once opened, and we saw the master of the
shop devouring part of the only leg of mutton
upon the premises.

"Two shillings a pound for that leg of
mutton," said Cuddy, without the slightest
hesitation.

"Noa," said the man sulkily, seeming to
understand the eccentric but very natural
offer; " there beant too much 'ere fur my
fam'ly, an' I wun't sell to ony mun."

Further higgling was useless, and we left
this mockery of a shop, with the highway-
robber part of our character again strongly
developed.

"I tell you what, Cuddy," I said, "a
twenty-pound note in one's pocket at Stoke
Brewin is not of so much use as a pipe-light.
We'd better declare on the parish."

A few more steps brought us to the canal
bank, where we found another foodless tavern
stocked with the thin, sour ale; and as the
Stourport and its butty-barge had not yet
arrived, we entered the pale of mild dissipation
to drink ourselves into a better humour.

"I suppose Lundun be very dool, now?"
inquired the young lady who served us with
the beer.

"Dull!" almost shouted Cuddy, whose
gallantry was quite gone; " the dullest street
in the dullest part of the city, at the dullest
time of the day, and the dullest part of the
year, is a bear garden compared with Stoke
Brewin!"

I started from the house upon hearing this
speech, and was soon followed by Cuddy.
We found our friendly Stourport lying in
the lock ready to receive us; and by this
time we understood the forethought and
prudence displayed in victualling the boat at
London with fifty pounds of beef, obtained
from the great butcher who sacrificed a hundred
beasts a week.

The boatmen were preparing for the passage
of the Ellsworth tunnel (nearly two miles
in length) an underground journey of an
hour's duration. The horses were unhooked,
and while standing in a group upon the
towing-path, one of the child-drivers, a girl
about six years of age, got in between them
with a whip, driving them, like a young
Amazon, right and left; utterly disregarding
the frantic yells of a dozen boatmen,
and nearly half a dozen family-boatmen's
wives. At the mouth of the tunnel were a
number of leggers, waiting to be employed;
their charge being one shilling to leg the
boat through. We engaged one of these
labourers for our boat to divide the duty with
one of our boatmen; while the youth went
overland with the horse. A lantern was put
at the head of the boat; the narrow boards,
like tailors' sleeve-boards, were hooked on
like projecting oars near the head; the two
legging men took their places upon these
slender platforms, lying upon their backs;
and with their feet placed horizontally against
the wall, they proceeded to shove us with
measured tread through the long, dark
tunnel.

The place felt delightfully cool, going in
out of the full glare of a fierce noon-day sun;
and this effect was increased by the dripping
of water from the roof; and the noise caused
by springs which broke in at various parts
of the tunnel. The cooking on board the
boats went on as usual, and our space being
confined, and our air limited, we were regaled
with several flavours springing from meat,
amongst which the smell of hashed mutton
certainly predominated. To beguile the
tedium of the slow, dark journey — to amuse
the leggers whose work is fearfully hard, and
acts upon the breath after the first quarter
of a mile; and above all to avail themselves
of the atmospheric effects of the tunnel; the
boatmen at the tillers nearly all sing, and
our vocalist was the captain's straw-haired
son.

If any observer will take the trouble to
examine the character of the songs that obtain
the greatest popularity amongst men
and women engaged in heavy and laborious
employments, he will find that the ruling
favourite is the plaintive ballad. Comic
songs tire hardly known. The main secret
of the wide popularity of the ballad lies
in the fact, that it generally contains a
story, and is written in a measure that fits
easily into a slow, drawling, breath-taking
tune which all the lower orders know; and
which— as far as I can find— has never been
written or printed upon paper; but has been
handed down from father or mother to son
and daughter, from generation to generation,
from the remotest times. The plots of these
ballad stories are generally based upon the
passion of love; love of the most hopeless
and melancholy kind; and the suicide of
the heroine, by drowning in a river is a poetical
occurrence as common as jealousy.

There may have been a dozen of these
ballads chanted in the Blisworth tunnel at
the same time. The wail of our straw-haired
singer rising, to our ears, above the rest.
They came upon our ears, mixed with the
splashing of water, in drowsy cadences, and
at long intervals, like the moaning of a
maniac chained to a wall. The effect upon,
the mind was, in this dark passage, to create
a wholesome belief in the existence of large
masses of misery, and the utter nothingness
of the things of the upper world.

We were apprised of the approach of
another barge, by the strange figure of a
boatman, who stood at the head with a light.
It was necessary to leave off legging, for the
boats to pass each other, and the leggers
waited until the last moment when a concussion
seemed inevitable, and then sprang
instantaneously, with singular dexterity, on
to the sides of their boats, pulling their
narrow platforms up immediately after them.
The action of the light in front of our boat,
produced a very fantastic shadow of our