back cellar sat in the House of Lords. The front room of the cellar was occupied by a cobbler. The window which supplied light to his room was a practicable one, resembling a shutter of glass, which could be put up and taken down at will; and during the whole of the year, in fair weather or foul--except upon those occasions, which were frequent enough, when he was drunk--the man could be seen by passersby plying his thread and awl. Fortunately for himself and for everybody about him, he was a bachelor. There were two rooms on the ground-floor, the front occupied by a "baked-tater man," his wife, and two young children. At those periods of the year when baked potatoes with their seasoning of pepper and salt were not in request, the man, being a strict Conservative, was idle, allowing his wife to accompany a friend of his, who drove quite a roaring trade in fairly good neighborhoods with his barrow of seasonable flowers. For this labor she was paid in coin one shilling a day, and a share of his bread and cheese or bread and meat, as well as of the sundry pots of beer his thirsty soul demanded in his peregrinations. Their two children played in the gutters, being not exceptional in this respect, because most of the children in the court found in the gutters a veritable Crystal Palace of delights. The back room on the ground-floor was occupied by a large family--father, mother, and seven children--all employed from morning till night, and often from night till morning, upon the manufacture of match-boxes, at the rate of two-pence three-farthings a gross. Their united earnings never exceeded fifteen shillings, often were less. Thus the grim effort to make both ends meet, no less than their close and long hours of toil, rendered them white, pinched, haggard-looking, and almost fleshless. On the first-floor front lived a married couple with an only child. The man had once been a law-writer, probably not a very skilful or capable scribe, seeing he had never been able to save a penny. However, it was here he found himself plunged into poverty's depths and unable to follow his calling, the muscles of his right hand being paralyzed. The wife had become a shirtmaker, and was assisted by her child, a girl of sixteen. Neither of these was a skilful workwoman, and after the payment of their rent there was seldom left at the end of the week more than seven or eight shillings to expend in food.