so it is now, in the Victorian age, and ever will be a very vexed question, and thinking representative men of varied social positions materially differ in opinion; some contending that the question is not of class interest but that of the interest of the public at large; some argue in an effective but perfectly legal and orderly manner for the removal of what they term a greivous nuisance; others ask that an industrious and useful class of men and women should be allowed their honest calling. They protest against the enforcement of an almost obsolete statute which conduces to the waste of fruit, fish, and vegetables, in London and large towns, which practically maintains a trade monopoly, and discourages an abundant supply. They claim for the public a right to buy in the cheapest market, and plead for a liberty which is enjoyed unmolested in many parts of the kingdom, and protest against a remnant of protectionist restriction being put into force against street-hawking. By the side of this temperate reasoning, let us place the principal arguments which are so often reiterated by aldermen, deputies, councillors, vestrymen, and others, when "drest in a little brief authority," and come at once to the _gravamen_ of the charge against the hawkers, which we find to consist in the nuisance of the street cries. London, as a commercial city, has numbers of visitors and residents to whom quiet is of vital importance. The street cries, it is alleged, constitute a nuisance to the public, particularly to numbers of day-time-alone occupants, to whom time and thought is money. It is the same thing repeated with many of the suburban residents, in what is generally known as quiet neighbourhoods. Discounting duly the rhetorical exaggeration, it is to be feared the charge must be admitted. Therefore, the shopkeepers argue, let us put down the hawking of everything and everybody. But this does not follow at all. Not only so, but the proposed remedy is ridiculously inadequate to the occasion. Admit the principle, however, for the sake of argument and let us see whither it will lead us. At early morn how often are our matutinal slumbers disturbed by a prolonged shriek, as of some unfortunate cat in mortal agony, but which simply signifies that Mr. Skyblue, the milkman, is on his rounds. The milkman, it is evident, must be abolished. People can easily get their breakfast milk at any respectable dairyman's shop, and get it, too, with less danger of an aqueous dilution. After breakfast--to say nothing of German bands and itinerant organ grinders--a gentleman with a barrow wakens the echoes by the announcement of fresh mackerel, salmon, cod, whiting, soles or plaice, with various additional epithets, descriptive of their recent arrival from the sea. The voice is more loud than melodious, the repetition is frequent, and the effect is the reverse of pleasing to the public ear. Accordingly we must abolish fish hawking: any respectable