Of all people the poor Irish are the most anxious to gain employment, and are truly valuable examples of industry. They sleep less than other labourers; for at the dawn of day they assemble in flocks at their usual stands for hire,--namely, Whitechapel, Queen Street, Cheapside, and on the spot formerly occupied by St Giles's pound, at the ends of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. The most laborious of them are chairmen, paviers, bricklayers' labourers, potato-gatherers, and basket-men; and, to the eternal disgrace of the commonalty of the English, these people, as well as the Scotch and Welsh, are guilty of very few excesses, particularly in that odious practice of drinking, a vice so much increased by the accommodation of seats in gin-shops, which are the first opened and last shut in London. The Irish carry immense loads. A hod of bricks, weighing one hundred and ten pounds, is carried one hundred and twenty times at least in the course of the day, and sometimes up a ladder of the height of five stories, and all for two shillings and ninepence per day. The pavier's rammer, of more than half a hundred weight, is raised not fewer than two thousand times in the course of the day. _What Englishman could do this?_ With respect to loads on the head, the Irish surpass all others. Leary makes nothing of carrying two hundred weight from the Fox under the Hill, near the Adelphi, to Covent Garden, many times on a market morning; and yet, extraordinary as this may appear, his feats have been more than equalled by a female. A man of the name of Eglesfield, who has sold flowers in Covent Garden for the last thirty-six years, knew an Irish girl who would often walk under the weight of two hundred pounds. He declares that she brought a load of one hundred and a half from Newgate Market to Covent Garden on her head, without once pitching, though it must be observed that this was not potato-weight, which has always one hundred and twenty-six pounds to the hundred. The following woodcut represents the humane manner in which cripples are conveyed from door to door in many parts of Ireland. The following description has been kindly furnished to the Author by a friend, who has frequently assisted in the conveyance, and takes no ordinary interest in the condition of the poor. [Illustration]