose hair and clothes
are full of mahogany dust. Some of them
buy bits of wood cheap, and make up complete
articles to be sold as soon as made, for
anything they will fetch. Others make only
some portion of an article, of which they
scarcely know the use, and by long habit grow
swift-fingered, to keep up with falling prices.
Out of their branch of labour, they are for
the most part stupid. Mangling seems to be
done everywhere. Children are taken in to
mind at twopence per day. There is a court,
with the announcement, " Small houses to let
up this passage, at three shillings and sixpence
per week." But the houses in this poor
neighbourhood are mostly high. Some have once
been a kind of mansion, when perhaps there
were few houses near. They stood at that
time, very likely, in gardens, and in the
midst of fields; for of the once rural character
of the neighbourhood the names of streets
and places still tell. One of these is now
inhabited by some twenty poor families, and
has strangely fallen from its old gentility
Another is shut up; perhaps too ruinous for
habitation. Every window in the front is
broken, in consequence of a ghost which has
been seen there at various times—  off and on—
for some years past. There seems a general
love of animals in these parts. Dog-fanciers
are in every street, and stuffers of birds,
beasts, and fishes. One of them exhibits a
cat with two heads in a glass-case, as well as
a canine coincidence with the Siamese twins.
The canine twins I suspect to have been
strangers to each other previously to their
decease.

Next to the chandlers' shops, the rag-shops
are the most numerous in the poor
neighbourhood. The rag-shop keeper has been
betrayed into poetry by the advent of Christmas.
He gives the highest price for anything,
from kitchen stuff to a highly- coloured
and tinselled portrait of Kean as Richard the
Third. His shop is covered with bills, having
pictures of the once popular Jim Crow and
his wife, and profane portraits of the Parish
Beadle, and an enormous representation of a
Christmas pudding. The shaving shops are
also numerous. One Trinnick, Easy Shaver,
long established in this part, with a fine head
of hair, takes the opportunity of the season
positively and with pleasure to assert, that
having given the whole of his time, up to the
present period of his life (age not stated;
though he appears to the writer, allowing for
the effects of art, to be about forty) to the
study of the human frame, he is capable
of making an improvement that will astonish
every person giving him a trial. Jireh
Meeting proposes to improve Christmas Day
with Discourses upon Death and Flames. Its
appeals to the profane are disguised under
such titles as " The Christmas Fire," and
"Emigration; " the former, terminating in a
graceful allusion to the general conflagration
of the world, and the latter referring to a
land of promise, the precise locality whereof,
as well as the only direct road to which, will
be communicated to any sinner who will enter
by the little back door of Jireh Meeting, and
consult an oracle certainly not inspired with
grammar. The Ragged School is not wanting
in the poor neighbourhood. There, too, there
is to be a feast to-morrow.

Dusk puts an end to these observations.
I can tell the direction of the busy street by
a long red flare in the sky, as if there were a
great fire that way. A full stop, and a new
paragraph will take us back there again.

The street, from end to end, is in a blaze of
gas. Pavement and roadway are filled with
people, so that I can hardly get along. No
cab or coach that values time would think
of driving down this way to-night. The
street has become one great fair, with such a
hubbub of cries, that I am stunned. The
greengrocer's house is covered with vegetables
from basement to pavement, and looks like an