to his nose, and keep it there pertinaciously;
but it is only just to say that the market is
kept as scrupulously clean as possible.

Walk into this tannery close to the market
(there are so many which answer to this
character, that we are relieved from all
personality in the matter). Amid the compound
of villanous smells, much that is commercially
and scientifically interesting presents itself
for notice. The tanner, scorning the thin
skins of the sheep, buys the tougher hides
of the ox, cow, horse, and calf, and makes the
Leadenhall hide-salesman the medium of his
purchases—for Leadenhall Market turns up
its nose at Bermondsey Market, in respect to
the hide trade. Arrived at the tannery, the
hides are robbed of their horns, which
accumulate in a heap in one corner, destined for
the comb-maker, and the knife-handle-maker;
they are robbed of bits and scraps, which go
towards the formation of a glue-maker's heap
in another corner; they are robbed of their
hair by a steeping and scraping process, and
thus the horse-hair worker is provided; and
then they are plunged into vessels and tanks,
the contents of which had better not be
minutely examined. After months of steeping
and turning, the hides have imbibed the
tanning principle contained in the oak bark
employed, and they have become leather.
They are hung up, and dried, and beaten,
and rolled, and a tough leathery result is
obtained.

But a tannery is sweetness itself compared
with a fellmonger's yard, in which sheep-skins,
instead of ox-hides, are treated. Here's
a gateway open, with a man wheeling a
barrow-full of skins to a cart outside; but,
oh, the sloppiness of the yard within, and the
paddling about of the men in their be-slopped
garments, and the ground-level tanks filled
with slimy liquids of unmentionable
composition! Yet, if the wool will not leave the
skins without all these dirty doings, what is
to be said? By dint of steepings, and scraping,
and pullings, the wool is separated; it is sold
to the wool-staplers, while the pelts or shorn
skins are sold to the leather-dressers and the
parchment-makers.

Another peep: this is a leather-dresser's
yard, where the thinner kinds of skins are
made into leather; where, for instance, goat
and sheep-skins are converted into "morocco"
(real or imitative), or "roan," or "skiver,"
for chair-covers, bookbinding, shoes, slippers,
pocket-books, and hundreds of other articles;
where kid and lamb-skins are made into kid
leather for shoes and gloves; where sheep
and deer-skins are transformed into "shamoy"
leather for various purposes. And although
the processes necessary for this conversion
partake of the characteristics so often
mentioned, yet they are more interesting to
witness, on account of the ingenious
contrivances employed.

The smaller fabricators are many and
varied; the currier is one who softens and
perfects the thick hides which the tanner has
prepared; the leather enameller, the leather
gilder, the leather stamper, the leather stainer,
pursue avocations sufficiently denoted by
their names; and for all of these alike,
Bermondsey is the head quarters, the heart and
centre. So likewise of the parchment-makers;
the sheets on which legal documents are
engrossed, and the big drum with which
M. Jullien astonished the world in his Exhibition
Quadrille, might tell something of the
sheepish doings of Bermondsey; and the
clippings of these parchmented skins furnish
a size-making material. The sheep filaments,
which are literally "done to fiddle-strings"
in the classic regions of Cow Cross, belong
not to our friends of Bermondsey.

Stop a bit near the Spa Road Station; let
the eye follow the direction which the nasal
organ points out; you have a glue-factory
here. On one side are thousands of skinny
fragments, drying in the open air; on another
are the boilers and vessels in which these
scraps are made to give up their gelatine;
and on another are the stages filled with
cakes of the gelatine or glue—not exactly
"Wasting their sweetness on the desert air,"
but sharing it impartially among the railway
passengers.

Let Russell Street (Bermondsey is not
without this lordly designation) and its
neighbourhood claim your notice for a minute; for
here the wool-staplers have chosen to
congregate. They purchase the wool as taken from
the skins, sort it into qualities, pack it in bags,
and sell it to the hat-makers and the
woollen-manufacturers. Here is a waggon, destined
probably to the Camden Goods Station; two
men roll out from the warehouse a huge
bag of wool, another paints some cabalistic
characters upon it, another grips it with two
formidable-looking grapnels, a couple more
lift it waggon-high by a crane, and it is
forthwith deposited by the side of its brother
bags.

Should we wish to put to the test our
Bermondsey theory, let the Post Office
Directory—that huge mass of statistics—be
appealed to; and let us ferret out the tanners,
the dressers, the cutters, the enamellers, the
gilders, the stainers, and the stripers of
leather; the leather-factors and merchants,
the curriers, the fellmongers, the
skin-merchants, the parchment-makers, the
glue-makers, the wool-staplers. Here we find that
the leather-dressers of Bermondsey muster
thirty-eight strong, while the curriers are
thirty-seven; the tanners give us forty-one
out of forty-seven, in the whole of the
metropolis, while the wool-staplers number
twenty-seven out of twenty-eight.

Rambling about in search of these
Bermondsey characteristics, we play at bo-peep
with the railway arches, diving under them
from time to time, until at length we arrive
near our starting point, at that busy corner,
where the two great hospitals and the two