men who visit the London Docks during the present high fever of emigration. [Illustration: LONDON DOCKS--OUTER BASIN.] CHAPTER VII. WHITECHAPEL, AND THE OLD REMAINS IN BISHOPSGATE-STREET. Hitherto our course has been eastward; we must now turn our faces towards the west, and describe a few of the objects which lie on our right hand, as we retrace our steps, and journey to where the sun sets. To the point from whence we started at the commencement of our work (the foot of Blackfriars Bridge) we shall find but little to detain us; for the Bank and Exchange are too commercial for our pages, as we have not undertaken to write a Guide-Book, and fear that we have already dwelt too minutely on many of the uninteresting portions of the City which we have already described. But, up to the Tower, the neighbourhood we have gone over lies like a mere edging on the great skirt of London, compared to the labyrinths of streets that spread north and west--to say nothing of the Surrey side of the Thames. A mere glance at the map of London appals us. We shall therefore select a picturesque object here and there after having quitted the city, just as fancy guides the way. Turning our back on the Docks, and taking the nearest cut to the Mile-end-road, we will at once dash into Whitechapel; for all behind us belongs to the suburbs, and our present descriptions lie not there. We have in our opening article, entitled "Ancient London," glanced at the picturesque appearance of this neighbourhood in former years, and now turn to the present to find that these old-world splendours have given place to gin-shops, plate-glass palaces, into which squalor and misery rush, and drown the remembrance of their wretchedness in drowsy and poisonous potations of gin;--splendour and squalor, the very contrast of which makes thinking men pause, but are disregarded by those who contribute to the one and recklessly endure the other.