lodgers. The straw is meant for them to lie on, but for reasons of their own they prefer to sit on it, composing themselves for the night by huddling nose and knees together and squatting by the wall. This wall is of rough planking, and extending along its entire length are places rubbed bald of splinters, and greasily polished by the friction of their uneasy shoulders, showing that for many 66 seasons "the shed had been used as a dormitory. They never take off their clothes, these hop-pickers, except the more fastidious, who will divest themselves of their ragged coat or jacket, with which to make a cushion to sit upon. Sometimes a mother may divest herself of her shawl or gown to make a nest on the ground for her baby. The only rule in support of decency-and the married element is generally sufficiently strong to enforce it-is that the married couples sleep in the middle, and the single lads and lasses at the ends.

The foreman picker had not retired, though it was late, and when he obligingly opened the barn door, so that I might get a peep inside, the scene, though ugly, was peaceful enough. Every one was asleep, or pretending to be asleep, and the heavy and by no means sweet air was stirred by the nasal trumpeting of many who had earned sweet repose by twelve or fourteen hours' labour in the broiling sun. But one could not help suspecting that what now appeared was not the worst of it. Was it reasonable to expect decent behaviour among human creatures housed with so much less ceremony than pigs in a sty? And then it was impossible to avoid the reflection that the majority of these hop-pickers were dissolute, lawless tramps, for whom a prison has no terrors except the hard labour, and brazen, shameless women, who, lost to all sense of modesty, delight in nothing so much as mocking it in others. The majority of professional hop-pickers are undoubtedly of this class; but only the majority. Every season scores of decent men and women, just then "hard up," are tempted by the stories of four or five shillings a day, and join the troop that flock to the Kentish plantations. These, of course, must herd with the rest, "Do you ever have any trouble with them ?" I asked of the foreman.

"Nothing worse than larking," he replied, "and that mostly on a Sunday. They are so tired that they are glad to get to sleep on week days."

Nothing worse than larking. To be sure that foreman picker may have been a man whose sense of propriety was so severe that he would construe the most innocent funny remark or practical joke as a "lark." On the other hand, it would not be the least surprising if, in the event of an officer of the Society for the Suppression of Vice putting his head in at one of these dens some fine Sunday night when the hilarity is at its height, he would discover something that called pretty loudly for his interference.

LONDON COURTS AND ALLEYS.

MAY I be permitted to offer to gentlemen of an inventive turn of mind a suggestion as to the production of a mechanical contrivance that shall confer greater benefits on mankind than the steam-engine or the electric telegraph, and earn for the inventor fame and wealth at least equal to those which rewarded the genius and perseverance of Watt and Stephenson? I have not the remotest idea as to what should be the shape of this wonderful machine, or of what material it should be constructed, but its name should be the Plague Preventive and Fever Indicator. The mechanism would need to be so delicate that wholesome air would have no effect on it; but as soon as the atmosphere became tainted with pestilence, it should proclaim the fact with a noise compared with which the din of an ordinary railway whistle is a mellow tinkling. Moreover, the machine to be perfect should be uncompromising-not to be quieted with apologies or promises. It must insist that the evil it is exposing be at once remedied; indeed, it should be out of his power to leave off shrieking until the cause of complaint was completely eradicated.

I only stipulate for one thing-that I may be out of town on the morning when this ingenious machine is set agoing. Otherwise it would be simply impossible to escape from the deafening uproar. Supposing Parliament to be sitting at the time, gentlemen of the House of Commons would be unable to hear each other speak, for Peter Street lies within a bowshot of the legislative temple. Now Peter Street is full of filthy chinks that swarm with human life in a manner suggestive of nothing so much as a rotten old cheese. The judges at Westminster would be in the same predicament. There is not a law court, civil or criminal, that would be able to keep out the appalling sound. It is a fact, that notwithstanding all that has been done in the way of bettering the dwellings of the poor of the metropolis, and despite our vaunt that

London is the healthiest city in the world, its courts and alleys-east, west, north, and south-may still be reckoned in thousands; the majority of them being unfit for human residence, and not a few in such a condition that many people would not believe in a fairly-written description of them There is evidence-volumes of it-that London in a

sanitary sense, is steadily improving. The first vigorous steps were taken about a quarter of a century since; and during the past five-and-twenty years, not a week, not a day has been lost in the highly-important work of making London a city fit to live in. Yet it is a simple fact that within three miles of Saint Paul's there may be found at least a thousand dens of squalor that are a shame and disgrace to any civilised nation.

The other day an offender was brought before one of the City Aldermen, charged with offering for sale some fruit that was somewhat decayed. His worship was justly indignant; but the terms in which he expressed himself were painfully significant of the fact that in spite of the advantage of his official position, he little knew what a tiny mite of the city's rottenness that half-bushel of plums or peaches represented. "Good heavens!" the worthy magistrate exclaimed, with a voice tremulous with emotion, "do you know what might have been the result had this fruit been eaten? We should have had cholera amongst us."

My dear Alderman, it is a mercy for which to offer up thanks in all our city churches, that the plague in question is not so easily evoked. People live on garbage such as that in the bushel basket; and the sickening odour that compels your nose to seek refuge in your pocket-handkerchief is the daily breath of their existence. Farringdon Market is not many minutes' walk from the Mansion House; and it might be wagered with a certainty of winning, that this sultry September afternoon there may be found at least a score of half-naked, dirty little children routing over the scavenger's swept-up heaps, exactly after the manner of pigs or ducks, gobbling up plums decayed out of all shape, rotten apples, oranges turned blue and with quite a hairy hide of mildew upon them-anything. Is this true? I seriously assure you that it is, and that it may be witnessed in Covent Garden or

Farringdon Market on any summer's day. But at last there is some hope that this shocking condition of things as regards the juvenile market prowlers will eventually be mended. There cannot be more than six or seven hundred of them, and after some weeks of skilful manoeuvring the active officers of the School Board have captured almost a dozen of them. But as regards the courts and alleys. For humanity's sake, it would be well, were it possible, to cut away a good sized block out of an acre of fair average of London squalor, and carry it out somewhere into Hyde Park, say, where it might be safely and conveniently exhibited. There is a broad field for selection. In the south, between London Bridge and the "Elephant and Castle," to the right is the Mint, with its awful colony of Irish; and to the left is Kent Street, with its network of slums, that give harborage to as many individuals "known to the police" as Newgate would hold, even if they were packed as close as barrelled herrings. Or you might take the Surrey side of Blackfriars Bridge, and cut your block out somewhere about Windmill Street, in the New Cut, or from the neighbourhood of Vauxhall, where the potteries and gasworks are. In the east you might take your pick from a hundred examples; but I should recommend a neighbourhood between Rosemary Lane and Limehouse Hole. In the north a remarkably choice sample-a rich, full-flavoured specimen of ally life may be met with between the Philharmonic Hall and Islington Green. If you went westward, the choice might lie between Peter Street and Parker Street, in Drury Lane.

It

But it would be fairest, perhaps, to take a slice out of the centre of the city. It is rotten to the very core. You may stand on Holborn Viaduct and bawl loud enough for the inhabitants of the very filthiest spot in London to hear. lies between the magnificent new meat market built lately by the Lord Mayor and the Corporation, and the great, gloomy Sessions House, that squats on what is funnily called the "Green" at Clerkenwell. The block I allude to is bounded on one side by Turnmill Street and on the other by Red Lion Street; and how it has escaped the vigilant eyes of the Sanitary Commissioners and their large staff of officers, who are, and have been for the last five and twenty