Palmerston has taken the trouble to sign
and Lieutenant-Colonel Jebb to endorse, and
which is commonly known as a ticket, and of
leave. And I think that the policeman who
comes up all at once like a sirocco, and
scatters the whole assemblage — William
Cockburn, fetters, banner, and audience and
all — to the four winds, shares my opinion ;
for he looks at the flower chewer, and the
flower chewer looks at him, and so takes his
life-preserver, his ticket of leave, and himself
down an infamous alley, and is seen no more.

While the fetters of Cockburn the transported,
jingle away into the extreme distance,
another dealer starts up on the
opposite side of the way. Banner, water-
coloured cartoons, pile of papers: he has all
these; but he is simply clad in a shabby
suit of black, and wears nor fetters, nor
particoloured prison dress. A red nose, in
passing, I may remark, is common to the
whole confraternity. The man in black is
bellowing forth the recital of the horrid,
cruel, and barbarous murder of a clergyman
and five children by gipsies in the north of
England, all for one halfpenny. In the next
street another banner, another pile of paper,
and a Seven Dials Demosthenes in the midst
of a philippic on some curious passages in
the life of the Reverend Mr. B—- and the
widow of General S—- , with the whole of
the correspondence between the parties ;
only one halfpenny. Some half dozen yards
from him may be another industrial, declaiming
the particulars of the Dreadful Assassination
of a Lieutenant in the Navy by a
young Lady of Quality whom he had
deceived and deserted — the perfidious
lieutenant being represented in the ordinarily
violent water-colours, as receiving his death-blow
from the explosion of a pistol, held by the
young lady, who is in pink satin with many
flounces. Further on, we have Revelations
of High Life in connection with the late
Mysterious Affair, by the unfortunate Earl
of C—- ; an imaginary conversation
between the Pope of Rome and the Earl of
Aberdeen, and one between the Emperor
of Russia and the Devil. Further on again,
a full account of the late serious Catastrophe
between a certain Judge and a well-known
Countess ; Death-bed Confession of Doctor
Richard G—-; and Awful and feariocious
cruelty of a Mother in humble life, attaching
black beetles confined in walnut shells upon
the eyes of her four young children, and in
that state sending them out to beg in the
public streets : these, all illustrated by the
water colours on the banners, mostly
interspersed with snatches of doggrel verse and
hoarse melody, and all price one halfpenny,
are among the thousand and one bright
chanticleers that form the Seven Dials day and
night entertainments.

Now, all these chanticleers, the crowing
whereof you may hear any time you happen to
lose your way in Seven Dials, and with which,
to a smaller extent, you may be favoured in
most of the back streets — in Clare, Newport,
and Portman Market, in Holborn, Leather
Lane, the Brill at Somer's Town, Tottenham
Court Road, the New Cut, and the Waterloo
Road— are all egregious, barefaced falsehoods.
The lieutenant in the navy has been
assassinated by the young lady of quality any time
these twenty-five years ; the unfortunate Earl
of C—- is the unfortunate earl of nowhere ; the
story of the Reverend Mr. B —- and the widow
of General S—- is as old and as trustworthy
as that of the unfortunate Miss Bailey and
her garters ; the death-bed confession dates
from the time of the Princess Charlotte's
death ; and William Cockburn probably never
suffered any greater judicial inflictions than
were comprised in an occasional month
upon the treadmill as a rogue and vagabond.
The public — particularly the Seven-Dials
public — must always have some excitement.
It is fond of a good war ; it is fonder still,
much fonder, of a good murder ; it does
not turn up its nose at a shipwreck or
a fire, when the particulars are sufficiently
horrifying, and the number of lives lost
sufficiently numerous. But the public cannot
always be accommodated with a good war,
murder, shipwreck, or fire. It will sometimes
happen that nations will shake hands, and
individuals with the bump of destructiveness will
refrain from cutting up their near relatives,
and sending them off, packed in tarpaulin, by
railway. Ships do sometimes reach their
destinations without any tribulation to the
underwriters at Lloyds, and Mr. Braidwood
is now and then enabled to enjoy a peaceable
night's rest. Then, the chief of the London
Fire Brigade, the unfortunate Earl of C—-
is roused from his slumbers in a back garret ;
the naval officer who used the young lady of
quality so cruelly, is deservedly put once more
to the torture of the printing-machine, and
worked off into so many quires ; the inhuman
mother again places walnut-shells, with live
black beetles in them, upon the eyes of her
helpless children, as she has been accustomed
to do on and off during the last half-century ;
and the barbarous and cruel murder of the
clergyman in the North of England is repeated.

The inhabitants of the Dials never seem to
become tired of these absurd figments. To
some old and middle-aged Dialists, the stories,
the doggrel verses, the wretched daubs on
the banners must have been familiar since
they were little children ; yet to them the
monstrosities shouted forth by the hoarse voices
of the patterers, seem always as welcome,
though quite as stale, as the threadbare jokes
of Mr. Merryman, the clown at the circus.
I have studied Seven Dials in their connection
with patterers these fifteen years durant ;
and I am of opinion that the older the cock the
more it is admired. It takes a long time for
a new thing to impress itself upon the Seven
Dials mind. Soap, although patent, is scarcely
yet recognised in that district. Water is yet