Thomas Miller

“ But Friday is the great day to see Smithfield, if a stranger wishes to peep at a few of our real London characters. Such a motley group as is there congregated can never be found together in any other spot in the metropolis. There the costermonger shews the paces of his donkey, and the dustman forces his broken-kneed jade into a trot, while the knacker looks on with eye intent, selecting out such as he feels confident will have to be carried home. What riding, and running, and trotting to and fro, is there to be seen! ”

“ We have often pitied the London cows, which we have seen driven up one street and down another, and have fancied that what little milk they had must have been churned into indifferent butter, as they ran on, to escape the stones thrown after them by boys, while mongrels were ever sallying out, and either biting or barking at their heels; but we had not then seen those which are doomed to dwell in the unbroken darkness of the Adelphi arches, without ever breathing any other than the sepulchral air which stagnates in this murky purgatory. ”

“ Here we saw the youthful aspirants of heaven tuning their notes like young birds, dim, half-heard melodies, which can only burst forth in perfect music when they reach that immortal land where “one eternal summer ever reigns;” and we sighed as we thought how many thousands still uncared for were scattered through the streets and alleys of London, and left to live as they best could amid ignorance, rags, and hunger, with no one to teach them that, outcasts as they are on earth, they have still a Father in heaven who careth for them. ”

“ What a dead smell floats around us! a close noisome air, such as arises from an over-crowded vault, even more death-smelling than many a vault we have in our day visited. The staircase is encrusted with dirt, a kind of black greasy mud, which has been trampled into toughness, not unlike what covers the City streets after rain or snow in winter; but “that” is “clean” dirt in comparison to this, for here we tread upon old filth, the accumulation, it may be, of years; for by the side of the staircase, where it is least trodden, it is mildewy and mouldy. ”

“ But we will cross over the way, and visit Covent-Garden Market, the ever-open flower-show of London. Here, when “the wind and rain beat dark December,” the costly chrysanthemum may be purchased, with which beauty decks her waving ringlets, as she shoots the arrows of love from her eyes, regardless on whom they may alight. In spring, summer, autumn, or winter, the choicest treasures of the floral world are here collected; from the conservatory and the humble cottage-garden, flowers of all hues are gathered to grace the Covent-Garden colonnades. ”

“ Poverty in the country—however poor it may be, however low it may have fallen—is still surrounded with a few fragments of the Paradise which was once man’s possession. There we see the blue of the sky bending and resting upon the dim rim of the horizon, or losing itself in the twilight of other worlds. The bladed green of the refreshing earth lies below like a rich velvet carpet which God hath diapered with flowers of “all hues,” and thrown down for man to tread upon. The solemn avenue of stately trees rises like a tall temple, roofed in by his mighty hand ”

“ We turned from the well-spread tables then before us, and thought of the poverty and wretchedness of those who drag out a miserable existence in our over-crowded London streets; the thousands who stand
“Houseless near a thousand homes,
And near a thousand tables pine for want of food;”
who bring no old memories into the crowded city, in which many of them were born. Home, with all its green boughs rustling above the rippling stream—the murmur of the bee—the shout of the cuckoo, and the mellow song of the golden-billed blackbird, were never to them old familiar sounds ”

“ To plant a grave with such flowers as “the poor inhabitant below” loved whilst living, is a pious pleasure: it is a living link between us and the dead, and keeps alive an affection which belongs not to the world; though a “poor thing, it is our own;” for we know that the flowers are kept alive by an invisible hand, that in the still dark night they continue to grow, while we are wrapt in as sound a slumber as that which falls upon the dead—the only difference being that we perchance may again awaken. ”

“ In the whole annals of time, there is no funeral procession that in sublimity and grandeur approaches his, who when young was sold as a slave to the Egyptians. That dead-march through the God-dried ocean, and over the desert, led by Moses—the man who had spoken to his Maker, and who was a mourner at that solemn funeral—causes the eye to quiver beneath its gloomy and awful grandeur: we see the dead and the living pass away amid the roar of the ocean, the thunder of the Mount, and the clashing of battle upon battle ”

