minutes in contact with a certain branch of our
metropolitan government, called the Lighting
and Paving, he would reverently inquire what
was the precise nature of the motives which
induced it (the Lighting and Paving) to keep all
the West-end and well-regulated neighbourhoods
in a blaze of illumination, and to leave
in Stygian darkness all those parts of our
metropolis which are known to be haunted by
disreputable characters, and which are
unmistakably the head-quarters of pickpockets and
other marauders. It is invariably the case that
in those regions where danger is to be
apprehended, the lights are dimmest and farthest
apart, while in a thoroughfare like Portland-place
you could see to read this article, standing
between two gas-lamps at an equal distance from
both.

A discovery of the exact principle on which
the Lighting and Paving acts in this matter
would be the more interesting, because it is
evidently the same which influences the
authorities connected with the ordering of our
police arrangements. The policeman and the
gas-lamp go together, and our constables are
ever to be found rallying round each other in
situations where there is plenty of light and life,
while in cut-throat neighbourhoods you shall
look for them in vain.

These audacious sentiments asserted
themselves very strongly in the breast of your servant
as, leaving behind him the crowded thoroughfare
of Bishopsgate-street Without, he penetrated
more and more into the remote intricacies of
Bethnal-green. The farther he advanced, the
fainter the illumination became, until at last he
looked about some time before he could persuade
himself that there were any lamps at all, and that
there was any other feeble light than such as
came from the few and melancholy shops, which
were thinly scattered, here and there, on either
side of the street.

But, if a dark street be a gloomy and depressing
thing, what is a dark public-house.
Accustomed to think of a gin-palace as a blazing
temple which sheds a brilliant gleam across
the street, and half-way up and down it, too, it
is a dismal thing to have to do with a public-
house which makes so little mark that it is difficult
to find, and which, when found, looks black,
and secret, and forbidding.

It must be acknowledged that when your Eye-
witness arrived at the door of the House of
Entertainment at which the Friendly Lead was
to come off, the aspect of affairs was not
inviting. Though there was little light emitted
into the street by the tavern in question, the
same complaint could not be made in the matter
of noise. Nor were the sounds which emanated
from the White Horse altogether of an amiable
kind; the Friendly Lead might be going on
upstairs, but it seemed not at all unlikely to lead to
unfriendly followings below. There was no time,
however, to be lost; your Eye-witness mounted a
wooden staircase which led to the regions above,
and, passing through an open door, found
himself in a large upper apartment, with a fair
sprinkling of persons of both sexes seated round
it, and with a very fair allowance of tobacco-
smoke, correcting any undue freshness and clearness
of the atmospheric air.

Your Eye-witness gained much obliging
information from a gentleman who was sitting at a
table close to the door of the room, with two
plates before him, one upon the top of the other.
When anybody, entering the apartment, put a
penny or twopence into the upper plate, this
gentleman, who appeared to be a sort of
treasurer, slid the sum into the under receptacle—a
soup-plate—and covered it up again as before.
The treasurer's discourse was explanatory and
terse in its phraseology. It was of this sort:

"You see, sir, a Friendly Lead is this here:
when a poor man—being a factory worker, a
jyner, a clockmaker, or what not—which this
'ere man himself is in the alarum business his
daughter being in the factory works at Gimp
and Twister's round the corner—well sir, this
poor man, not being this one particklarly, but as
it might be you or me, being a factory man, a
clockmaker, or what not, say he falls into distress,
gets behind, 'as a doctor's bill to pay, 'as to
bury a child, leastways 'as some hextra payment
to come down with which he did not look for—
what is he, being a pore man, to do? Well,
he comes to some friend as knows him, as it
might be you or me, and he says, 'Simmons,'
he says, 'here's a bundle of tickets,' he says,
'for a Lead; will you take a few and see if
you can work 'em off?' he says. Well, I takes
some, you takes some, and so does others of
his friends, and we agin works 'em among
our friends (promulging while we does so that
this pore man is in exiguency and want), and
these makes it known agin to their friends, till at
last a tidy lot is sold, being at a penny, tuppence,
or what not. Very well; he comes next to this
'ouse, 'spectable 'ouse, or it might be any other,
and he says to the landlord, 'Mr. Blake,' he
says—as it might be you, or me—'I want your
room for this night or that night, for a Lead
amongst friends and in a friendly style, as it
might be here or there or anywheres.' Then
they meets together, and each man as he comes
in, puts in his penny or tuppence, or what not,
into the plate. Well, sir, the hobject of all this
'ere, is to hease him—being but a pore man, a
factory worker, a clockmaker, or what not—to
hease him a little; and first one comes in, and
then another, and sometimes he makes a pretty
good thing of it, and sometimes not so much;
and then, being met together, perhaps some
gentleman, as it might be you, or any one
present, he obliges the society with a song; and
first one sings, or it may be another—anybody,
in short, as is willing to oblige—and so the
hevening passes till it gets to be twelve o'clock,
and the company being about to go, the party
who receives the money, as it might be myself
this night, he says a few words thanking 'em for
their pincuriary assistance, or what not; and so,
the money being reckoned up, is handed over to
the man as the Lead is for, as it might be you
or me, and then we breaks up for the night, and