The old sporting-houses, once the resort of half the blackguardism of the East-End and a good deal of the West, have gone down before the steady bowling of the law. The friendly bouts with the gloves between local 'chickens' and 'novices,' which once were regular Saturday night amusements, are few and far between, and dog-fights and ratting-matches have to be searched for by the curious as diligently as though they were looking for a policeman in a suburban neighbourhood, and the result is generally the same. That boxing and ratting, and other forms of the 'fancy,' still exist as part of the amusement of the lower orders is perfectly true, but they exist in such a hole-and-corner, out-of-the-way, few-and-far-between style, that they can no longer be classed as among the amusements of those who cannot afford to pay high prices of admission to illegal entertainments. The noble art of self-defence did undoubtedly linger among the lower orders as a pastime long after it had passed out of favour with the Corinthians, and many of the porters of Billingsgate, Covent Garden, and Smithfield, waterside labourers, costermongers, and street-hawkers are to this day famous as 'bruisers,' and given to indulge their friends at odd times with a display of their prowess on the extreme Q.T., in quiet out-houses and secluded spots where the police are unlikely to mar the harmony of the proceedings. Such meetings, when they do take place, always attract a mob of the lowest riff-raff, and if there be, as is generally the case, a charge for admission, ragged wretches, who look as though a crust of bread and cheese would be of considerable advantage to them, manage in some mysterious way to find the requisite amount of silver, without the production of which the crystal Bar of the Pug's Paradise moves not, and the sporting Peri is sent disconsolate away. It has been my good or evil fortune, in my desire to know all sorts and conditions of men, to witness some of the latest revivals of glove-fighting; now in drill-sheds, now in top-floors of public-houses, and once in the upper floor of a workshop, which nearly gave way with the weight of accumulated blackguardism collected. These, it is only fair to say, were mostly 'ramps,' or swindles, got up to obtain the gate-money, and generally interrupted by circumstances arranged beforehand by those who were going to 'cut up' the plunder. As a matter of fact, the suburban racecourse has now absorbed most of the poorer patrons of the ring, and the fighting men--that is, the class who are of the slum order--find employment in connection with the betting-lists and booths. The turf is still as highly patronised as ever in poor districts, in spite of the objection of the police to ready-money betting, and the racing element enters largely into the recreations of the residuum.