Most of the streets, courts, and buildings are very mean. In the winter, nothing can equal the repulsiveness of the place. To the squalor of beggary, the meanness of abject poverty, add the darkness and smoke; and the conditions seem unfit for human life. The rich shut themselves within their houses, drop the heavy draperies over windows, stir up the fires, light the flaring flames of the curious gas-lights, eat, drink, and sleep--shutting out from sight and sound that hideous _outside_. This is the time when the wretched in mind and body find existence too great a burden, and cast it off with a shriek and a rush--plunging into the river or canal, or dashing beneath the wheels of the swift steam-chariots. At all street-corners one notices the gin and beer shops. These are the homes of the poor, who find in them the warmth and comfort which are wanting in their domestic haunts. These shops are closed at mid-night, when the half or wholly drunken loiterers must straggle off into those holes and corners which _are_ their homes. Probably there is no feature in barbaric life so curious and so characteristic as this--this Gin-house of the poor. The Government licenses these places, and derives a great income. The Upper-Castes fatten upon this very thing. What can be said of it--what done with it? Another remarkable object in the London streets is the _Street Arab_. This is the name given to it by the Barbarians. But the Arab of Asia (if my reading be correct) is nothing like this creature. The London Arab is of the degraded and thieving class--the very sediment--but not yet fully weighted! In years a youth, but in feeling a ravening, sharp, adroit animal, quickened by the exercise of every instinct, and cool and expert from constant habit. He dodges in and out from under the heads of horses and the wheels of vehicles; mounts a lamp-post, or anything by which he may get a sight; seizes the bundle which you may have in hand; touches his uncombed front locks of hair, "Please, Sir, le' me carry it, Sir;" and trots before you, happy if he get twopence. Nobody knows where he sleeps, or eats, nor how he lives, at all. I have suddenly come upon two or more of them, when resting upon an iron grating. Their naked feet and heads, their thin limbs hung about with dirty rags, and their teeth chattering with cold--but never a word of complaint--no seeming thought of anything hard or uncommon. These iron bars cover, sometimes, an area below, into which the warm, moist air of kitchens comes, and rises through the gratings, loaded with the smell of cookery. Upon these bars will huddle together these half-naked and starved outcasts, happy in the partial warmth, and a hope of food--for, if only a bone, or a bit of that steaming soup could by any chance be theirs! Poor girls, of this wretchedness born, shivering upon the wintry swept corners, timidly offer you matches [kin-fue], "Please, Sir, buy"--and will run along by your side, if you give them a