When the hour of departure arrives, you see the pavement and carriage-way of Bow Street studded with a choice assemblage of the raggedry, ruffianry, felonry, misery, drunkardry, and drabbery, whom the infamous hundred of Drury, and the scarcely less infamous tithing of Covent, have cast out into a thoroughfare which, two hours hence, will be re-echoing to the wheels of carriages bearing noble lords and ladies to listen to the delicious Bosio (alas!) in the “Traviata,” or the enchanting notes of Tamberlik in “Otello.” London is full of violent contrasts; but this is the grimmest in the whole strange catalogue. See, the warder in the watch-box has descended from his perch, and with a patent key opened the portal of the van, revealing a second janitor inside. And now the passengers destined for the lugubrious journey come tumbling out of the court door, and down the steps towards the van. Some handcuffed, some with their arms folded, or their hands thrust in their pockets in sullen defiance; some hiding their faces in their grimy palms for very shame. There are women as well as men, starved sempstresses, and brazen courtezans in tawdry finery. There are wicked graybeards, and children on whose angel faces the devil has already set his indelible brand. There are ragged losels rejoicing to go to jail as to a place where they shall at least have bread to eat and a bed to lie on; there are dashing pickpockets in shiny hats and pegtop trousers braided down the seams. There are some going to prison for the first, and some for the fiftieth time. One by one they are thrust rather than handed into the van. The shabby crowd gives a faint, derisive cheer, the door bangs, the policeman-conductor ensconces himself in his watch-box, and the Prisoners’ Van drives off. The Pharisee thanked Heaven that he was not “as that Publican.” Down on your knees, well-nurtured, well-instructed youth, and thank Heaven for the parents and friends, for the pastors and masters, to whose unremitting care and tenderness, from your cradle upwards, you owe it that you are not like one of these miserable Publicans just gone away in the prisoners’ van. But thank Heaven humbly, not pharisaically. A change at nurse, the death of a parent—one out of the fifty thousand accidents that beset life—might have thrown you into the sink of misery and want, foulness and crime, in which these creatures were reared, and you might have been here to-day, not gazing on the spectacle with a complacent pity, but trundled with manacles on your wrists into this moving pest-house, whose half-way house is the jail, and whose bourne is the gallows. SIX P.M.—A CHARITY DINNER, AND THE NEWSPAPER WINDOW AT THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE.