faintest image simulating the truth. Description by any hand, by even our own! would scarcely be worth the paper spoiled by it. Let him who would see them as they are, changing in aspect with every changing hour, walk forth among them, look at them, and at what is passing within them, and he shall see A SIGHT. We announce them as such; we argue nothing; we describe nothing; we merely assert. Within the last dozen years a mighty change has come o'er the spirit of London streets. Such erasions, such alterations, such improvements! High-ways made and bye-ways hermetically sealed; humble dwellings pulled down, and palaces built up; fields once verdant piled with houses, their freshness no longer visible; the air which once might be inhaled in its balmy purity now skulking suffocatingly and feloniously down the trachea, saturated with unholy, whitybrown, miasmatic dust; acres of tenements swept from the face of the land, and their sites converted into sights of squares, 66 places," and circumbendibi; trees cut down, canals cut out, churches levelled to the earth, graves desecrated, bodies exhumed-the veritable realization of the vision of dry bones! The less that is said, then, at the present juncture, about the streets, per se, the better; for this simple reason, that London seems just now in course of being rebuilt; and what it may be in even a few months of time, it would be difficult to foretell. Never, surely, was there in any stage of the world's duration such cutting and clipping of bricks and mortar as now. Masons are indeed the only beings who realize our young ideas of the magicians of old; living Aladdins they seem, each with his Wonderful Lamp, for they pull down and build up at a rub. Nothing less than magic trowels could effect the wonders they achieve. You walk to the spot where, a little while ago, you spent such a convivial meeting at your friend's house: it is gone, and with it scores of others-felled to the earth, all, as though they had not been. You turn your back, and anon a princely pile rears its proud front; but how it came there who shall declare? The less we say about the streets the better. We might mislead; for what we tell this month, may be by the next-mere " matter of history." Ethereal Powers! If our poor, dear, defunct fathers (rest their souls!) could but walk forth from their deathy homes, and witness the wonders that CHANGE had of late effected, how would they not lift up their eyes in very astonishment! Old things given place to new, the venerable relics of bygone ages mouldered and crumbled into destruction; and the things which but a breath of time back were wont to exert such allpowerful, all-subduing influences, scraped from the memory, with as much recklessness as the mud from your Wellingtons on a door-mat. This contempt for the old, and love for the new, is a very remarkable trait in the disposition of the present revolutionary times. Mankind bow the head no more to the treasures of antiquity; no longer esteem its dust as of greater price than mines of silver and gold. The glittering and perishable baubles of modernism have supplanted these once reverenced mementos; and the solemn and sad-coloured veil, which mysticism threw around the cherished remnants of fleeting times, is now rudely torn asunder by the daring hands of puny upstart flaunting Madam Change. The scenes and the monuments of the olden age are to stand before our eyes in sacred uncertainty no more; no more may we behold them as arrayed in the beautiful garb which the imagination once gave to their outlines, to challenge our awe and admiration. O! this thirst for change! Our very children eschew that which imparted measureless delight to their baby ancestors; the brilliant gold that once dazzled the infant vision as it sparkled on gingerbread spectacles, is now rejected, despised, contemned. The tales and the histories of the mighty of other days please and enchant no more; he who, though brief in space and of stature small, was, nathless, mighty in valour and fame, the redoubted Jack, the demolisher of giants, has ceased to entrance the childish heart, to teach the young idea how to slay. The modest Goody Two-shoes, too, now fails to point to the paths of infantine morality; the sorrows of Little Red Riding-hood excite no more heartbreaking sobs; and as for Cock-Robin, his tomb is closed for ever: the bard who sung his sad sweet requiem is forgotten quite, and the last tear to his loved memory has been shed. All have passed away, their glory utterly extinct; and pyronomics, hydrostatics, phrenology, mathematics, and other crabbed sciences, are the horn-books of infancy in these our days. Where be the streets whose narrowness made neighbourhood among the habiters therein, when man could shake hands with his fellow-gossip on the opposite side of the way; and venerable virgins, as they leant out of the first floor windows, might chat scandal, and descant on the mutability of human affairs? Where be the roads that made a journey an epoch in the lifedays of humanity; an era; a time to date by? Where