It would have been pity not to have seen poor _Jack-in-the-Green_, on a May-day, in London; and yet I had quite forgotten the sweep, and his right to a share in the festival, until I saw the sight itself, as I chanced to be passing through one of the streets of the West-end. A chimney of green things, it seemed to be; walking along, and nearly or quite concealing the occupant, who gave it motion, while a crowd of boys did honour to the show. The game seemed to consist, in pausing before certain doors, and soliciting a gratuity. Certain it is, that no one can grudge a penny to such an applicant, or behold the one day’s sport of the poor climbing-boy, without wishing he may succeed in trying to make the most of it. Lady M. W. Montague is said to have invented this beneficial anniversary of sweepdom, and the moving obelisk of green seemed to me no unmeet memorial of her benevolence. Better this, than the column of the Place Vendôme, unless it be better to be remembered for levying a world-wide tribute of blood and tears, than for giving one new object of hope and joy to the children of sorrow! During the residue of the week I was engaged in the ordinary lionizing, but met several agreeable persons in company, dining one day at the Rectory of St. George’s East, and another day at Clapham. My first impressions of the enormous extent of London were gained in passing between these limits, and yet as vast a suburb lay unexplored beyond the former, as I had travelled through to reach the latter. Clapham is called four miles from the metropolis, but one reaches it, by omnibus, with no very clear idea of having left London at all. And so, in every direction, London seems interminable, and villages known to us from books as highly rural, and as affording delightful retreats from the city, are found, to our surprise, to be incorporated with the great Babel itself, and that by no means as its extremities. CHAPTER X. _St. James—Wellington—St. Paul’s._