obeys till he can stand it no longer. At length all his manhood
is aroused. Armed with what he calls a persuader--a cudgel of most
formidable pretensions--he astonishes his wife with his unexpected
resistance. She tries to regain the mastery, but in vain; and great is
the delight of all as the husband, holding his formidable instrument over
his cowed and trembling wife, compels her to obey his every word. All
the unwashed little urchins around me were furious with delight. There
was no need for the husband to tell the audience, as he did, as the moral
of the piece, that the best remedy for a bad wife was to get such another
cudgel for her as that he held in his hand. It was quite clear the
little Britons around me had resolved how they would act; and I fear, as
they passed out to the number of about 200, few of them did not resolve,
as soon as they had the chance, to drink their quartern of gin and to
whop their wives.

On another occasion it chanced to me to visit a penny gaff in that dark
and dolorous region, the New Cut. There the company and the
entertainment were of a much lower character. A great part of the
proceedings were indecent and disgusting, yet very satisfactory to the
half-grown girls and boys present. In the time of the earlier Georges we
read much of the brutality of the lower orders. If we may believe
contemporary writers on men and manners, never was the theatre so
full--never was the audience so excited--never did the scum and refuse of
the streets so liberally patronise the entertainment as when deeds of
violence and blood were the order of the night. This old savage spirit
is dying out, but in the New Cut I fear it has not given way to a better
one.

RAG FAIR.

People often ask, how do the poor live in London. This a question I
don't intend answering on the present occasion. But if you ask how they
clothe themselves, my answer is, at Rag Fair. Do my readers remember
Dickens's sketch of Field-lane? In "Oliver Twist," he writes, "Near to
the spot at which Snow-hill and Holborn meet there opens, on the right
hand as you come out of the city, a dark and dismal alley, leading to
Saffron-hill. In its filthy shops are exposed for sale huge bunches of
pocket handkerchiefs of all sizes and patterns, for here reside the
traders who purchase them from pickpockets; hundreds of these
handkerchiefs hang dangling from pegs outside the windows, or flaunting
from the door-posts, and the