ceptical ejaculation, "Indeed!" Ay, but it is so; and let us go
no further than Covent Garden. Enter it from Russell-street. What can be
more unsightly,--with its piles of cabbages in the street, and
basket-measures on the roofs of the shops--narrow alleys, wooden
buildings, rotting vegetables "undique," and swarms of Irish
basket-women, who wander about like the ghosts on this side of the Styx,
and who, in habits, features, and dialect, appear as if belonging to
another world. Yet the Garden, like every garden, has its charms. I have
lounged through it on a summer's day, mixing with pretty women, looking
upon choice fruit, smelling delicious roses, with now and then an
admixture of sundry disagreeables, such as a vigorous puff out of an ugly
old woman's doodeen, just as you are about to make a pretty speech to a
much prettier lady--to say nothing of the unpleasant odours arising from
heaps of putrescent vegetables, or your hat being suddenly knocked off by
a contact with some unlucky Irish basket-woman, with cabbages piled on
her head sufficient for a month's consumption at Williams's boiled beef
and cabbage warehouse, in the Old Bailey. The narrow passages through
this mart remind me of the Chinese streets, where all is shop, bustle,
squeeze, and commerce. The lips of the fair promenaders I collate (in my
mind's eye, gentle reader) with the delicious cherry, and match their
complexions with the peach, the nectarine, the rose, red or white, and
even sometimes with the russet apple. Then again I lounge amidst chests
of oranges, baskets of nuts, and other _et cetera_, which, as boys, we
relished in the play-ground, or, in maturer years, have enjoyed at the
wine feast. Here I can saunter in a green-house among plants and heaths,
studying botany and beauty. Facing me is a herb-shop, where old nurses,
like Medeas of the day, obtain herbs for the sick and dying; and within a
door or two flourishes a vender of the choicest fruits, with a rich
display of every luxury to delight the living and the healthy.

I know of no spot where such variety may be seen in so small a compass.
Rich and poor, from the almost naked to the almost naked lady (of
fashion, of course.) "Oh crikey, Bill," roared a chimney-sweep in high
glee. The villain turned a pirouette in his rags, and in the centre mall
of the Garden too; he finished it awkwardly, made a stagger, and
recovered himself against--what?--"_Animus meminisse horret_"--against a
lady's wh