The front of Billingsgate has altered its aspect of late. A wharf has arisen where, heretofore, a couple of narrow gangways descended sheer to the foreshore of the Thames, when it was exposed, and to the water, when the tide was in. Many a Billingsgate porter has lost his life hurrying up those gangways, yet, so conservative is the City of London in its habits, that it is only a few years since the conclusion was reached that the market would be no worse, and human life would be all the safer, for a pier. With that very modern improvement one of our London "sights" has changed its aspect. No longer may we behold the four lines of white-jacketed figures, two bustling up from and two hurrying down to the boats. Yet the white-jacketed figures are there, and they bustle about as of old, though the work has become indescribably easier, and is carried on by men in less constant peril of their lives. To see Billingsgate in the full tide of its work--and England has no other sight to compare with it--one must rise with the sun in summer, and long before the dawn in winter, when heavily-laden market-carts from Kent are rumbling over London Bridge, whilst the homeless tramp is still composing himself to slumber, and while still the mists cling to the surface of the river so heavily as to seem beyond the power of any mere London sunshine to raise or dispel. [Illustration: BILLINGSGATE--EARLY MORNING.] At five in the morning, summer or winter, rain or shine, Billingsgate seems to shake itself and start on a sudden into active and turbulent life. In the night a series of long, low, snake-like steamers have crept up the river, bearing freight from the fishing-smacks which are pursuing their dangerous fortune in the North Sea. Just below where they have dropped anchor cluster several broad-beamed, highly-polished, Dutch schuyts, bringing oysters or eels to market, and reminding you, by their bulk and build, of the stout, prosperous, slow-moving citizens of Amsterdam. Little panting steam-tugs are hurrying here and there, and amid a confused glare of lights, and a tempest of smoke and steam, the Billingsgate porters, having waited for the five o'clock bell, rush out in streams to schuyt and smack and steamer, pushing, shouting, swearing, surging to and fro in the mist and steam and glare, working with the energy of gnomes doomed to perform an allotted task ere the first beams of morning surprise them at their toil. Thames Street, and Fish Street Hill, and Pudding Lane, and many a street and alley roundabout, are crowded, packed, jammed, with vans and carts and trollies. The stranger wanders bewildered and afraid among all these, in danger of being knocked down by laden porters, run over by market-carts, hustled out of all self-possession by feverish buyers, or lost amongst such a wild and interminable confusion of vehicles as no other place in the world can show.