"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen," and this applies to weeds as well as flowers. Persons not acquainted with the intricacies of the neighborhood would have passed Church Alley without noticing it, even without being aware that there was such a thoroughfare within hail; it seemed, as it were, to shrink from notice, and to have been formed with a view to the enjoyment of the pleasures of obscurity, notwithstanding that it had at one end a public-house and a pawnbroker's shop, and at the other end a pawnbroker's shop and a public-house. These four establishments may be said to have been the archways to the paradise of Church Alley, and from the commencement to the end of the year, in rain or shine, in winter or summer, lost and wretched Peris could always be seen there, lingering at the gates. Public-houses and pawnbroker's shops are as the very breath of life in the East of London, and are important and degrading elements in the education of the dwellers therein. Children from their earliest days are familiar with them, and grow into the knowledge (which fair minds cannot dispute) that these institutions are planted there especially for their behoof. Brewers and distillers grow fat upon vice, and go smilingly through the world, conveniently blind to the fact that the richer they grow the more crowded become the ranks of those wretched ones from whose midst our prisons are filled, and whose lives are a standing reproach to humanity and civilization. It is not the fair use, but the gross abuse, of a system which is here deplored. The axe should be laid to it, despite the Moloch called vested interests, which is set up at the least remonstrance to frighten the timid. Let there be beer-shops and public-houses within limits, but it is infamous legislation which sanctions and encourages (as is to be verified to-day in slices of the East) every fifth or sixth tenement to be either one or the other. To contend, in respect of these hot-beds of vice, that the law of supply follows the law of demand, is an unblushing falsehood; they are distinctly forced upon the people by the very men who fatten upon the degradation, and who are often to be seen upon public platforms deploring the evils of which they are the creators. The sermons these moralists preach--to win votes, or to prove themselves qualified for public office, or to air their spurious philanthropy--are the bitterest of mockeries.