The amount of business transacted in each of these great receiving-sheds every evening, from seven till about ten o’clock, is quite astonishing. On Messrs. Pickford’s great elevated platform, which at that time is laden with goods of all descriptions, several clerks, each protected by a sort of rough arbour of iron rods, and lighted by gas, are seen, in various localities, sitting before little desks, towards which porters from all directions are wheeling, on trucks, different articles which have just been unloaded from a series of spring-vans, the bottoms of which are nearly on a level with the platform. The drivers of these carriages, entering the building at a large gate, twist, turn, and then back their horses with a dexterity which an unpractised person would think it impossible for men and horses to attain: “_Now then!_” and “_All right!_” being almost the only vociferations to be heard. As fast as the goods can be unladen from the spring-waggons to the platform, a porter lustily calls out the address on each bale or parcel, which is actively registered by a clerk. These invoices are then briskly sent across to the other side of the platform, in order that each article enumerated therein, when reloaded--as it almost immediately is, into railway waggons--may be ticketed off, to ascertain whether every package taken in at the receiving side of the platform has _bonâ fide_ been safely despatched from the other. Until the visitor to this extraordinary nocturnal scene has had some time first to recover his composure, and then to observe, analyse, and reflect on the various arrangements simultaneously in operation before him, the picture altogether is really astounding. For from one side of the platform a set of active porters are centripedally wheeling from different spring-waggons innumerable packages to the recording clerks, as eagerly as from these clerks (whose duty it is to record the weight of every article, and to affix to it the Company’s printed charge for conveyance to its address) other porters, equally active, are centrifugally wheeling other packages to various railway vans, which, as fast as they can be filled, are drawn away from the despatching side of the platform, and immediately replaced by empty ones. One set of porters are wheeling to a recording clerk a waggon-load of raw silk, valued at 9000_l._, from China, which, _viâ_ the South-Western Railway, has just arrived from Southampton to go to Macclesfield to be manufactured; another set, Russia tallow, in casks; others, draperies; another set, yarns for Gloucester; one porter has on his truck a very small but heavy load of iron or lead; another, with comparative ease, is wheeling through the crowd a huge wool-bag, large enough to contain, if properly packed, a special jury. Here comes a truck of mustard, in small casks, followed by another full of coffee; there goes a barrow-load of drugs--preceding a cask of spirits, which, to prevent fraud, has