lesome _liqueurs_. Although places of this
description are to be met with in every second street, they are
invariably numerous and splendid in precise proportion to the dirt and
poverty of the surrounding neighbourhood. The gin-shops in and near
Drury-Lane, Holborn, St. Giles's, Covent-garden, and Clare-market, are
the handsomest in London. There is more of filth and squalid misery near
those great thorough-fares than in any part of this mighty city.

We will endeavour to sketch the bar of a large gin-shop, and its ordinary
customers, for the edification of such of our readers as may not have had
opportunities of observing such scenes; and on the chance of finding one
well suited to our purpose, we will make for Drury-Lane, through the
narrow streets and dirty courts which divide it from Oxford-street, and
that classical spot adjoining the brewery at the bottom of
Tottenham-court-road, best known to the initiated as the 'Rookery.'

The filthy and miserable appearance of this part of London can hardly be
imagined by those (and there are many such) who have not witnessed it.
Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper: every
room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two or even
three--fruit and 'sweet-stuff' manufacturers in the cellars, barbers and
red-herring vendors in the front parlours, cobblers in the back; a
bird-fancier in the first floor, three families on the second, starvation
in the attics, Irishmen in the passage, a 'musician' in the front
kitchen, and a charwoman and five hungry children in the back one--filth
everywhere--a gutter before the houses and a drain behind--clothes drying
and slops emptying, from the windows; girls of fourteen or fifteen, with
matted hair, walking about barefoot, and in white great-coats, almost
their only covering; boys of all ages, in coats of all sizes and no coats
at all; men and women, in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel,
lounging, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting, and
swearing.

You turn the corner. What a change! All is light and brilliancy. The
hum of many voices issues from that splendid gin-shop which forms the
commencement of the two streets opposite; and the gay building with the
fantastically ornamented parapet, the illuminated clock, the plate-glass
windows surrounded by stucco rosettes, and its profusion of gas-lights in
richly-gilt burners, is perfectly dazzling when contrasted with the
darkne