“ Remains of ancient London are still to be found in the neighbourhood of Smithfield. The courts and alleys about Cloth Fair, and behind Long-lane, are perfect labyrinths, and so full of ins and outs, that they astonish the stranger who ventures to thread his way through them. Bartholomew’s Church is also one of the very oldest in the City; and we never look upon its weather-beaten tower without recalling the scenes which have taken place in the vast area which stretches out before it.
There is no spot in London richer in historical associations than Smithfield. ”

“ No stranger can say that he has seen the vastness of London until he has mounted the hundreds of steps which lead to the Golden Gallery, and looked out upon the outstretched city and suburbs below. It is a sight never to be forgotten; the passengers underneath scarcely appear a foot high, and the omnibuses so diminished, that you fancy you could take one under your arm and walk off with it easily. But it is the immense range of country which the eye commands that astonishes the stranger. ”

“ Behold! the curtain is at last uplifted, and those are living and breathing forms that sit or stand before us, and such—however much we may shun them here—as we shall be doomed to dwell amongst hereafter. That poor girl is tying up her water-cresses in bunches, ready for to-morrow’s sale; she has no other place but the floor to lay them on before she puts them into her little basket ready bunched. The green bunches at her feet will be sold and eaten on the morrow by those who never bestow a thought on the filthy floor on which they now lie. ”

“ Hush! the unceasing murmur of the mob now breaks into a loud deep roar—a sound as if the ocean had suddenly broken through some ancient boundary, against which its ever-restless billows had for ages battered; the wide dark sea of heads is all at once in motion; each wave seems trying to overleap the other, as they are drawn onwards towards this outlet. Every link in that great human chain is shaken; along the whole lengthened lines has the motion jarred, and each in turn sees, coiled up on the floor of the scaffold, like a serpent, the hangman’s rope! ”

“ Many an unfortunate man may date his ruin from the day he first witnessed an execution—as the first hour that threw him amid the group who haunt the foot of the gallows; and as human nature is more prone to stoop to vice than to soar aloft to virtue, so from that moment he sank never more to rise again, all his finer feelings blunted, and he himself lowering all who were once endeared to him to his own vicious standard. Such as the herds among have no pity for the dead ”

“ HOLIDAYS OF THE LONDON POOR. household shelter and a grave, are all the Poor-Law allows to the pauper; for there is no clause in that act permitting him the enjoyment of the sweet air of heaven, or the open and unwalled sunshine (the gold which God scatters down for all) , beyond what blows and beats upon the narrow court-yard in which he is doomed to walk—the Prisoner of Poverty. The birds he there hears sing are the dirty sparrows that roost under the soot-blackened eaves, and weary the heart with their unchangeable chirrup. ”

“ The hill above and the plain below are crowded with the gay populace of London, all clothed in their holiday attire, the ladies looking in the distance like a bed of tulips, so rich and varied are the colours of the costume and parasols. At every few yards you meet with a new group, while the long avenue which leads up to Blackheath is one continuous stream of people. ”

“ The ham-and-beef houses display the same love of fatness, as if neither pig nor bullock could be overfed that comes to be consumed by the “greasy citizens” of the east end of London.
As for fish! the very oysters gape at you with open mouths, as if they knew how useless it would be to keep closed in such a ravenous-looking neighbourhood. They seem to cast imploring glances at the passers-by, as if begging to be taken out of the hot sun, and devoured as quickly as possible. You see great suspicious-looking whelks, sweltering in little saucers of vinegar ”

“ May they, like those who are now preceding them, find a home around which to twine their affections, with a few trees and flowers that they can love and call their own, where the sun has room to get near them at morning, and can give them a parting smile before he sets at night, where he comes streaming free as when, first launched from God’s almighty hand, he went thundering with a golden trail of glory behind, until the voice of the Omnipotent{139} bade him stop in the immensity of space. ”

“ Those who wish to witness the out-of-door pomp and pride of mighty London must enter by the Horse-Guards and visit the parks; for there all the array of rank and fashion and aristocratic beauty congregate, under the open eye of heaven: mounted on splendid horses, or seated in richly ornamented chariots, and arrayed in the most approved costumes, they confer a mutual pleasure upon all, by issuing forth to see and to be seen. ”

