who did as they pleased with the valuable
ground which borders that line of road! A
great and important means of communication
between the City and the western extremity of
London, situated at a convenient distance from
the centre of the town and its public offices,
accessible to the fresh air which comes down
with little interruption from Hampstead and
Highgate, this site was one possessed of peculiar
advantages, and, bordered on either side by
trees and houses set back in gardens away from
the noises of the Road, might have been one of
the most attractive places of residence in London,
and, at the same time, a splendid feature
in our capital. But to have organised such a
Boulevard, it is necessary that the whole
arrangement should have been under wise
superintendence and restrictions. The buildings
which line either side of the New-road have
sprung up by degrees, have been built by
different contractors, at different times, and on
different scales of expenditure. Let us follow the
history of this thoroughfare from the beginning.

The New-road does, in the course of its
career, play many parts. Starting in life, at the
Finsbury extremity, as a prosperous tradesman,
it very soon, on getting through a certain
turnpike-gate which separates it from the City, seems
to pass in some way the bounds of the respectable,
and deteriorates sadly. It becomes a stick-vendor,
an apple-stall proprietor, a potato-can holder, a
sixpenny photograph purveyor, and is pervaded
generally by a hand-to-mouth character which
is anything but prepossessing. At this point
of his career, too, certain tavern-haunting
propensities are conspicuous, and Eagle Taverns,
Grecian Saloons, and Jacob's Wells (which are
not filled with water), at once account for, and
prey upon, his poverty. Emerging at length
from this degraded condition, our friend has—
as will happen to those who fall into low habits
—for some time an up-hill career of it. He makes
tremendous efforts at respectability, pretends a
fondness for water drinking, assumes a spurious
benevolence in surrounding himself with
infirmaries—always for some specially unpleasant
form of suffering—builds Penitentiaries, and a
Dissenting Chapel or two. It will not do,
however, and when he has been at this sort of thing
for some time, he suddenly finds that he is going
down hill very fast, and that it is necessary that
something should be done to keep him on the road
at all. He enters accordingly on all sorts of
lucrative, but squalid, undertakings; lends
himself to chandlery; goes in more than ever for
photography, in which he has always been more
or less concerned; makes fresh arrangements
with omnibus companies; sets up as a clothier
on Battle-bridge, painting his name on every
wall and gate within twenty miles of London,
and exhibiting pendent mechanics' suits of
moleskin clothing, to entrap the engineers and
stokers from the neighbouring railway. There
is no end to his energy and to the struggles
he makes at this particular time, or to the
success which might have attended him if he
had gone on. But it is not in his nature. The
worst part of his character is, that as soon as he
has got a little money together he will always
retire and play the gentleman. This he does,
immediately after displaying the commercial spirit just
mentioned, and, beyond some dealings with
Morison's pills, an occasional transaction in
dentistry, a certain amount of photographic
performance, and some small dealings in the
tobacco line, he may be said to live for a while
quite in retirement. Whether it is that these
means of living are more lucrative than they
appear, it is not easy to say, but he suddenly
builds a church, richly ornamented with caryatides,
and retires into a handsome square.
Here, one would think, might naturally come
a termination of his career. No such thing;
there are all sorts of new trials, new successes,
and new failures in store for him. After enjoying
his retirement in the Square for some little
time, he seems again to become straitened in
his resources, or to exceed his income, and
once more contracts very much in his ideas and
habits. But even this economy, and the arrangement
with the omnibus company, which is the
only commercial undertaking he has kept up,
proving insufficient to bring him round, he
is actually—and at a comparatively advanced
period in his career—compelled once more to
have recourse to business transactions on a large
and varied scale. It is melancholy to see him
obliged, at this advanced age, to struggle like
a mere beginner. He sets up more
photographic establishments than ever. He goes into
small ways of business, as well as large. He
sells zinc baths, and distorted chimneys, at the
same time that he purveys fried fish, sweet-
meats, and confectionary plums; he lets out
ladders, so tall that the tops of them are quite
dim, for hire; he keeps coffee-shops, with gigantic
teapots and symmetrical chops in the window;
he enters into relations with other roads
communicating with other parts of the town and
with Hampstead; he mixes his commerce
(having always a philanthropic turn) with soup
kitchens, and does a good deal also in the tavern
business, for which he has from time to time
frequently manifested a considerable liking.
There is no end to our friend's efforts at this
particular time of his life, and, from a menagerie
where you can get a silver pheasant, to a
confectioner's shop where you can solace yourself with
a penny ice, there is nothing that he does not
provide you with. Nor does he hesitate to break forth
into new exertions in the stone-masonry line. He
lays himself out to captivate, with stone lions, with
copies of the antique in the same material, with
griffins, shepherdesses, and drinking-fountains.
Nor is the cemeterial part of this exhilarating
line of business lost sight of, but, on the
contrary, weeping and shivering infants on tombs,
broken columns, and polished marble obelisks, are
to be found in the wayside studios: not to mention
the inverted torch, which would be the aptest
emblem of extinguished life that we could have,
if it did not happen that when a torch is turned
upside down, it usually burns brighter than ever.

The consequence of this tremendous show of