be the habitations whose structure seemed imperishable, whose builders wrought for unborn ages? Where be those comfort-giving, capacious, and lugubrious vehicles, that once rolled in slow and unupsettable solemnity along, the portly, well-fleshed quadrupeds, in whom fleetness was a fault, and surety of foot a virtue? Alas! all that once was deemed permanent and endurable has passed into tinsel show and mockery; all that was once venerable has become a thing to scoff at by a novelty-loving world. A change, mighty and terrible, has taken place; and the hearts and the doings of the people, their yearnings and their callings, arevanity, vanity, vanity! Yet, nevertheless, the streets are streets, and as such they may be very laudably gaped at as a wonder. The extraordinary difference in their character is a somewhat hackneyed subject; east, west, north, and south, on whatever point located, In three great agents by which nature reduces an overgrowing population: why should gin, by whom such hosts wither away into death, be omitted in the category. The subject is a capital one for a mouthful of declamation,-but the pen. cil of George Cruikshank has preached, in one page, a better sermon on it than we could do in fifty. there is a visible alteration, not less in structural | prepared to "retire" on their realized fortunes. particulars, than in the manners, modes of living, | War, famine, and pestilence are said to be the and habits of action of the several natives. the city, BUSINESS is the god before whose altars all make sacrifice; at the West End, show, glit. ter, and aristocratical indolence are stamped on every stone and every strutter. Southwark, Whitechapel, Mary'bone, and other off-shoots, alike differ from one another in diversified extremes; all dissimilar, all palpable. In one region you shall behold nothing but equipage, ton, lordly bearing, and the outward and visible signs of luxury and affluence, in manifold abundance; in another, streets crammed with human bodies, hurrying hastily along in opposite currents, never ending, never stopping, continuous, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, but as if impelled by a resistless power. The countenances of these various grades in society are a capital volume for the study of the thinker; and if properly perused, a glance will be quite enough for the dexterous-will afford both recreation and profit; emulation, ambition, wealth, want, grief, happiness, anxiety, pride, servility, all the stimuli, in short, which agitate the bosom of man, being depicted in most legible print. Truly it is a brave book to read. The streets teem with variety; dull, bustling, noisy, quiet, dark, glaring in gas-light, wide, narrow,-in short, in every believable state and its antagonist (pure Hibernic!) that can comport with possibility. Whatever can minister to the need of man, in pleasure or in pain, in want or wo, in penury or wealth, are in them to be found. Hotels whose viands are as savoury as they are costly, hospitals for the sick, theatres for the gay, clubs for the social, police-offices for the naughty, lock-up houses for the debtor, gaols for the felonious, gallows for the convicted, and dram-shops for the drunkard. By the by, among the things of splendour to be found in London Streets, it would be a crying shame to omit mention of those establishments where death and disease hold their chief court,-where vice and human misery, in every conceivable form, congregate together, where suicide, "in progression by succession of degrees," is tolerated by license, and where poison, though slow the surest, is doled out to thousands at the small price of two-pence the " kwartern"-the ginshops. By day and by night are these deadly dens crowded: but chiefly during the night season are the orgies perpetrated. These shops are fitted up in most costly style, brilliantly decorated, and in one general blaze of light; crowded at all hours to their very corners by all that is worthless, depraved, disgusting, abandoned in human life;-men, women, children, and even babes on the mother's bosom, partaking of the deadly draught. Here drunkenness and pollution go hand in hand;—and amid the unceasing din of oaths and brawling, vice receives its most goading spur. Thousands are expended by the proprietors in the purchase of the "Free-will," as it is called, of these "Establishments ;" and in a brief space, they are well nigh all to a ma The city streets present an animating spectacle. At the hour of nine in the morning, they are seen thronging with living beings, pouring in from every suburban radius to the great city centre, like a walking torrent. One would think that London was almost wholly populated by clerks, so innumerable seems the mass. In business-life, punctuality is one, the very chief, of cardinal virtues; and as every poor devil lingers at home till the very last second of time, they all appear to be walking for a wager, so fleetly do they foot it away, to be at their posts in time! The omnibi and the stages, too, for the behoof of the more wealthy and the more