Then the sale commences, the seller fixing his price, and the buyer offering what he considers to be the value; sometimes they "meet each other halfway," as it is called, one lowering and the other advancing. The fish are generally sold in lots without being weighed, and it requires good judgment on both sides to reach the right mark. Although there are so many salesmen, and generally such ample choice, the prices vary much, as fish brought from one part of the coast are often superior to what come from another. But the fun of the market commences with the hawkers, when they come to see what has been left by the large retail dealers: then you may hear a little of what is called "Billingsgate;" though, instead of the old renowned blackguardism, it is generally most good-natured "chaff." "Fresh do you call these?" says one, who finds the price too high for him. "Look how they rolls up the whites of their eyes, as if they vanted a little rain. I should say they hasn't had a blessed smell of water for this week past." "Think I've been robbing somebody?" says another. "Vy, bless you, all the whole bilin' of my customers hasn't got so much amongst them as would buy the lot--no, not if they sold their toothpicks!" Billingsgate is more like a wholesale warehouse than a fish-market, although you may purchase a single mackerel in it. The hundreds of carts which are drawn up in Thames-street, proclaim how far and wide the produce of river and ocean is dispersed. From the next street to the most remote suburb are the loads of fish borne, to be washed and laid out temptingly in the thousands of shops which abound in London and the surrounding suburbs. Nor is the supply limited to this circle; the rapid trains carry off tons of fish to the distant towns, where they arrive in time enough for dinner; thus sending [Illustration: BILLINGSGATE.] into the country the turbot and salmon as fresh as we receive it in the metropolis; for what are a hundred miles on the great railways? Old Billingsgate is now pulled down; the muddy dock, where so many fishing-smacks have been harboured is filled up; and, instead of the old-fashioned market which illustrates this chapter, a pile is erected more befitting the greatest city in the world, and more like the noble edifice--the New Coal Exchange--that faces it. Eels cannot be brought to Billingsgate in such perfection as they formerly were. We have now before us a Parliamentary report, given in above twenty years ago, complaining of the poisonous state of the Thames. The following evidence of Mr. Butcher, a fish-salesman, and agent for Dutch vessels, will be interesting at this moment, while the Thames is made the great sewer of London: "Eight Dutch vessels arrived at Gravesend with full cargoes of healthy eels in July 1827, and the following is the state in which they reached the London market: