By way of contrast, we will stride from splendour to squalour--from St. James's to St. Giles's, whose names Douglas Jerrold has rendered inseparable in his fearless and life-like novel. As St. Giles's folds within its arms a portion of the fashion-frequented neighbourhood of Oxford-street, so do the low alleys of Tothill-fields hem in the palaces of Westminster, creeping up to the very walls of the grey old abbey, and dipping down to the rim of the river; while, eastward, the city of merchants is bounded by the wretchedness of Whitechapel on the one hand, and deep behind again by the thickly-inhabited parish of Shoreditch. Wealth cannot wholly seclude itself; to wheresover it moves poverty follows for companionship, for without its dependents it is useless: riches cannot dwell apart, without looking worse than the gold on gold in bad heraldry. The fungus and the lichen cling to the sound gigantic oak, the same as to the trunk of the decayed pollard. True, the wedge has been driven into the rotten heart of the old Rookery of St. Giles's, and New Oxford-street has sprung up from the corruption; but what has become of the inhabitants who battened on the core of the decayed tree? Like a nest of ants, they are turned loose to overrun other neighbourhoods. The new houses and splendid streets which have risen above the old sites of sorrow, misery, and wretchedness, have but driven them from their ancient haunts, and compelled them to seek shelter in other quarters, where the poverty-stricken populace "Most do congregate," where misery clings to misery for a little warmth, and want and disease lie down side by side, and groan together; where "But to think is to be full of sorrow, And leaden-eyed despair."--_Keats._ Let us look these evils steadily in the face for a moment or two without blenching. The air which now blows through the open windows of the emblazoned carriage in which the diamonded duchess is seated, a few seconds ago swept over the poisonous avenues of Church-street and Carrier-street, and is laden with odours from the sink and sewerage of St. Giles's. Yes, the self-same breeze which now uplifts those dark ringlets, a minute ago filled the lungs of Wiggins; those parted lips inhaled the poison that arose from the rotten garbage of these streets, the gases arising from the churchyard, and every other smell that is born of death and decay. How essential is it, then, fair lady, for thy own sake, to aid us in cleansing these Augean stables, in purifying these pest-houses of poor humanity. You may build yourself a fine house, my lady, and hem it round with a lofty wall; but you must, while in town, still breathe the poisonous air which they breathe, until these grievous evils are remedied.