indolent, join in the general race, so as to disgorge their cargoes at the Bank or Exchange gates, precisely as the various clocks are chiming the important hour. The interval between the last stroke and the quarter is filled up by the stragglers who, having loitered too long in bed or at the breakfast-table, are obliged to make up in time what they have lost in space by running themselves into a vulgar heat, blowing and perspiring like porpoises,-if porpoises perspire, a fact upon which we are not quite clear. We are almost tempted to picture forth a city clerk in this place, the opportunity seems so inviting; but he is too rich a bit to be disposed off by episode; besides, do we not design to give a portraiture of some of the leading London characters among our Sights? At about ten a different class becomes visible, namely, the masters, in cab and carriage, each looking as though the affairs of the universe rested on his individual shoulders,-the compressed lip, the steady eye, the furrowed forehead, anxiety riding triumphant in every muscle. This hour also brings into the field of vision a no less imposing variety, videlicet, those beings who look big and do the dignified upon ten pounds per annum and upwards of salary-augmentation over the small fry, as senior clerks. Compared with these, their very employers are infinitely less in self-consequence and importance. By about this time the city may be considered to have received its full complement of labouring humanity, and the bustle of the day is fairly com menced. Noise is a prime ingredient in the mass which constitutes London. An incessant din, one everlasting rumble is present; the cries of the cadmen blending with the hollow roll of the carriages, the murmur of myriad tongues mixing with the undefinable ear-splitting something, coming within the sense of sound. It has always been bad enough, but. latterly, it has become fearfully worse. in the streets, and, gazing on the exhibited wonders in each window, haply be decoyed to buy; but now, a portion of the public is in the omnibus, far removed from the temptation of the shop windows; and the eyes of the rest are obliged to be directed exclusively to personal safety, and they are glad to hurry on, uninspective of, and so, unallured by the choice exposures. Apropos of noise: it is doubtful whether the taste for street music was originally generated by the French and other foreign organ-grinders, who, since the peace, have visited our shores; certain it is, that we are becoming fast a musical nation. It is in the nature of improvement, (as of man,) to look contemptuously on the means by which it was first advanced; so that barrelorgans are fast falling in general estimation. Music of a higher cast, and masters of deeper science and more skilled execution, are, therefore, in nowaday request. Some of the streetbands of the present era are, in sober verity, getting to be of a really listenable quality; and if they proceed in their calling, with the same extent of excellence and rapidity which has recently marked their progress, Meyerbeers and Rossinis will spring up among us, thick as mushrooms. We make honourable mention of these pleasant itinerants, not only because they give a certain degree of character to the streets, but because we consider that this meed of praise will, as an equivalent, justify our non-distribution, for some time to come, of the "superfluous pence" which we are too prone to disburse among them. This is a benefit to both parties, and a loss to neither. Within the last few months, the leading | bus tyranny. The public was once wont to loiter thoroughfares have presented a novel aspect. Some three or four years back, an unhappy wight, in evil hour, concocted, for the blessing of the public, a piece of mechanism, to which he appended the name of Omnibus; an ungainly oblong box, upon four wheels, sufficiently huge to encompass fourteen souls, (bodies annexed,) and designed to "run" from the city Exchange to a suburban locality named Paddington. It is said that the deviser had been long in possession of a couple of hearses which-either people wouldn't die fast enough about that time, or the survivors of those who did, liked not the expense of hearsehiring-he was unable to bring into profitable employment. The brilliant idea shot across his prolific mind that by" striking" the feather pegs on the top of said hearses, knocking out a window or two on either side, and covering the sooty suit of his vehicles with a plentiful layer of yellow varnish, he might turn them to some account as a means of conveyance-if not for the dead, at least for the quick. The public love a novelty to their very hearts. Our hearses (now severally rejoicing in the name of omnibus,) took amazingly; and in process of time they multiplied exceedingly. In a great commercial city, a new idea is bread and cheese to thousands: the omnibus trade became too flourishing to be limited to what are called the," metropolis roads ;" and, in due course, the leading streets soon became themselves its chief mart; and so