In Smithfield, there was neither light nor sound. The glossy crockery and glittering glass no longer was strewn upon the ground, and no impatient dealer was there jingling his cups and tumblers, and rattling his basins to bring the customers to his stand. The covered sheds, spread with bright-coloured handkerchiefs and muslin, and hung with long streamers of lace, had all disappeared; the long narrow alleys of old clothes stalls, decked with washed-out gowns and brown stays, and yellow petticoats and limp bonnets, were gone; the old-boots stalls, bright with the highly-polished shoe, were nowhere visible; nor the black hardware, nor the white wicker-baskets, nor the dangling hairy brooms, nor the glass cases glittering with showy jewellery. The booth-like cook-shops were shut up, and not a boy was to be seen within them enjoying his cheap basin of steaming soup or plate of smoking pie; and the sheets of tripe, like bundles of shammy leather, and the cow-heels, white and soddened, like washerwomen’s hands, had disappeared from the stalls. In Victoria Market the oranges were no longer to be seen piled up in pyramids, and glittering like balls of gold against their white-papered shelves. Not a sound of music was to be heard in any of the harmonic taverns. The piano of “THE HEN AND CHICKENS” was hushed. The fiddle and violoncello sounded not in “THE COTTON TREE.” At Ben Lang’s the lights were all out, and the galleries empty—not a seriously-comic song, nor comically-serious ditty disturbed the silence of the “Saloon.”