his wares according to established rule;
whereon the Irish giant is fain to apologise
and is absolved.

Thinner and less bustling is the crowd
under the Piazza; as, in obedience to custom,
we are compelled to call it. Hawkers of
account-books, dog-collars, whips, chains,
curry-combs, pastry, money-bags, braces,
tissue-paper for the tops of strawberry-pottles,
and horse-chesnut leaves for the
garnishing of fruit stalls; coffee stalls, and
stalls of pea-soup and pickled eels; basket-makers;
women making up nosegays; girls
splitting huge bundles of water-cress into
innumerable little bunches; and men who
write with their toes, possess the Piazza
from Great Russell Street to the entrance to
the underground saloon of the superior Vocal
Entertainment. The poor, light-haired, sunburnt
young man with the broken boots and
dusty appearance, whom I saw before daylight,
sleeping with his stick and bundle in
a blue handkerchief in the midst of the
market, has been driven from his refuge, and
has flung himself down upon the stone pavement
here and gone to sleep again. Before,
he bad for neighbours a thickset, sturdy-looking
beggar, with a black beard of three
weeks' growth, and a pale, dirty gent, who
sat back to back upon a heap of baskets,
and dozed and nodded with their hands in
their pockets: fondly trusting to a tradition
of other times, that here the unfortunate
might find a sure sleeping-place, without fear
of disturbance. They too must have been
driven out; but I don't find them here. I think
I saw the beggar slinking down Tavistock
Street in the direction of the Adelphi dark
arches some time ago; but the gent is gone
I know not whither—perhaps to wander about
the great squares further west—feeling himself
very much like Cain or the wandering
Jew. The sunburnt young man is too fast
asleep to hear anything of the noise about
him, or to heed the row of water-cress girls;
one of whom stops now and then from her
task to tickle his ear with the point of a rush.
I fancy he is dreaming of having enlisted in
the army; being on a long march somewhere,
and feeling very foot-sore, and anxious
for the word to halt. Police inspector with
the narrow waist and padded bosom looks at
him and kindly passes on.

The clock of Saint Paul's, Covent Garden,
is striking four; as, mindful of my appointment
with the Clerk of the Market, I mount
the granite staircase, towards the famed conservatories
on the roof. That gentleman is in
his little counting-house, giving an audience
to a few old Irish women, all anxious to obtain
a badge and number qualifying them to act
as porters in the Market. One shilling and
sixpence they have to pay for this, not as a
fee, but by way of deposit, to be returned to
them when the badge is given up. "When
we have got this, and satisfied ourselves that
they have given a true address," says the
Clerk of the Market, "we have some hold
upon them. No one will trust them with
goods without seeing a badge. There are
some hanging about the market now unable
to obtain a job, because they have left their
badges as a deposit for drink at some public-house
or beer-shop. We can't prevent that."

I am conducted higher up the granite
staircase to the roof; whence, leaning on the
stone balustrade, we (I and the clerk) contemplate
calmly the bustling crowd beneath.
This side (the eastern) is called the Essex
side, to our right is the Surrey side; the
waggons from those parts stopping always
at the nearest point. The crowd is busier
here than at any other part. "But not so
much confusion as there used to be," says my
companion. "We compel the waggons in the
markets, as well as the carts in the adjoining
streets, to keep a passage clear, as you see, on
each side of the roadway. A few years ago
they would block up the way entirely, and
dealers were often afraid to venture in far,
lest they should be compelled to wait until the
market was nearly over, to get released. For
this reason, some would buy of the nearest
waggons without troubling themselves to go
further. When the buyers complained, and
we proposed to introduce a better system,
many of the sellers opposed it. They had a
notion that the difficulty of circulation 'made
good for trade' in some way. But I think
they are beginning to be convinced now of
the contrary."

"An old story, and very like an allegory
in the history of two certain great political
parties."

My conductor catches my sneering, and
smiles. "As to Free Trade," he says, "it is
a mere habit with our market gardeners to
grumble at it. Perhaps it may hurt them a
little in the bringing of early supplies. Our
people don't get now such extravagant prices
for the first lots sent to market; but these
high prices were never paid for any great
quantities. For the rest, business is better for
all parties than it used to be. Now, we have
fruits and vegetables from all parts of the
world. Peas, and asparagus, and new potatoes
not only from the South of France, but from
Belgium, Holland, Portugal (though only a
few years ago the English residents there had
to send to England fur their supplies), and the
Bermudas: wherever, in short, they can grow
them, if the distance or means of transit will
allow them to be in time for the early markets.
Speculators buy these alongside the steam-vessels
at Blackwall or Southampton, and
bring them to market here. Our railways,
too, bring us tons from localities where
people never dreamt of supplying the London
market. Years ago we talked of Deptford
onions and Battersea cabbages, Mortlake
asparagus, Chelsea celery, and Charlton peas.
So we do now; but immense quantities come
to us from Cornwall and Devonshire, the
Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey, the Kentish