There were no unpleasant sights—no rotten vegetables or leaves, no mud, no spitting, no——in short, the whole looked like a painting, and the women all seemed as if they were dressed for the purpose of sitting for their portraits, to let other times have a peep at what was going on in a former world. “If I am in my senses,” said Hastings, “which I very much doubt, this is the most pleasing change which time has wrought; I cannot but believe that I shall wake up in the morning and find this all a dream. This is no market—it is a picture.” “We shall see,” said Edgar. “Come, let us proceed to the butchers’ market.” So they walked on, and still the rippling stream followed them; and here no sights of blood, or stained hands, or greasy knives, or slaughter-house smells, were present. The meats were not hung up to view in the open air, as in times of old; but you had only to ask for a particular joint, and lo! a small door, two feet square, opened in the wall, and there hung the identical part. “This gentleman is a stranger,” said Edgar, to a neatly dressed man, having on a snow white apron; “show him a hind quarter of veal; we do not want to buy any, but merely to look at what you have to sell.” The little door opened, and there hung one of the fattest and finest quarters Hastings had ever seen. “And the price,” asked he. “It is four cents a pound,” replied the man. A purchaser soon came; the meat was weighed within; the man received the money, and gave a ticket with the weight written on it; the servant departed, and the two friends moved on. “Our regulations are excellent,” said Edgar; “formerly, as the old Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries says, the butchers weighed their meats in the most careless manner, and many a man went home with a suspicion that he was cheated of half or three quarters of a pound. Now, nothing of this kind can take place, for the clerks of the market stand at every corner. See! those men use the graduated balance; the meat is laid, basket and all, on that little table; the pressure acts on a wheel—a clicking is heard—it strikes the number of pounds and quarters, and thus the weight is ascertained. The basket you saw, all those you now see in the meat market, are of equal weight, and they are marked 1, 2, 3, 4 or more pounds, as the size may be. Do you not see how much of labour and confusion this saves. I suppose, in your day, you would have scorned to legislate on such trifling objects; but I assure you we find our account in it.” “I must confess that this simplifies things wonderfully; but the cleanliness, order and cheerfulness that are seen throughout this market—these are things worthy of legislation. I suppose all this took place gradually?”