for each of his four limbs, and he is fitted
with a suit of clothes. Of a pair of trowsers,
there is sometimes nothing left, except a
single button-hole; the garment is
philosophically put on; the skin of these miserables
is so bronzed, thickened, and tanned, that it
serves them as a vestment, as far as the eyes
are concerned, and gives the illusion of dress
to the passers-by. Providence, who, in this
country, has put an ingot of gold into so
many breasts, has clad its children with a
skin of serge. Every mortal, accoutered in
this fashion, and showing his naked flesh,
would take it as a derogation to wear a night-
cap, or a cap. They are crowned with a little
bit of hat; the same of women, even of
beggars.

Admire, on the cushions of that carriage-
and-four, conducted by a postilion in silk,
admire that young duchess, radiant with
elegance. Give a rapid glance at her spangled
velvet cloak, a master-piece of Parisian art.
In a fortnight the cloak will be made over to
her children's governess. (Query, whether
the lady's maid would allow of such an
irregular transfer?) Fourteen months
afterwards, the cook will sell it for old clothes;
the article gets greasy while becoming more
popular. Some stall-keeper will turn it, and
display its brilliant wrong side. Then it will
become faded, torn, unravelled, with fluttering
wings, like a wounded bird. In this state,
a mendicant will pick it up in the gutter, and
while holding out her hand to the duchess
for alms, will show her grace something
which she will not recognise. But the poor
creature has received three-pence. That will
buy bread? No; it will buy gin; and, in
the evening, you will see her children naked,
and grovelling on a heap of offal, gnawing
outcast vegetables, raw carrots, and cabbage-
stalks; and then the whole family will go to
rest upon a scanty layer of pulverised straw.
The national delicacy banishes such scenes of
famine to the distant shades of unseen
quarters. An insufficient remedy.

Before penetrating into the Tunnel, the
subterranean bridge which passes under the
Thames, we entered a tavern to cool our
exterior, and to warm our interior with a
cordial dram. People drank, standing around
the counter; and a woman offered in the
same basket, by way of refreshments, little
Malta oranges, as well as cold sheeps' feet,
half-cooked, which she presented on the point
of an iron fork, with a little salt in a
paper. These light pastimes for the stomach
are intended to charm the interval between
meals; judge from this of the sufferings
which hunger must inflict on such magnanimous
appetites as the English possess.

In the Tunnel—to which you descend by
a round hole some hundred feet in
circumference, decorated with bright coloured
paintings, and flanked by a couple of staircases
—the necessity of earning a livelihood
gives rise to painful industries. When you
have entered the double gallery, whose
vaults describe three quarters of a circle,
the air becomes thick and chilly; a cold
and humid vapour, laden with sepulchral
miasms, shuts in the view at twenty paces'
distance, in spite of the light of a hundred
and twenty-six gas burners. It seems as
if one would be sure to die, if one spent a
couple of hours in these hypogées (that is,
under-earths; but what will the Academy
say to the word?) which distil water
drop by drop, till it collects in black and
slippery puddles. Between each pillar, there
are shops, kept by quite young girls thus
buried alive. Smiling and pale, they offer
you glass articles, enchanted lunettes
(kaleidoscopes, perhaps), panoramas of London,
lots of small tinware, and foreign gewgaws.
There are puppet-shows and performances
on the accordion and the serinette in this
subterranean passage; in short, they
contrive to exist in this dwelling of death.
What maladies unknown to the land of
sunshine, must germinate here! What a
capital greenhouse for the production of
morbific rarities! But liberty is opposed
to the closing of these stalls, a measure in
which the solicitude of the government
would be doubly justified, in the interest
both of the public health and the public
morality; for commerce here is only a
pretext for something less respectable.

At this humane proposition to close the
Tunnel bazaar, we take our leave of
Monsieur Wey, with thanks and good wishes.

RE-TOUCHING THE LORD HAMLET.

THERE is a novel called the Hystorie of
Hamblet, printed in sixteen hundred and
eight for Thomas Pavier, the stationer in
Corne-hill, of which only one known copy
exists, and which novel or hystorie had
been originally published, as we are credibly
informed by Mr. Payne Collier,
"considerably before the commencement of the
seventeenth century."* It is to this novel
that Shakspeare is believed to have been
partly indebted—in other part, to the older
play, generally attributed to Thomas Kyd,
and which was acted and printed before
fifteen hundred and eighty-seven. This novel,
or rather hystorie, is a considerable improvement
on the rough chronicle of Saxo-Grammaticus,
and shows how the refining hand of
time ameliorates the incidents of old manners
in the process of historical repetition, and
that a tale thrice told is in very many
respects a different thing from one told only
once. How the tale was told in Kyd's Hamlet,
we have now no opportunity of knowing;
but it must have presented much gentler
features than the draught of it in the rude
pages of the Danish chronicler, since this