COVENT GARDEN MARKET.

IF there be any moment in all the four-and-twenty
hours of the nightless days of summer
solstice, in which the traffic and turmoil
of this mighty city of London may be said
to cease—at which that turbulent stream,
which is never quite run out, might seem to
linger for the turn of flood—perhaps it would
be found on the dial, not very far from the
hour of two ante meridian. There is an interval
of comparative stillness about that time,
which any patient disciple of Bacon standing
with watch in hand, might mark to a nicety.
It is neither perfect silence nor intelligible
sound. It is the momentary rest in the grand
symphony of life, which, before the chords
have ceased to vibrate, will gradually break
again into the crash and rush of instruments.

Since the clocks struck two, I have walked
through a full mile of streets where, in the
day-time, I am jostled, elbowed, and bewildered
by a noisy crowd, and have found them
all deserted; for I do not count policemen
for anything: nor an occasional proprietor of
a breakfast stall going loaded to his stand;
nor an Irish family sleeping on the church
steps of Saint Andrew's, Holborn; nor a jolly
angler whom I met trudging along an hour
before daybreak, with rod and basket ; nor a
row of scavengers sweeping the wood pavement;
nor the only cabman on the stand,
dozing on his box, with chin sunk in his coat
collar. All these, if I were about to compose,
in imitation of the writers of the last century,
"A City Night Piece," I might use from their
association with the "small hours" of morning,
to prepare the mind of the reader for a
picture of solitude and silence. Nor would
I hold the drunken man, whom I encountered
"tacking" in Middle Row—and with whom
I came in collision, in spite of a careful
attempt to adapt my steering to his—to be
less suggestive of the hour. But Lincoln's
Inn Fields should be my culminating point.
There is no sign of life there : not a glimmer
of light at any attic window : not one policeman :
not a sound but my own footsteps and
the rustle of leaves in the great enclosure.

Great Queen Street, too, is silent ; but I
hear a noise, like the tic tac of a water-wheel,
from a waggon crawling up Drury Lane, and
confused sounds of carts and men greet my
ear in Long Acre. A slow movement has
already broken out in the neighbourhood of
Coven Garden Market. Rows of carts and vans
and costermongers' barrows are beginning to
form in the middle of the roadway in Bow
Street. Lights are in the upper windows of
public-houses—not of inhabitants retiring to
rest, but of active proprietors preparing already
for the new day. Files of horses, jingling
chains at their heels, go down to stables in
back streets. Women and men with hampers
hurry on, all in one direction. The
early bird is not awake yet, nor, perhaps, is
the worm, but the preparations for the great
market-day are already begun, and my friend
Mr. Trench is at his post.

At his post! Mr. Trench's waggons have
been here since midnight. Speculators have
been already negotiating with him for the
purchase of whole loads of cabbages for Spitalfields
and the Borough Markets. Capitalists
who buy vegetables as a stockjobber
will buy scrip, have been tempting
him before daylight with offers to take upon
themselves the risk of a fall in the market,
by buying the whole of his stock at once : but
he judges it better to hold it for the regular
dealers. Many waggons, filled too high to
go through Temple Bar, have been already
sold in this way ; their horses that had gone
down to the stables for a quiet night, turned
out and harnessed again to take their load
away without "breaking bulk" : but the gaps
they have left have been filled up again, and
more waggons are coming in from every side.
The roadway is already blocked up, and the
by-streets are rapidly filling. Light vans are
unloading in order to hasten home and to
fill again. Florists' carts are setting down
their pots in every nook and corner ; and
pavement and kerb and gutter blossom with
balsams and geraniums. Work will begin in
earnest at daybreak.

Four hundred years ago, before the battle
between Town and Country gave any token
of ever reaching as far west as this; when
the struggle was so slow and spiritless, that
kings and queens had not yet deemed it
necessary to espouse the country cause, and
endeavour by solemn Acts of Parliament
to check the alarming increase of houses
in this city, and restrain the number of
the inhabitants thereof within reasonable