omnibi are, at this hour, as thick as rogues and blackberries. For the convenience thus afforded to every one individual passenger, hazard to life and limb is occasioned to innocent dozens; indeed, nothing could have been more capitally contrived for the peril of person to his Majesty's lieges, and for loss of trade to harmless shop-ral procession is seen moving slowly along; its keepers, than these rolling monsters. Competition, at all times an excellent thing, has had the fortunate effect of making their numbers numberless; and as the respective proprietors are enthusiastic in their rivalry to benefit a liberal and enlightened public, it not unfrequently happens, that in their meritorious ardour to recommend to its notice the best, the cheapest, and the fleetest vehicle, some slight mistakes occur in the occasional fracture of a few bones, belonging to people who are not sufficiently alert to get out of the way. Messieurs les conducteursCads in the vernacular-are discreetly selected, in general, from among the most incorrigible ruffians which guilty London teems withal; and the altercations between these worthies, by no means unfrequent, if not in strict accordance with classic taste, is, at least, managed with an eloquence singularly vehement, and, now and then, peculiarly striking. Although almost every leading street is infested with these vehicles and their insolent appendages, to the hindrance of all other locomotive traffic, the nuisance is tolerated as of course; for nothing can be put down in this land of law and liberty except by act of Parliament. The unfortunate shopkeepers, too, find themselves in a bitter bad plight from this omni The most incongruous intermixtures are often to be found "on the stones." Sometimes a fune solemnity made ridiculous by a motley and interminable string of waggons, hackney-coaches, cabs, and drays, all following apparently as an integral part of the mourning train; at another time some lusty carter is heard oathing a bit of the blood patrician for "cutting him out," with all the force that slang abuse can administer; a dustman's cart in close succession to the noble's carriage; the grimy, cindery, unshorn knaves, cracking their coarse jokes at the "warmunts wots keeping the old 'un's back warm" within ; the powdered and bedizened footmen the while looking volcanoes at the ineffable audacity of the filthy varlets' mistimed frolic. A "stoppage" is sure to provoke a bit of fun of some kind; every one knows it is of no use to be in a blockhead hurry, and all very contentedly await the removal of the distant and unseen obstruction, ripe and ready for any "lark" that may offer itself to beguile the tedium. It would be wormwood to many a proud aristocrat, if he suspected by what ignoble cause his passage was oftentimes arrested, and his lordly pleasures delayed-some costermonger's cart-wheel off, or haply his donkey down; occasioning as effectual a suspension of movement to a mile of vehicles as the preventive slap of a harlequin's wand. Be it, however, what it may, he must put his indignation in his pocket, be he duke or dog's-meat man. Such an occurrence is priceless, for it teaches a rare lesson of philosophy to those who are inclined to learn it. A rainy day in London is a treat alike to the sheltered and the shelterless. Business may not be stopped for a shower; and if it please the clouds to pour down Perth pebbles instead of water drops, those with whom business peoples the streets are not allowed to indulge in love of idle creature-comfort. None but the foolish ever dream of having recourse to umbrellas; but as the multitude are fools, so multitudinous are the umbrellas mounted in such an extremity. As politeness is admittedly at discount among the crowd in a storm, he alone whose arm is longest and strongest can hope to navigate his protector through the turbulent ocean of gingham visible in a soaking day. Such poking and pulling, such blood-mantling, such asperity! who in their senses might hope to escape the drench? No; let all people in such extremity prepare for it like Stoics true; umbrellaed or umbrellaless they must have it, and the wise know this. It is fine to witness a pure legitimate London rain, how it comes peppering down; not a mere drizzle-now a little harder, now a semi-cessation; but a true, right-lined, continuous, equable outpouring of water pellets from above; each drop the fourth of an inch in diameter, and descending at the rate of thirty-three feet seven inches per second of time, as correctly computed by the learned Leslie. You feel that the clouds really mean what they are about; no half measure, no make-believe, but all in downright earnestness. On such a day the rain is like the blood, in truth, a circulating fluid; for all are in motion, man, beast, cab, coach, and omnibus, -not a loiterer among them; all is pensive submission; and, like the impersonation of detected guilt, every eye is downcast. After the rain, comes, as meet it should, the mud; and is there anybody this side of CrimTartary, who has not heard of London mud? The