I visited the New Cut on a Saturday night, which is the great market night, when traffic is at its height in the neighborhood. The wide, short street, which runs into a half circle at its end, was filled with people. The noise was of that indefinite kind which is hardly to be described. Stands, barrows, and wagons, having ponies and asses attached, were placed along the gutters, with smoky lamps fed with a disagreeable smelling oil, from which a dusky flame was shed over the street, showing the faces of the venders as they gave tongue to many different cries. "Whelks," a small shell-fish, like the American mussel, were heaped in thousands on the heads of barrels and tables, and ham sandwiches, at a penny apiece, and boiled potatoes, with sheeps' trotters, oysters, fried fish, oranges, apples, plums, and, in fact, every kind of fruit and vegetable were for sale. Little ragged boys and girls, their feet bare and dirty, ran hither and thither, importuning the passers-by to purchase their matches and water-cresses. Here water-cresses and radishes are sold together in bunches at a penny a handful. Some of these small children are up as early as five o'clock in the morning, to purchase the water-cresses at Farringdon market, and from that time until midnight, or until the theatres close, they are crying their water-cresses, which they carry with them through the London streets in a basket. The whelks are sold at two a penny, and are accounted a delicacy by the poor of London, when properly seasoned with pepper, salt, and vinegar. They are very much relished in the pot-houses of the metropolis by hard drinkers when pickled in this fashion, and in any tap-room of a Saturday night it is not uncommon to find men or women peddling these shell-fish to those who have been drinking freely. The costermongers are universally great gamblers, and earning during the week from twelve to thirty shillings, as their luck may run with the purchasing community, yet it is not an uncommon occurrence for them to gamble away as much as fifty per cent. of their week's earnings in various games of chance. These people have no religious belief whatever, and do not know anything even of the rudiments of religious instruction. To them God is some indefinite being whose attributes are unknown, and whose immutable laws are disregarded simply from utter ignorance. They never darken a church door, and tracts are received by them with the most supreme disgust.