You are finally off; you arrive at your new quarters. Before you can wink, up starts a first cousin [tw-in-ti] of him who has just stared at you, who, in his turn, seizes hold of the door-handle, and shows in every motion that he has seized you too, at least to the extent of _sixpence_. You step out; he touches his hair (he has no hat); you try not to see him; but impossible--the pennies must come. But why attempt to delineate these endless methods of prey. The poor wretches who live by these miserable shifts are innumerable and everywhere. One does not begrudge the _pennies_, but detests the nuisance, and the debasement which it demonstrates. London is an undesirable place of residence, unless for the rich, and to them only for a few months in the year. But it is full of objects of study to him who cares to know anything of barbaric life, or who wishes to investigate the records and literature of the Western tribes. All great cities are much alike; it is the different aspect of human life which is the noticeable thing. Unless, on the whole, a great city exhibits humanity in a pleasing condition, it is a failure, however rich it may be. London, which was described one hundred and fifty years ago as a "Province of Houses," certainly contains an immense population bare of attractive features. No doubt much must be put down to climate and fuel. The former is foggy, cold, dark, and disheartening for the larger part of the year; and the latter, by its foul gas [ptrut] and smoke, makes the fog and cloudy air so obscure as to give an unearthly gloom. The poor feel not only the gnawing of hunger but the nipping frost, unrelieved by any smiles in earth or sky. The mud of the streets is like a nasty grease, and one walks or crosses the ways in terror of befoulment. The clothes and the face are exposed not only to this, but also to the defiling smoke which drops a steady drizzle [kri-tze] of black atoms upon everything.