We will enter these streets and peep into those dark, close, unhealthy, and forbidding-looking rooms. In this narrow alley a dusky twilight reigns throughout the sunny noon of day. We have to feel for the noisome staircases which open on either hand; and now we have found one, we will grope our way through this land of gloom and shadows. What a dead smell floats around us! a close noisome air, such as arises from an over-crowded vault, even more death-smelling than many a vault we have in our day visited. The staircase is encrusted with dirt, a kind of black greasy mud, which has been trampled into toughness, not unlike what covers the City streets after rain or snow in winter; but "that" is "clean" dirt in comparison to this, for here we tread upon old filth, the accumulation, it may be, of years; for by the side of the staircase, where it is least trodden, it is mildewy and mouldy. The smoke of our cigar is the only wholesome aroma that rises amid these stifling rooms. The perfume of flowers could never pierce through the weight of this dense atmosphere, but would fall back again and die amid the petals whence it arose; even the strong sweet-smelling May-blossoms would struggle in vain to disperse the poison of this motionless air. Now we have reached the room, we cannot see what forms are before us, so little light streams in through that "dirt-ditched" and cobweb-covered casement, which appears as if it were never opened, [Illustration: THE ROOKERY, ST. GILES'S] as if they knew that the noisome air was better kept out than in. There is no ventilation, no "thorough-draft" through any of these miserable rooms; the walls are damp through so many breaths, for where the moist air falls there doth it rest, hanging like cold beaded drops on the brow of one who wrestles sternly with death. It must have been many years since these apartments were either painted or whitewashed; a black grey hue pervades every thing, as if the very atmosphere had itself grown dark through hovering here so long and motionless, as if it were compelled to stand and sicken between the stench from below and the black vapours above--the one arising from the foetid cellars, the other hurled down by the rain from the soot-covered roofs--exhalations of the earth earthy--of the sewer sewery--of the filth filthy--poison ever propagating poison--gutters ever generating deadly gases, and creeping into the blood of the inhabitants; and yet strange, in spite of its filth, this neighbourhood was passed over lightly by the "fell destroyer," compared to others which He ravaged during the last dreadful epidemic.