rrots, cabbages, apples and pears, chestnuts, sweetmeats! Did you want
your likeness taken, there were artists to do it at sixpence a head. Did
you need to buy old clothes, there were Hebrew maidens waiting to sell
you them to any amount. One old lady was doing a thriving business in
what she denominated as "spiced elder." Boot-cleaning, though not by
Lord Shaftesbury's boys, was being carried on upon a gigantic scale. Two
or three vendors of cheap prints, chiefly fancy subjects--portraits of
imaginary females with very red cheeks and large eyes, and gay
dresses--collected a great crowd, but I fear one consisting chiefly of
admirers rather than purchasers. It may be that the tightness of the
money market was felt in the Blackfriars-road, and that the lieges of
that district felt that, with the Bank charging even two-and-a-half per
cent., something better might be done with the money than investing it in
works of art. The butchers' stalls were well attended, though I regret
to say, from casual remarks dropped as I passed by, the keepers of rival
establishments were not on such friendly terms as are desirable amongst
near neighbours. Women were bringing their husbands' dinners, children
were flocking about in shoals, and sots were yawning, and smoking, and
gossiping, waiting for one o'clock and their beer. You ask, was no
effort made to get this mass under the influence of religious teaching?
Oh, yes; all the morning there was service of some kind of other at the
Obelisk. As soon as one man had finished, another had commenced; and at
times one man was preaching on one side and another on another. The
first man I heard evidently was a working-man; and if to preach all that
is required were fluency and a loud voice, evidently he would have done
an immense amount of good: but he was too fluent to be clear and correct.
I question whether a working-man is a good preacher to a working-man.
The chances are, he imitates the worst characteristics of some favourite
preacher, instead of translating Bible truth into plain every-day
language. My friend had got all the stereotyped phrases, such as the
"natural man," &c., which can only be understood by persons accustomed to
religious society, and therefore I did not wonder when I found he had but
some twenty or thirty to hear him. To him succeeded, I regret to say,
two men in seedy black, with dirty white chokers, and cadaverous faces,
whose portraits were I to give, you woul