mud of no town, city, province, duchy, or nation in civilized Europe is like it. Proverbial for the peculiarity of its attributes, it stands unrivalled by any plebeian mud yet known. Gluey, well-kneaded, closely-packed, and slippy, it requires the foot of genius itself to maintain undisturbed the proud distinction of man over the lower animals-erectness of body. He or she who, without a fall, can walk the streets of London carpeted with London mud, may walk any portion of the earth's surface, fearlessly, confidently, securely. Notoriety is of such paramount importance in commercial matters, nowadays, that the placarding plan has universally obtained; and a race of ragged peripatetics has accordingly sprung up, who announce, in various modes, the claims of various individuals to the patronage of every passenger. Some of this wandering tribe are furnished with handbills, for distribution to all who will take, announcing the sovereign efficacy But of Smith's family pills, for the 'cure of all diseases of the human body; the unapproachable excellence of Thomas's steel pens; the advantages of Frisby's filter, and so forth : others are cased in a couple of boards, cuirassier fashion, on which, conspicuous in four-inch type, is set forth the wonders of Mechi's razor paste; the speed of the Brighton Quicksilver, the hour when, and the place from which it daily starts; the bear, just killed, whose grease will restore hair to the bald; the public meeting, to be held this day at the Freemasons' Tavern, at twelve or one o'clock, for the purpose of taking into consideration the propriety of petitioning the Legislature, for the removal of the odious, unnatural, and flagitious tax on French poodles, and similar matters of equivalent moment. valuable as are the services of these walking advertisements, they are absolutely as nought compared with their bill-sticking brethren. This latter respectable tribe are of a superior grade, by reason, apparently, of a great natural gift— alertness of vision. The sharpness of a hawk's optics is a proverb; but no hawk, surely, possesses more intensely that searching faculty. If a house, by any chance becomes tenantless, on a given day, the next shall see its walls covered to the very chimney tops with posting bills, not a square foot unprofaned by paste. How they become possessed of the knowledge, no one may divine, excepting it be by intuitive perception. Cockneys are now so accustomed to the sight, that they have ceased to be, if, by the by, they ever were surprised at it; but to a stranger or a thinker, it wellnigh simulates a miracle. Times were, when walls were, under certain conditions, accounted "dead ;" but times are altered: instead of being dead walls they veritably seem instinct with life, teeming with information on every subject, most urgent to the necessities of mortal man. A placarded wall, housefront, or board, is in itself a volume full of interest, the perusal of which must inevitably make us wiser and happier; for every advertisement, large or small, is philanthropically designed for the comfort of mankind. Even to him who happens to be both wise enough and happy enough to need no further assistance, it shall be a source of capital amusement; for no cross-readings in Joe Miller shall be found more pregnant with drollery and conceit. Perhaps there is not one in a million who has had the ingenuity to make this discovery. Yet, let any lover of fun take this hint, and planting himself in a secure position, minding his pockets, being too even-tempered to be moved by a jostle, while away ten minutes before a bill-pasted wall, he shall be upon the broad grin before two are expired, and in convulsions before five. But an hour ago we jotted down the following random medley :-" Grace Huntly, and other entertainments, for the benefit of-The Reverend Joel Byers. On Sunday evening will be Preached a Sermon on the Nature and Attributes of J. Biffen, Bug Destroyer to their Majesties. Reward of L.50. Absconded-5000 Acres of Arable, Meadow, and Pasture Land. To be let on Building Leases-Burgess's Essence of | fortable of all that are practised. It has its Anchovies. For Bombay and China; will Sail on Thursday-The Lothbury Bathing Rooms (Back of the Bank) for the Cure of-Fine Yorkshire Hams. Lost on Tuesday last, a Pocketbook containing-Garraway's Coffee-House-All that Capital Freehold Estate and-Marsden's Warehouse for Bedding and Mattresses, Warranted to be well Stuffed with-Industrious Fleas." This, however, is but a short and sorry sample compared with what may be sometimes picked up. People engaged in the whirlpool of business are prone to snatch a glance at a curiosity for transient amusement's sake, whether it be in the shape of a row, a thief-hunt, a fire, a show, a skull-fracture, or any other novelty: novelty, we mean, compared with the tedium of businessroutine. Accordingly, here and there are to be found, in any waste spot, some juggler or sleightof-hand man, tossing balls, balancing wheels or live jack-asses [fact as death] on his chin, casting somersets, and