But I might still, I must admit, admire you very much, without that admiration giving you a Right to the Dedication of a Book relating exclusively to London Life and London Manners in the nineteenth century. Herein, however, rests, I think, your claim: That you are the author of a capital book called “Paved with Gold,” replete with the finest and shrewdest observation drawn from the scenes we have both delighted to survey, to study, and to describe, and of which book, although the basis was romantic fiction, the numerous episodes were picturesque but eminently faithful photographs of fact. I should have liked, myself, to tell the story of a prize fight, of a ratting match, or of a boy’s low lodging-house, in my own way, and in these pages; but I shrank from the attempt after your graphic narratives in “Paved with Gold.” And, again, have you not been for years the fellow-labourer of your brother Henry, in those deeply-tinted but unalterably-veracious studies of London Life, of which we have the results in “Labour and the Poor” and in the “Great World of London?” Of how many prisons, workhouses, factories, work-rooms, have you not told the tale? of how many dramas of misery and poverty have you not been the chronicler? Let us bow to the great ones of letters, and, reading their books with a hearty, honest admiration, confess that the capacity to produce such master-pieces is not given to us; but let us, on our own parts, put in a modest claim to the recognition and approval of the public. Please remember the reporters. Please not to forget the bone-grubbers. Fling a pennyworth of praise to the excavators and night-watchmen who have at least industriously laboured to collect materials wherefrom better painters may execute glowing tableaux of London Life. At least, we have toiled to bring together our tale of bricks, that by the hand of genius they may be erected some day into a Pyramid. At least, we have endeavoured to our utmost to describe the London of our day as we have seen it, and as we know it; and, in the words of the judicious Master Hooker—of whose works, my Augustus, I am afraid you are not a very sedulous student—we have worked early and late on London, and have done our best to paint the infinitely-varied characteristics of its streets and its population, “Tho’ for no other cause, yet for this, that Posteritie may know we have not looselie, thro’ silence, permitted thinges to pass away as in a dreame; there shall be for men’s information extant thus much concerning the present state of”—London. So you see, my dear friend, that I have dedicated my work to you; and that, _bon grè, mal grè_, you have been saddled with the dignity of its Patron. I might have addressed you in heroic verse, and with your name in capitals; and, in the manner of Mr. Alexander Pope, bidden you:— “Awake, my MAYHEW: leave all meaner things To low ambition and the pride of kings.”