and from that time the association was virtually
extinguished, whatever became of the individual
feelings of its members.

How many victims may have been sacrificed to
this spirit of inhuman and revolting fanaticism,
no human being can ever know, and the day of
judgment alone can reveal.

COMMITTED TO NEWGATE-STREET.

IT may have been a prophetic vision of the
future, it may have been only the phantom of a
disordered digestion, but I saw it as plainly as
anything was ever seen by human eyes.

I saw the architectural masterpiece of Wren,
the national Cathedral of St. Paul's, as
black and as majestic as ever, up in the
clouds. I say in the clouds, for the solemn
glory had departed from its base. It was
no longer a mysterious temple standing in a
sacred circle, undefiled by contact with the
coarse trades carried on within the broad shadow
of its dome. The greasy, suety labourers of
Newgate-market, and the dead meat—the daily
staple food supply of metropolitan millions — had
at last oozed out of their narrow receptacles
in this direction. The thin, lean channel of
Paternoster-row — the ground that is traditionally
haunted by the bony authors of the past—
had been too weak and feeble, to stem that
sturdy torrent, which refused to be confined any
longer by any barriers, until it found a resting-
place round the statue of Queen Anne in the
open cathedral yard. The heavy quarters of
Aberdeen beef, the pink and yellow quarters of
Edinburgh mutton, the bullocks' hearts, the ox-
tails, the baskets of small joints, the carcases
sewn up in dark canvas bags, the smooth-
skinned pigs, were all piled up on the very
steps of the temple, in defiance of everything,
except the one necessity for finding room. The
blue-shirted guardians of these treasures, the
salesmen's men and the market porters, looked
hot, determined, sulky, and riotous, like persons
who had made up their minds to be trifled with
no more. The former ran their red fingers
through their greasy hair, flourished their long
greasy knives, and seemed to speak of the great
space underneath the cathedral dome, as if they
were about to turn it, by force, into a market
for dead meat. The Dean and Chapter were
fortunately not awake to hear these seditious
threats. The Common Council had debated
for years, the City architect had reported for
years, the City solicitor had drawn and reported
for years, and, in the mean time, the metropolitan
population had grown, had doubled, and
the food supply had doubled likewise. Thousands
of market-carts formed an endless chain
along Newgate-street, the Old Bailey, Ludgate-
hill, and the sacred churchyard. Thousands of
tons of meat poured relentlessly from loaded
waggons in Warwick-lane, White Hart-street,
the market proper, and Newgate-street, squeezing
through the narrow courts and alleys to the
cathedral columns. Thousands of butchers
hustled and bargained with hundreds of salesmen,
while hundreds of porters trotted by with
mighty limbs of meat upon their backs, or with
half a dozen knotted sheep quarters disposed
about their bodies. In such a storm the voice
of authority was hushed, the truncheon of
authority was placed upon the shelf, and rum and
milk were liberally combined to console the
abdicated beadle and the abdicated policeman.

I awoke, as all dreamers do. I discovered that my
watch had reached the hour of three A.M., while I
recollected that I had appointed the hour of four
A.M. to inspect, in reality, the market I had been
visiting in my sleep. I am not in the habit of
getting up at three; I am not in the habit of
visiting Newgate-market. The sense of some
strange, unusual duty had produced a short and
restless night, in which the coming events had
cast their exaggerated shadows before.

Not so very exaggerated, either, as I found,
when the market delirium was at its height. At
four o'clock in the morning there was comparative
tranquillity, and partial darkness. It was Saturday,
and a December morning. The hundred and
fifty salesmen, with their six or seven hundred men,
had not all arrived to open their shallow shops in
the narrow Newgate-street lanes, and to welcome
the arrival of two thousand purchasers. But the
six hundred tons of dead meat had already
begun to arrive from the different railways in
heavy vans, and signs of these deliveries might
have been seen as early as one o'clock in
the morning. Where the shops were not open,
the heavy baskets of mutton were thrown down
on the pavement before the dark doorways, as
the first rule for the carters to observe is to get
rid of their load and to get out of the way. By
five A.M. the whole of the courts, alleys, shops,
spaces, cupboards, and watchbox-looking counting-
houses were lighted up; the arrivals of meat
became more frequent, and the struggle to deliver
more desperate; the thousand and one carts
of the different metropolitan butchers took their
places in a slanting position along the kerb of
Newgate-street, round the black prison, in Paternoster-
row, and Ave Maria-lane, up Ludgate-hill,
and round the churchyard; and the business of
the market might be considered as fairly opened,
as there is any prospect of its ever being in this
world, while it remains where it is.

This business is tolerably simple in principle,
and consists chiefly of selling consignments of
dead meat, upon commission. There are a few
carcase butchers—men who kill their own meat,
and sell it — but not more than a dozen; there
are eight or ten licensed slaughter-house keepers,
with slaughter-houses not underground, as in
the olden time; and there are a few small
salesmen, who join to a small commission trade,
the purchasing and retailing of meat on their
own account. These are the exceptions in
Newgate-market, to whom may be added the
poultry-dealers, who carry on their occupation in
a small feathered space, not unlike a "Lady-
chapel" in a cathedral. The meat is sold by the
stone of eight pounds: a peculiar arbitrary
weight, in use only in dead and live meat
markets. The salesman is paid by a fixed