guests, is mine host, and his female companion:--"old cadgers" both, but stalwart, and able to maintain the "respectability" of the house. The visitor passes on, and turns down a lane. By day or night, it hath an ancient and a fish-like smell. Apparently the dwellings are inhabited by the very poor. In the day time there are no noises, except that of women bawling to their children, who are sitting in the middle of the causeway, making dikes of vegetable mud and soap-suds. There are no sewers;--the commissioners have no power to make them,--and do not ask for it. There is nothing outwardly to indicate that the inhabitants are other than honest. If you open the doors, you may perceive that the staircases are double and barricaded, that rooms communicate with each other, and that, in the rear, there are facilities for hiding or escape. If you stroll about this place at night, you may be surprised by the sight of two policemen patrolling together. You will be an object of scrutiny and suspicion,--notwithstanding your respectable appearance. And then, as you appear to have no business in the neighbourhood, you will be civilly greeted with, "You are entering a dangerous neighbourhood, sir!" In the newspapers of the following day, you may read of a gang of housebreakers, or coiners, having been secured in this spot. And if it be revisited when a group of felons have just left the wharf, you will find it a scene of drunken lamentation. In this lane is a _cul-de-sac_. It is inhabited by persons with respect to whose actual condition the shrewdest investigator is at fault. The visitor enters a dwelling, and climbs the narrow staircase. Upon entering the small room, he is almost stifled by the foetid smells. In one corner, on a mattress, lies a man, whose gaunt arms, wasted frame, milky eye-balls, and dry cough, sufficiently indicate the havoc which disease is doing at the seat of life. A fire has been recently kindled by the hand of charity. Near it, and seated upon a tub, is a woman, busily employed in toasting a slice of ham, which is conveyed rapidly out of sight upon hearing the ascending footsteps. Her dress is gay, but soiled, and her face is familiar to the pedestrian. Upon the entrance of the visitor, the Bible is hastily seized, and an attitude of devotion assumed. The question the visitor asks, is, Are you married? "Oh yes, I was married at a village near Bury, in Suffolk; I was travelling as a mountebank at the time." The tale is not well told. After a few interrogatories, and the utterance of a score of lies, the truth appears,--he was never in the county of Suffolk in his life. In a few days he makes a merit of his confession, and marries,--a week before his death.