[Illustration: CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. Fourth Series CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS. NO. 727. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1877. PRICE 1½_d._] COSTERS AND THEIR DONKEYS. In walking through any part of the metropolis--be it in the City, the West End, or any part of the suburbs north or south--you will, especially if early in the day, see men with wheeled trucks drawn by donkeys, and laden with fish, vegetables, or other articles for sale to the inhabitants. Rough as they are in appearance, and poor as may be their commercial outset, these are a useful class of persons; and looking to the vastness of the population crowded within a wide but yet limited space, one has a difficulty in knowing how the ordinary life of many individuals could get on without them. A small town could manage pretty well with a few shops. But in the metropolis, in which there are now from three to four millions of people, the shop-system does not fulfil the general wants; and supernumeraries with trucks to hawk their wares among customers, have sprung up as a convenience and necessity. The name given to these humble street-traders is Costers or Costermongers. Their professional designation is of old date, and is traced to Costard, a large variety of apple. Costermongers were therefore originally street-sellers of apples. The apple might be termed their cognisance. Henry Mayhew, in that laboriously constructed and vastly amusing work of his, _London Labour and London Poor_, issued some six-and-twenty years ago, describes the costermongers as numbering upwards of thirty thousand. It might be inferred that in the progress of time, the number would have increased; but such, we believe, is not the case. Social arrangements have considerably altered. Owing to police regulations, there is a greater difficulty in finding standing-room in the street for barrows. By improved market arrangements and means of transport, small shopkeepers in humble neighbourhoods have become rivals to the costers. As regards means of transport for traders of all sorts, there has been immense progress within the last few years, on account of the abolition of taxes on spring-carts, and latterly the abolition of taxes on horses. We might say that for these reasons alone there are in all large towns ten times more spring-carts and vans for distribution of goods from shops than there were a very few years ago. Of course, all this has limited the traffic of itinerant vendors, and prevented any great increase in their number. Under such drawbacks, however, there are probably still as many as thirty thousand costermongers in and about the metropolis. The young and more rudimental of the class do not get the length of possessing donkeys. They begin with hand-trucks, which they industriously tug away at, until by an improvement in circumstances they can purchase, and start a donkey. Having attained