“ From the long range of hills that overlook Surrey and Kent, from the opposite heights of Highgate and Hampstead, and for miles away in the level valley through which the Thames ebbs and flows, that rounded dome is seen standing sentinel day and night over the two-million peopled city. Above the busy hum of the multitude it keeps watch by day, and through the hushed night it looks up amid the overhanging stars, and throws back from its golden cross (emblem of our salvation) the silvery rays of the bright moon, when all the miles of streets below are wrapt in drowsy silence. ”

“ Over thousands of troubles and trials rolled the rapid years; then the “Great Fire” broke out, and nearly every ancient landmark was destroyed; and now we have to grope our way through the twilight of dim records and a few rudely executed prints, to catch a glimpse of the old London in which our forefathers lived. This we shall endeavour to do as we thread our way through city and suburb; now glancing at the London of the present day, then turning the eye of the imagination to the ancient metropolis, which Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane, and Norman have in succession traversed. ”

“ The old highway to London is that which the daring sea-kings poetically called “the road of the swans”—the broad bosom of the sea,—and then along the majestic river which leads to her grey old fortress, the Tower. But the railroad has ploughed up the country, and this ancient “silver pathway” is abandoned to commerce and pleasure-parties; so rapid is the transit from every point of the coast, that few care to thread the winding river when they can reach London by the railroads almost as direct as “the crow flies.” Such remains of ancient London as fall in our way we shall again glance at ”

“ Stowe thinks that the old name of St. Mary Somerset was Summer Hithe. Summer and hawthorns! how we love the memory of the old historian for calling up these pleasant associations! We may be wrong in the name, but, for the sake of the poetry, we must picture the pretty Saxon maids, before London was a city, wandering down Mounthaw to Summer-wharf between long lines of hawthorn hedges, to see their lovers return from fishing in the Thames, or to watch the arrival of some corn-barque lower down the bank by Queenhithe. ”

“ BILLINGSGATE.
into the country the turbot and salmon as fresh as we receive it in the metropolis; for what are a hundred miles on the great railways?
Old Billingsgate is now pulled down; the muddy dock, where so many fishing-smacks have been harboured is filled up; and, instead of the old-fashioned market which illustrates this chapter, a pile is erected more befitting the greatest city in the world, and more like the noble edifice—the New Coal Exchange—that faces it.
Eels cannot be brought to Billingsgate in such perfection as they formerly were. ”

“ To our ears there is something in the lowing and bleating sounds that fill Smithfield on a market-day that carries us away into the green quietude of the country; and we cannot look upon the flocks and herds without conjuring up the sloping hills and pastoral valleys from whence they have been driven. They call up images of homesteads and thatched granges, far off amid the dreamy murmur of open fields, where even the smell of the smoke has a pleasant aroma, and the dust on the road-side a clean look. ”

“ In the early morning have we traversed that solemn neighbourhood, when neither the stir of trade nor traffic disturbed the silence. And at such times the past has seemed again to open its silent doors, and the phantoms of the departed dead to glide before us. Battle and banner have again been displayed: pale and bleeding we have in fancy seen Wat Tyler fall, struck down by the arm of the powerful Mayor of London. ”

“ We feel that we are in the presence of the mighty dead; and, as we gaze around, the deeds which throw a grandeur and a gloom over the pages of English history pass in vivid succession before the eye of the mind. The very pavement seems strewn with the ruins of crowns, sceptres, helmets, and swords, mitres and croziers, bent, crushed, dented, and broken; while, amid the dim gold and the rusted steel, the green laurels of the poet alone remain unchanged. What moving scenes have broken the lengthened shadows which those high-piled pillars throw over aisle and choir! ”

“ Carts rolled by, bearing the produce of quiet fields and tree-sheltered gardens, to the market; the rustic driver turned his head for a moment; then, with eyes bent upon the ground, went musing along his way. The coach moved slowly along, severing in its course the closely-packed crowd; the warm-clad passengers glanced down the wide thoroughfare, with its dark pavement of human heads, upon the black and ominous beam that went spanning across, like the bridge of death, and ever would the same vision rise up before them all day long. ”