Tottenham Court Road, and Union Street, Borough. What gives these men their almost superhuman velocity, strength, confidence? They do but carry cabbages, like other market-folk; but look on the legends inscribed on these vans, and the mystery is at once explained. “Chaplin and Home,” “Pickford and Co.,” railway carriers. These vegetable Titans are of the rail, and raily. They have brought their horns of plenty from the termini of the great iron roads. Carts and carts, trucks and trucks have journeyed through the dense night, laden with vegetable produce; locomotives have shrieked over Chatmoss, dragging cabbages and carrots after them; the most distant counties have poured the fatness of their lands at the feet of the Queen-city; but she, like the daughter of the horse-leech, still cryeth, “Give! give!” and, like Oliver Twist, “asks for more.” So they send her more, even from strange countries beyond the sea. Black steamers from Rotterdam and Antwerp belch forth volumes of smoke at the Tower stairs, and discharge cargoes of peas and potatoes. The Queen-city is an hungered, and must be fed; and it is no joke, I need scarcely tell you, to feed London. When the King of Siam has resolved upon the ruin of a courtier, he makes him a present of a white elephant. As the animal is thrice sacred in Siamese eyes, the luckless baillee, or garnishee, or possessor of the brute, dare neither sell, kill, nor neglect it; and the daily ration of rice, hay, and sugar which the albino monster devours, soon reduces the courtier to irremediable bankruptcy. Moral: avoid courts. If this were a despotic country, and her Majesty the Empress of Britain should take it into her head to ruin Baron Rothschild or the Marquis of Westminster (and indeed I have heard that the impoverished nobleman last mentioned is haunted by the fear of dying in a workhouse), I don’t think she could more easily effect her purpose than by giving him LONDON and bidding him feed it for a week. [Illustration: COVENT GARDEN MARKET: EARLY BREAKFAST STALL.]