patiently the different trading stamps which
are to be set upon them by enterprise and
capital.

The floor is alive with heads, the roof is
alive with legs,—heads and legs of dark, light,
black, white, brown, and slate-coloured men.
I am disturbed in my gallery and my
reverie, by an insidious labourer, who first
makes himself and me thirsty by sweeping
a lot of dust, shavings, and broken brick
together in a corner behind me, and then
hopes that the workmen may have the
pleasure of drinking my "'onner's 'elth."

"How many of you are there?" I inquire,
resigning myself placidly to this
begging box-keeper.

"Eight 'underd, yer 'onner."

"Eight hundred at a shilling a-piece. A
hundred shillings is five pounds. Eight times
five is forty. Forty pounds for beer! Take it,
and be happy!"

A shout of joy rang through the building.
The heads wagged furiously on the floor
beneath; the legs kicked violently through the
roof of planks above. The lights began to die
out, one by one. The performances were over
for that evening. Sudden silence came upon
the weary ear at last. I joined the stream of
earnest, steady labour pouring through the
dark passages, over the sand hills and under
the sheds, into the street once more.

No matter what I see now, or what I may
see hereafter, I shall always believe, to my
dying day, that all that army of eight hundred
trained labourers, was, on the evening
of the twentieth of April, eighteen hundred
and fifty-eight, employed with all its will
and all its strength—not in erecting—but in
pulling to pieces, stone by stone, splinter by
splinter, and brick by brick, the mighty
structure of the Italian Opera House in
Covent Garden.

THE BALCOMBE STREET MYSTERY.
I.

SOME thirty or forty years since, there
used to be a great house, at the corner of
a hilly street, in that day known by the
name of Balcombe Street. It may be doubted
if any one could find Balcombe Street
now. Most likely, the commissioners have
long ago come down in that direction, and
quietly put Balcombe Street out of the
world. Oldest inhabitants used to tell
how it had once been a fashionable
neighbourhood, and there were dusky traditions
of a Chief Justice, great counsellors, and
other men of law, having rather fancied the
quarter, it being within an easy walk of
Chancery-lane. But these legal glories had long
departed. Dilapidation was quietly eating its
way down the street: down to the tall mansion
at the corner.

For that matter—showing as yet no signs
of outward corruption—it was a very imposing
structure indeed, and in the days of its legal
jubilee must have been glorified by the
presence of the defunct chief justice. It was
known disparagingly as Maldon's Folly, though
nobody seemed to be aware who Maldon was,
or where his foolishness had broken out.
Very likely the folly had never been paid for,
or perhaps Maldon had paid for it, and been
broken in consequence, or had been taken in
execution, or otherwise legally inconvenienced.
Whatever might have been the secret, the
neighbours had always accepted Maldon's
Folly as it stood, and asked no questions. It
was still a handsome, well-saved edifice, with
a high, cavernous porch, and abundance of
florid iron railing, twisted fancifully in the old
French fashion. Standing under the shadow
of that portico, having heard the great
knocker sound hollowly, strange influences
as of ghostly dinner parties, of heavy legal
merriment and sound judicial port, came
floating forth from within. Dark and dispiriting
was the atmosphere of the entrance-
hall, light from the church window over the
landing falling dimly on the great polished
knobs and thick twisted pillars which formed
the balustrade of the broad staircase. Overhead
there were vast chambers of reception,
where the deceased chief justice had doubtless
sat, and held his Ievées, and been waited on
obsequiously by men learned in the law.
This might have been in the awful front room,
which was garnished with huge immoveable
structures, in the shape of toppling cabinets
and creaking pillar and claw tables, which it
would take the strength of many men to
stir.

There lived in the old house in Balcombe
Street a family, that was, to a certain degree,
in keeping with the tenement; a lonely family
that kept to itself; that saw but few people,
and that were written down by neighbours
as odd and queer. Those who knew them
could say no more than this;—that they were
a cold, sapless, incomprehensible race, from
whom all the kindest juices of human
nature had been dried out. Who knows
but that, living in such a dark, dismal
atmosphere, might account for much of these
strange ways: perhaps, too, the having come
of a strange stock (the grandfather being
an eccentric who shunned his fellows, and
wore his clothes to rags, and kept on a cocked
hat in the house) had something more to do
with their self-contained dryness. This
grandfather had given up his soul in the
chief justice's rooms, and the cocked hat was
lying still in the drawer of a black oak wardrobe,
that fronted the mausoleum bed, just
in the same manner as Mr. Collier Lyttleton,
the grandson, inhaled law all night long, in
the dun room underneath. Yes, there was
the dun room exactly underneath: and one
round of the well staircase left you at the
door of the chief justice's apartment. It
was a terrible shaft, sunk clean through
the house; through which those who stood
in the hall looked up at the sky-light in