on the City. I grant that. But run back
to the days of King Henry the Third, who on
one occasion, wanting cash, extorted from the
citizens five thousand marks, saying that they
could not object to giving as much to their own
king as they had just given to the King of
France; who, on another occasion, took from
the citizens one thousand five hundred marks
as fine for permitting Walter Buckerel to live
in London after he had been banished from
the kingdom, though Buckerel had been
pardoned by the king's own letters patent before
he returned to his country; who, in the year
next following, required another thousand
marks; who, in another year, talked about
raising money on his plate and jewels, but
remembered that the London people were
"an immense treasure of themselves," and
bled them by granting to the Abbot of
Westminster leave to hold an annual fair in
Tothill Fields, ordering every citizen to cease
from trade during the fifteen days that the
fair lasted, which order was to be bought off
only by a heavy payment. The same king
—who was indeed one of the fine old London
nuisances, all of the olden time—begged of
the town new year's gifts and Christmas-
boxes, and enforced additions to them when
they were not large enough. When
Londoners began to escape into the country, the
king fearing depopulation, promised them a
rest, and chose for a time only the Italian
bankers in the town for victims, then again
touched the purses of the whole community,
and when it proved restive revived Tothill
Fair. In those happy times, a prisoner having
escaped by accident, the citizens were fined
three thousand marks. The sheriffs not having
levied distresses with sufficient vigour to
secure the payment of the tax called the
Queen's gold, they were imprisoned, and the
City was deprived of privileges which it
recovered only by the payment of four
thousand marks. There were held folkmotes
in St. Paul's Cathedral, and great fines
had to be paid by those men who stood
forward on the side of liberty. In one year,
while the royal nuisance thus afflicted London,
there arose a famine in the town so great that
men were to be seen in the streets fighting
for carrion and dead dogs, and drinking the
wash erewhile given to the hogs. When, at
last, London made a bold stand against these
afflictions and marched out to fight the king's
army in Lambeth Fields, it brought upon
itself more losses and demands, especially a
fine of sixty thousand marks—quittance for
which, however, was to be had on payment
of twenty thousand for prompt payment.

We don't like to hear women shouting at the
full stretch of their lungs, "Mackerel alive-
O!" before we are fairly out of bed of
mornings. Well, shall we go back, then, to
the good old days of laws against forestalling
and regrating, which allowed nobody to
secure fish the moment it was caught, or
country chickens as they came into the town,
but forbade any huckster or dealer to
purchase anything of the sort before three o'clock
in the afternoon, after the lord king and the
king's servants had purchased what they
needed? "And if they who have bought fish
shall come after three o'clock let them not
sell that day, but let them sell to-morrow
morning." Little chance then of hearing in
a street like mine at nine, A.M., the cry of
Mackerel, alive O! No doubt the Jews were
not so noisy with the cry of Clo'! when on a
hint of the coinage having been clipped, two
hundred and eighty London Jews could be in
one day seized and executed. No doubt, the
sweep's cry was faint or unknown in days
when our rulers took care of our health by
prohibiting the use of coal. As I sit here
over a coal fire after dinner, it seems to
me that our street cries are notes of
liberty.

After my dinner! Busy with the pen, I
did not hear the entrance of our little servant
of all work—a sweet child whose sorrow it
must be that circumstances will not suffer her
to be clean. She has been here, however, for
I see a document now lying on my table
which was not there half an hour ago, and
upon it I see, executed in soot over "Mrs.
Caddypick's respectful compliments," Matilda
Slutt, her mark. This document contains
the evidence that I have dined, that I have
enjoyed liberal repasts of every kind not once
only during the past week. It always is
produced on Saturday, and at a time when I am
happiest. The sight of it is welcome, for it
abounds in testimony to the thoughtful
kindness of my landlady.

It is astonishing to note sometimes how
dexterous a woman is in flattery, what subtle
ways she finds of making a man happy in
himself. I am, let me own, something
dyspeptic, and always play a shamefully bad
knife and fork. I cannot help this, and
it would serve no good purpose, it would only
make me painfully nervous and alarmed as
to my bodily condition, if my weekly bills
reproved me with the failings of my appetite,
and told me in stern black and white, that I
am not a robust old man, and that my term
of life must be drawing to a close. My
landlady knows this, and, to please me,
has hit upon one of the most original and
exquisite devices I have ever noticed in a
world full of kind deeds. She keeps up, with
a gravity dictated by the utmost delicacy, in
all these importunate little documents that
must be read, the agreeable suggestion that I
am an eminently healthy and a hungry man.
She will not grant that I am unable to eat a
leg of mutton at two sittings, or to get through
a pound of butter at a breakfast. In another
way her little document consoles me. Owing
to my dyspeptic state the butter often appears
to me salt and rancid, and the juiciest rump-
steak will eat like a tough piece of what is, I
believe, called skirt. My bill satisfies me
upon all such points by the assurance that no