The lower middle classes are a never-failing stalking-horse; we can all afford to laugh at them as ridiculous, vulgar, improvident and wicked. Even the mock hero, the good young man who tries to raise himself, has something comic in him. But we haven't seen anything of the lower orders in this history as yet, and it is only incidentally that we quit King's Warren for the grimy neighbourhood of St. Luke's. Just behind the great hospital for lunatics is Matilda Street. They are all private houses in Matilda Street, and from the number of brass plates it seems at first a professional sort of neighbourhood. Most of the houses are evidently occupied by at least three families, for the right-hand doorpost nearly always contains three bells, one for each floor. But the brass plates are not those of lawyers and doctors; many of them indicate the places of business of working jewellers and watchmakers, and the latter predominate; dial painters, engine turners, escapement makers, swivel manufacturers and so on, _ad infinitum_. Then there are pianoforte tuners, and dealers of many sorts. Those of the plates which have only a surname upon them, indicate that the place is a lodging house. Though we are in the black heart of London, in one of the darkest, poorest and most melancholy quarters, there is a great deal of window gardening going on; plants of every kind and sort may be seen on the window ledges, from ground floor to attic; the humble Creeping Jenny is a great favourite, and it seems to thrive wonderfully in the damp thick atmosphere. Some of the ground floor windows are discreetly screened by wonderful specimens of lank spindly geraniums--hapless plants which have never been known to bloom, but whose sickly-looking leaves of abnormal pallor struggle towards the light, what little there is of it. Matilda Street, being in the heart of St. Luke's, naturally contains many fanciers. Numerous bow-windowed, brass-bound cages, each with its little bit of turf, are hung outside the windows in all directions, and the imprisoned skylarks they contain warble away merrily, giving quite a rural air to Matilda Street, E.C. Seedy-looking men and boys, carrying tiny square cages carefully tied up in handkerchiefs, are continually popping in and out; these are the chaffinch fanciers, and each cage contains a sightless songster, who at his master's command is prepared to pour forth his simple rural melody at any hour of the day or night in a long unbroken series of cheeps and chirrups. In Matilda Street lives a trainer of piping bullfinches, a man who has passed his whole life turning a melodeon and teaching his pupils the tune of "Rule, Britannia." Dog-breeding and dog-dealing are favourite occupations in Matilda Street; mysterious men emerge at dusk, leading dogs and carrying them in their arms, their pockets, or their bosoms, to exhibit them at numerous local shows held in neighbouring pot-houses. The little back