"Where fam'd St. Giles's ancient limits spread,"
the matutinal huckster may be seen administering to costermongers,
hackney-coachmen, and "fair women without discretion," a fluid "all
hot, all hot," ycleped by the initiated elder wine, which, we should
think, might give the partakers a tolerable notion of the fermenting
beverage extracted by Tartars from mare's milk not particularly fresh.
Hard by we find a decent matron super-intending her tea-table at the
lamp-post, and tendering to a remarkably select company little, blue,
delft cups of bohea, filled from time to time from a prodigious
kettle, that simmers unceasingly on its charcoal tripod, though the
refractory cad often protests that the fuel fails before the boiling
stage is consummated by an ebullition. Hither approaches perhaps
an interesting youth from Magherastaphena, who, ere night-fall, is
destined to figure in some police-office as a "juvenile delinquent."
The shivering sweep, who has just travelled through half a dozen
stacks of chimneys, also quickens every motion of his weary little
limbs, when he comes within sight of the destined breakfast, and
beholds the reversionary heel of a loaf and roll of butter awaiting
his arrival. Another unfailing visiter is the market-gardener, on
his way to deposit before the Covent Garden piazza such a pyramid
of cabbages as might well have been manured in the soil with Master
Jack's justly celebrated bean-stalk. Surely Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed like one of these. The female portion of
such assemblages, for the most part, consists of poor Salopian
strawberry-carriers, many of whom have walked already at least
four miles, with a troublesome burden, and for a miserable
pittance--egg-women, with sundry still-born chickens, goslings, and
turkey-pouts--and passing milk-maidens, peripatetic under the yoke of
their double pail. Their professional cry is singular and sufficiently
unintelligible, although perhaps not so much so as that of the Dublin
milk-venders in the days of Swift; it used to run thus,--
"Mugs, jugs, and porringers,
Up in the garret and down in the cellar."
They are in general a hale, comely, well-favoured race,
notwithstanding the assertion of the author of Trivia to the
contrary.[5]
[5] "On doors the sallow milk maid chalks her gains.
Oh! how unlike the milk-maid of the plains!"
The most revolting spectacle to any one of sensibility which usually
presents itself about this hour, is the painful progress of the jaded,
foundered, and terrified droves of cattle that one necessarily must
see not unfrequently struggling on to the appointed slaughter-house,
perhaps after three days during which they have been running
"Their course of suffering in the public way."
On such occasions we have often wished ourselves "far from the sight of
city, spire, or sound of minster clock." One feels most for the sheep
and lambs, when the softened fancy recurs to the streams and hedgerows,
and pleasant pastures, from whence the woolly exiles have been ejected;
and yet the emotion of pity isnot wholly unaccompanied by admiration at
the sagacity of the canine disciplinarians that bay them remorselessly
forward, and sternly refuse the stragglers permission to make a
reconnoissance on the road. They are highly respectable members of
society these same sheep-dogs, and we wish we could say as much for "the
curs of low degree," that just at the same hour begin to prowl up and
down St. Giles's, and to and fro in it, seeking what they may devour,
with the fear of the Alderman of Cripplegate Within before their eyes.
The feline kind, however, have reason to think themselves in more danger
at the first round of the watering cart, for we have often rescued an
unsuspicious tortoise-shell from the felonious designs of a skin-dealer,
who was about to lay violent hands on unoffending puss, while she was
watching the process of making bread through the crevices of a Scotch
grating.[6]
[6] They say that no town in Europe is without a Scotchman for an
inhabitant. This trade in London is generally professed by North
Britons, and it is always a cause of alarm to a stranger if he
notices the enormous column of black smoke which is emitted from
their premises at the dawn, of the morning.
Another animal _sui generis_, occasionally visible about the same
cock-crowing season, is the parliamentary reporter, shuffling to
roost, and a more slovenly-looking operative from sunrise to sunset
is rarely to be seen. There has probably been a double debate, and
between three and five o'clock he has written "a column _bould_."
No one can well mistake him. The features are often Irish, the
gait jaunty or resolutely brisk, but neither "buxom, blithe, nor
debonnair," complexion wan, expression pensive, and the entire
propriety of the toilette disarranged and _degagée_. The stuff that
he has perpetrated is happily no longer present to his memory, and
neither placeman's sophistry nor patriot's rant will be likely in
any way to interfere with his repose. Intense fatigue, whether
intellectual or manual, however, is not the best security for sound
slumber at any hour, more particularly in the morning.
Even at this hour the swart Savoyard (_filius nullius_) issues forth
on his diurnal pilgrimage, "remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," to
excruciate on his superannuated hurdy-gurdy that sublime melody, "the
hundred and seventh psalm," or the plaintive sweetness of "Isabel,"
perhaps speculating on a breakfast for himself and Pug, somewhere
between Knightsbridge and Old Brentford. Poor fellow! Could he
procure a few bones of mutton, how hard would it be for his hungry
comprehension to understand the displeasure which similar objects
occasioned to Attila on the plains of Champagne!
Then the too frequent preparations for a Newgate execution--but enough
of such details; it is the muse of Mr. Crabbe that alone could do them
justice. We would say to the great city, in the benedictory spirit of
the patriot of Venice,--_esto perpetua!_ Notwithstanding thy manifold
"honest knaveries," peace be within thy walls, and plenty pervade thy
palaces, that thou mayest ever approve thyself, oh queen of capitals,
"Like Samson's riddle in the sacred song,
A springing sweet still flowing from the strong!"
_Blackwood's Magazine_.
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