bersin the Piazza di Spagna at Rome, and about the Chiaja of Naples, dancing and grinding away at their little hurdy-gurdies, just as though London in the awful month of June, 1860, was any fitting place for such dirty children of the South. It is clear enough that these poor people never came here on their own account, nor upon the suggestions of their own brains. They must be the human merchandise out of which some Italian slave-dealer looks to make a good profit; and it is to be hoped he will be disappointed. Were they exported direct from Naples? did they grind their way all through Italy, and across the Swiss mountains, and down the Rhine? How did they manage to find money to pay their fares across the Channel? The first supposition is probably the correct one; but really our own Scotch bag-pipers are quite a sufficient affliction for a human society, without any leaven from abroad. It never can be worth the while of the wretched creatures themselves to try this English journey as a commercial adventure like the Germans. The Germans are tradesmen—these people are beggars. It is scarcely advisable to come so far as England from Italy in search of alms. The little Savoyards with the white mice, and the organ-grinders from Parma, have become an institution; it would be useless to say a word about them. They, too, are mainly imported by speculators upon a venture; and oftentimes, if their stories are to be believed, have enough to bear. One night on coming home through the Regent’s Park, and on the side of the enclosure by the wooden palings, I saw something which looked at first in the gloom like an overturned cab, or something of that description. On crossing over I found that it was an encampment of little Savoyards, who had piled their organs up so as to give them shelter from the wind, and had clubbed their filth and their warmth, and were lying all together asleep. London was the Prairie to these little travellers from the South. Their story was, that they had not earned money enough in the day to secure them a favourable reception from the padrone at night. They were afraid of being beaten if they returned home, and so had preferred taking their rest al fresco in the Regent’s Park.
The native ballad-singers are at best a dreary set, and not to be encouraged. It is not, however, one of the pleasant sights of London when you see a drab of a woman with an infant at her breast, dragging two wretched children by the hands through the muck and mire of the streets after a day of down-pour, such as we have known of late, and when the pavement, illuminated by the gas-light, is glossy with rain. What a cruel irony it is to hear such a creature shouting out in a husky way—
Through pleasures and palaces, where’er we may roam,
Yet go where we can there is no place like home.
Home, home, sweet home.
Nor is one quite disposed to believe in the genuineness of the destitution of that tidily-dressed man in the rusty but well-brushed suit of black who perambulates the streets, accompanied by his lady and their numerous family—all neatly though poorly dressed—and the youngest ones with white pinafores of irreproachable cleanliness. He looks like a schoolmaster, and the presumption is that he is in difficulties. It is, however, to be feared that there is something too professional about the manner in which every member of the family, from the parents down to the youngest child, pauses every now and then, pivots about on her or his own heel, and sweeps the windows of the street which they may at that moment happen to be making tuneful with hungry gaze. They know what they are about too well. Again, no one can be said to have made a complete study of the streets of London unless he has mastered the difficult subject of the sweepers, from the dear old lady at the bottom of the Haymarket, who is, I am told, a millionnaire, and the Hindu gentleman in St. James’s Square, downwards. These two are well-nigh, if not quite, at the top of the profession.
I have only spoken—and quite in a random and disjointed way—of a few of the odd sights and persons which any person of common observation must notice as he walks about the streets of London. It would be a very different tale if I were to ask the reader to accompany me in a little stroll whilst I talked to him of what was passing through the brains of the passers-by—plain, well-dressed men, with nothing very noticeable about them. But now it is John Sadleir fumbling with the cream-jug; now Felice Orsini with a hand-grenade in a side-pocket; now Pullinger on the way to attend the funeral of his relative, whilst the directors of the Union and the Bank-parlour people are talking him over. These are notabilities; but, reader, if you are a person who would rather study human life from realities than from books, keep your eyes open as you walk about the streets of London, and you will find in them odd sights and odd people enough.
THE BEE IN THE BONNET.
Of course when I received a letter from little Ned Ward, announcing that at last he was going to be happy, I ought to have felt sympathetically joyful. When the letter went on to state that I must, under extraordinary penalties, present myself that evening at his chambers in Crown Office Row, to partake of a gorgeous banquet in honour of the occasion, and to drink her health in a great number of bumpers, I ought to have accepted the invitation with a rapt alacrity, and have conducted myself generally in a light-hearted and genial manner. No doubt that would have been the right sort of tone to have taken. I accepted the invitation, certainly. I wrote a short letter of congratulation even. I hoped he might be happy—no end of happy—with her, whoever she might be: and yet I did not feel very warmly or very cheerfully in the business. It seemed to me as though I were coming in second in a race.
He had always been little Ned Ward to me. He was my junior: he had been my fag at school. He had been a little pale-faced boy, very thin and weakly, with dry, fair hair, and a blue jacket and bright buttons, when I had been an ultra-grown youth suffering acutely in stick-ups, and perplexedly grand in a tail-coat. But now things