About five p.m. the ladies and gentlemen who, through the arbitration of Mr. Hall, Mr. Jardine, or Mr. Henry, stipendiary magistrates, have settled their little differences with Justice, are conveyed to those suburban residences, in which, for the benefit of their health, and in the interests of society, it is judged necessary, _par qui de droit_, they shall for a stated term abide. The vehicle which bears them to their temporary seclusion enjoys different names; some technical, others simply humorous. By some it is called “Her Majesty’s Carriage,” from the fact that the crown and the initials “V. R.” are painted on the panels. More far-fetched wags call it “Long Tom’s Coffin.” The police and the reporters, for shortness, call it “The Van.” In this vehicle the malefactors who have in the course of the day been arraigned before the tribunal of the Bow Street Police-court, are conveyed to the various jails and houses of correction in and about the metropolis, there to undergo the several terms of imprisonment and hard labour, as the case may be, to which they have been sentenced. Sometimes the court sits late, and the van does not take its departure before half-past five; but five is the ordinary time when the great black, shining, cellular omnibus, drawn by two strong horses, with its policeman driver, and policeman conductor in a snug little watch-box, rolls away from Bow Street. It is a prison on wheels, a peripatetic penitentiary, a locomotive hulk. Criminals both in and out of prison regard it with a species of terror, not unmixed with admiration, and, as is their wont, they have celebrated it in that peculiar strain of ballad poetry for which London roguery has been so long distinguished. In that celebrated collection of dishonest epics, the “Drury Lane Garland,” in fit companionship with “Sam Hall,” “County Jail,” “Seven years I got for priggin’,” and the “Leary Man,” I find a ballad on the subject of the Bow Street chariot of disgrace, of which the refrain is— “Sing Wentilator, separate cell, Its long, and dark, and hot as well. Sing locked-up doors—git out if you can, _There’s a crusher outside the prisoners’ wan!_” A “crusher,” or policeman, there is indeed, not only in the little watch-box on the exterior, to which I have alluded, but in the narrow corridor between the cells into which the carriage is divided in the interior. It is the former functionary’s duty to keep the outer door securely locked; the latter to take care that no communication takes place between the passengers confined in this penal omnibus, either through the ventilators on the roof, or by talismanic tappings at the panels which divide them. [Illustration: FIVE O’CLOCK P.M.: THE PRISONERS’ VAN.]