other deeds pertinent to his vocation; our-everybody's-old friends, Punch and Judy; or some such entertainments got up for the relief of pence-encumbered pockets. Such things are an occasional relief to the monotony of the scene; we wish they more abounded. But alas! times are sadly altered; the good old days of dancing bears and creeping camels are gone by. The hackney coach horses, in the march of improvement, got conceited and affected terror, so the foreigners were "put down." Bah! all things are altered. The redletter days in number now hardly exceed a couple or so; Lord Mayor's Day, Guy Fawkes' Day, May Day, being all that are left in the calendar, and these are fast fading into desuetude. may not let off a squib under fear of a fine; every Jack-in-the-Green soot-scraper does not know but he may be dancing towards the treadmill; and even the whole corporation of London are trembling lest Charley Pearson should take it into his noddle "to move"-and with him to move is to "carry"—that there be no more processions. Out upon such innovations! We Beneficent London teems with charitable institutions, hospitals, asylums, refuges for the destitute, the indigent, the sick, the lame, and the blind; there is scarcely a calamity that miserable humanity is liable to, for which Pity, in her affluence, has not provided a palliative. Yet are the streets thronged with beggary, beggary the most abject and revolting. Our national vanity may admit that in other countries beggary is in overmuch plenitude, because compared with this, all other countries are less advanced in wealth, wisdom, and that perfection of wisdom, law; but how it is, that in this first of nations upon the earth's surface, and especially in this first of cities among nations, beggary should be allowed to rear its fearful front, would appear passing strange, were it not for a reason that rarely shoots across the humane of heart. Beggary is a business, a profession, out-and-away the most thriving, profitable, secure, and com schools of tuition, and learned professors, whereat, and by whom, men, women, and infants, are instructed upon the most improved principles in every branch of the science: to whine, to halt, to gasp, to feign convulsions, starvation, orphanism, widowhood, and every bodily affliction nameable or conceivable. The progress of the scholar varies, of course, according to the aptitude or genius with which he is gifted: some, not many, make a sad, miserable botch of it; but, generally considered, the greater part evince great talent. The facial expression of wretchedness and hunger is frequently sublime-a perfect study. Tattered garments, rags, and filth, are within the means of every one of these artists, and they, of course, are of no more value than as being simple adjuvants; but he, or she, to whom nature, or good-luck, has imparted a spare tallowy face, a hump-back, ophthalmia, a distorted limb, a scrofulous nose, or any equivalent blessing, and who has the gumption to set it off to advantage, is sure of never-failing success. The worst of it is, that a hit, whenever made, becomes at once overdone and marred, by general adoption. "Give me a ha'penny to buy a bit of bread," a sentence got up a few years since, was, as a bit of soul-stirring pathetic, one of the finest things of the kind on record; but it soon lost its power by becoming the one universal appeal. The little square bit of brown paper, with the words " I am starving" written in chalk, and though appearing in multiplied copies throughout town, evidently by the same penman, is another clever hit; but like its precursor every beggar uses it. We have daily passed a sly rogue who, to our knowledge, has been starving for the last two years. He does his best to look wo-begone, it is true, and by constant practice he has succeeded tolerably well in schooling his muscles into the required grin: but the cunning dog has been picking up in flesh weekly in spite of himself. By practice also he has managed to get up a masterly teeth-chatter, and this he continues till the weather gets so hot that the perspiration trickles down his cheeks. If any fact were wanting to show the precocious talents of infancy it will be found manifested in London. Lots of little urchins, but a few spans high, are to be found, with and without brooms, as occasions require, running about, begging with a vehemence and vociferation quite refreshing; and it is astonishing how many silk handkerchiefs accidentally fall into their possession. The proficiency which these imps make in their art must oftentimes be a source of proud and soul-glowing satisfaction to their parents or employers, as well as of no inconsiderable profit. The facility with which they can do the famished is often admirable. A knot of four or five, sprawling upon some door-step, shall be amusing themselves at the game of toss-halfpenny, laughing and shouting to the top of their voices; their very souls, if they have any, apparently absorbed in the excitement of the play; yet no sooner does a passenger approach, than in a moment up start |