white blinds of their windows can be seen
through the morning mist, and above the flare
of the market gas. They must be wonderful
people who can sleep in such bed-chambers.

It is not, perhaps, easy to overrate the social
importance of this dead meat market in Newgate-
street. After allowing for the metropolitan live
cattle market at Holloway, we may safely say—
although the statistics are extremely loose — that
the duty of providing one-half of the daily staple
food of three millions of people is thrown upon
the meat salesmen in these Newgate-street
courts and alleys. We may not only assert
that our present dead meat market is painfully
wanting in space, but that it contributes, in
some degree, by the difficulties it throws in the
way of the butcher's trade, to raise the price of
animal food all over London. The fact would be
ridiculous, but for its having a serious aspect,
that six hundred tons of meat, on any given Saturday
morning, should be squeezed, pushed, and
thrown, by some three thousand people, into a
web of narrow alleys, like the maze at Hampton
Court, to be torn and dragged out of the same
maze by the same three thousand people
immediately afterwards. To look at one of these
alleys, when business is at its height, you might
suppose that the houses had been slightly split
asunder by solid wedges of meat.

The market proper, which belongs to the
corporation, is an open, uncovered space, about
twenty-five yards long by twenty yards broad.
It can be reached by a few foot passages, but
only by one carriage-way, about three yards wide,
called White Hart-street, that will admit one
cart at a time out of Warwick-lane. Almost
every van that comes down this narrow roadway
has to be conducted by the market beadle to its
place, and planted with much ingenuity, so that
it may be able to withdraw when its unloading
work is done. Nearly every Stoke Pogis in
the country has a better market-place; while
Liverpool can show a range of buildings
for selling every article of human food, much
superior to what our chief metropolitan receptacles
for fish, flesh, vegetables, and fowls would
make, if they were all brought together. The
different webs of this maze, the narrow alleys,
the shops that have burst out between Newgate-
street — taverns, drapers, and Berlin wool
warehouses — the meat receptacles in Warwick-lane
and Ivy-lane, are all private property, rented by
meat salesmen, whose business could not be
conducted any longer in the sheds of the market
proper.

The old College of Physicians in Warwick-
lane, built in 1670, from a design by Sir Christopher
Wren, has been partially swallowed up by
the butchers, in their irresistible demand for
room. Looking at the octangular porch of
entrance, under the "pill"-surmounted dome
(according to the author of the Dispensary),
and along the passages, which look like
naves and transepts, to find them lighted up,
hung with all kinds of meat, and crowded with
meat buyers and meat sellers, it requires no very
great stretch of faith or imagination to believe
that St. Paul's Cathedral may one day fall a
victim in like manner to market necessities,
as it appeared in my dream. There was
a time when no eminent physician could have
thought, for a moment, that his cherished
college would ever be so desecrated; and so, no
doubt, at the present hour, think the Dean and
Chapter of St. Paul's, of their sacred temple. It
is not wise to be over-confident in your security.
Those who have any lingering regard for the
old market-place of literature — Paternoster-row—
and those who respect the sanctity of the
national cathedral, either from an architectural,
theological, or ecclesiastical point of view, will
do well in endeavouring to turn the ever-
swelling tide of dead meat in an opposite
direction, and in supporting the projectors who
wish to transform Smithfield into a great central
market for flesh, fish, and fowl. The maddening
traffic of the City streets, shows another
necessity for some such improvement; while the
contemplated centralisation of the metropolitan
railways, ought to afford increased facilities for
the more rapid and decent collection and distribution
of food.

What the proposed and accepted design for
covering in Smithfield may be, I suppose we shall
all learn in good (corporation) time. To those
who have looked forward to the costly Utopia of
a City park, it may prove, in any shape,
disgusting in the extreme; but lawns and fountains,
however beautiful, must not stand in the
way of hungry millions demanding to be fed.
A market-place need not be an unpicturesque
object, as our neighbours, the French people,
taught us long ago. The meat salesmen will,
doubtless, be in favour of warehouses over their
market, with a view of keeping down their rents:
while the proprietors of property in the neighbourhood,
and certain sanitary authorities, will
advocate a light, airy structure, well ventilated
at top. Whatever it is to be, in the name
of the present market maze, let it be erected
quickly, cheaply, and well! Let us feel, when
we go to bed, that our dinners are no longer
being sent to crowded Newgate-street to take
their bitter trial; and that our national cathedral
is preserved from dead meat desecration for at
least two centuries to come!

Just published, in one vol. demy 8vo, price 9s.,
A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
With Sixteen Illustrations by HABLOT K. BROWNE.

Now ready, price 5s.,
OLD LEAVES:
Gathered from HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
By W. HENRY WILLS.
London: CHAPMAN and HALL, 193, Piccadilly.