When I first walked about the great places of the city, I was surprised to see very many miserable men punished (as I supposed) by the _Cangue_. They had suspended to their necks two boards, one in front and one behind. Upon these were curious devices. Horses, women, great fires burning, ships blowing up, and the like. Perpetually walking to and fro, just to the measured distance, and never once sitting down, never once speaking, nor being spoken to, these creatures, thus accoutred, walked dismally right in the garbage of the gutters. No one, by any chance, ever noticed them, nor by any chance did they ever do other than, with slow and limping gait, keep up the march of doleful dismalness! For long I puzzled over these ragged apparitions; after many moons I found that they were merely stalking advertisements! [muun-shi]. I might give many other illustrations of life in London, differing from what is known to us. The human dregs are truly dreadful. Their haunts are indescribable. Many settle upon the oozy and slimy river bank, when the tide is out, seeking anything which perchance may have been washed up. Wading in a filth which covers the feet and befouls the whole tattered creature, this being, nicknamed _mud-lark_ [pho-ul-sti], becomes an outcast to all decency. Others prowl about the ash-heaps, and sift and pick over any heaps of rubbish, carefully gathering from garbage, bones, rags, anything which can give the merest pittance. It must be certain that human degradation can go no deeper when to debasing and starving poverty is added drunkenness, loathsome brutality, violence, and crime. Possibly the greatest city of the Barbarians is not worse than the worst of some portions of a great city with us; nor should I refer emphatically to the wretchedness of London were it not for the boastful ignorance manifested by Barbarian writers and literati. These always speak of the prëeminence of English civilization--of the grand and humanizing influence of their true religion--of the wealth, the liberty, and the happiness of the people! No other tribe is so humane, so just, so brave, so wise, so free, so prosperous, so contented and happy! In the face of these declarations, which are to be met with on all sides, London is a marvel! Nor London only, other cities are more marvellous; one wonders what the standard must be, by which is tested this boasted prëeminence. If by _other_ Western Barbarian life, and compared to that, truly superior, then what must be the condition at large of the Western tribes?