We well remember passing through the Rookery of St. Giles's when the work of demolition first commenced; when those who had found no other residence were allowed to remain until the workmen began to pull the houses down. Many of the inhabitants who were then old were born in those tumble-down houses, then doomed to stand no longer. There they had tended the sick couch, and through those dilapidated doorways carried out their dead; smiles and tears had brightened and fallen in those apartments, which to them bore the endearing name of home. We looked up, and through the broken lattices saw the faces of little children--dirty images of innocence--dear to the hearts of their poor mothers. And many houses similar to these are still standing in St. Giles's, with leaning door-posts and windows all awry; some propped up with beams, on which they rest, as if they had a stitch in their sides, and had placed their hands there to relieve the pain. Many of the door-posts are worn smooth and bright, through the idle loungers, who have rubbed and rested against them while smoking and looking out into the streets, hour after hour, and day after day,--men who seem to have no business upon earth, having to smoke and sleep, and when they awake, to smoke and lean against the self-same doorways until it is time to sleep again. On the steps, and on the edges of the pavement, or at the entrance of those unexplored courts, withered old women sit with folded arms scowling at you as you pass, and proclaiming by their looks that you are an intruder. And fortunate may a decently-clad man consider himself if he meets with nothing more serious than black looks while passing through the still dangerous neighbourhood of St. Giles's. All are not idle, be it remembered, who frequent such haunts as these; many have seen "better days," and only fell because they possessed not fortitude enough to struggle against unfortunate circumstances. Others had never been taught any trade, and when they lost such situations as ten thousands were capable of taking, they never raised their heads again, although they went many a weary day, week, and month afterwards in quest of employment, returning at night to sleep in such dens as we have here described, sick and sad at heart. At length their attire became too shabby for their admission into respectable houses only to ask for employment, and then they sank with a kind of sullen recklessness amid the filth and squalor of St. Giles's, and from that wretched state never emerged again. But these are the exceptions; the majority of the inhabitants are "to the manner born."