Nor must we forget the " chummies," with their Jack-in-the-green, who, instead of sooty garments, cover in May their "innocent blackness with spangles and tinsel. How Jack reels and staggers in the midst of his green portable arbour towards the close of the day! lurching aside like the massy trunk of a tree buried in ivy, which you expect every minute to fall; reminding us of Orpheus, and the life he put into the timber toes of the hoary old oaks when the forest trees stood bough linked with bough as they danced a merry reel, making all their green array of leaves to tremble again. Merrily does the "Sweepess," or "Jackess" of the green, jingle her bright brass ladle before the doors; and freely is the produce of that day spent in gin, until the drinking and fighting is ended, when, disrobed of their tinselled trappings, they snore happily on a couch of soft soot.

Guy Fawkes still forms one of our London street amusements, though we regret to say that Guy is now oftener personated by some great hulking gin-drinking lazy fellow, than the old, uncouth stuffed figures which were frequently carried about, with one foot hanging down before and the other behind.

CHAPTER XIX.

SPRING-TIME IN LONDON.

HE cries of "All a-blowing! all a-growing!" are the first sounds with which the spring-flowers are ushered into the streets of London; and although not uttered by the lips of such fabled nymphs as the poets of old clothed in the richest hues of their imagination, and sent forth as attendants on blossom-bearing Spring, the voices still come like gentle greetings from old friends, all the sweeter through having been so long absent. Sometimes we see a pretty face looking out, through the homely bonnet, and behold a light and graceful form, and hear a clear musical voice calling out "Sweet primroses!' Another hurries along from street to street with the little basket balanced on her head, while with one hand she ever keeps throwing back the long silky hair that falls down and veils her deep violet-coloured eyes; and we think how some such figure haunted the poet's fancy when he peopled the vales of Arcady with the "sweet spirits of the flowers."

Now windows, which have been closed throughout the long winter, are again thrown open, and the pleasant breeze which has come from "far away o'er the sea," again blows freshly into those close and unhealthy-smelling rooms. Over dead walls and high houses has the refreshing air climbed-escaping from courts in which there was no thoroughfare. Through the steam of suffocating sewers it struggled; it shook off the malaria that clung to its skirts, as it swept over dark and stagnant ditches; over bone-boiling houses it hurried, and left the old poison behind to float around the places where it was first engendered; and, though somewhat shorn of its sweetness and its strength, it comes like a welcome guest in at the

open doors and uplifted casements of the poor. By it the grey hairs of that thin, pale-faced old man are uplifted; it tosses aside the long brown locks of the little grandchild that stands between his knees, fatherless and motherless; for the wind an hour ago blew over the empty house beside the black putrid ditch, where so many died during the past summer, and where that little orphan then lived. Even the imprisoned lark that hangs by the window feels his plumes ruffled by the breeze, and fancying for a moment that he is free, sends out his voice through the wiry cage, and sings as if he were again shivering his wings in some silvery cloud high above the opening daisies.

The blessed breeze and the sweet sunshine have aroused the poor children who vegetate in courts and alleys; and these dirty images of innocence have descended from the close, high attics, and climbed out of the low, damp cellars, and now, bare-headed and bare-footed and scantily clad, they are chasing each other like swallows, and appear as happy as if neither rags nor hunger existed in this great city of palaces, poor-houses, and prisons. A drum battledore with its gilded shuttlecock they never saw, nor would such things make them happier than those they have manufactured out of the corks they picked up among the sweepings of the gin-shop, and the feathers from the stall of a distant poulterer; while the bottom of a saucepan, or the crown of a hat, even the fire-shovel (if nothing else is to be had) furnish them with battledores. Somewhere those little ones have been and thrust their tiny arms through the railings where a lilactree was in leaf, and they have dug up the stones in the court, and stuck the green lilac-twigs in the ground, and made themselves a garden, which they are watering out of oyster-shells and broken bits of pots; for the same instinct that leads a bird to build its nest causes them to imitate the making of gardens. They collect the leaves of the turnip-tops which the greengrocer has thrown into the street, and, placing them on their little bare heads, march up and down the court, crying "All a-blowing! all a-growing!"

You peep through the open doors of little houses, at the fronts of which men and women are bartering old garments for roots or flowers, and through those open doors you see a little sunless spot between two dead walls, by the side of which a small portion of dark damp mould is portioned off, somewhere about a yard in width by eight feet in length, and those are the two garden-beds into which the "penny roots" will be stuck. Here they grow mustard-and-cress, on which the cats fight, and over which Cinderella shakes her doormats, while scores of little black flies play at hide and seek amongst the leaves; nor will all the washing in the world cleanse your salad

from these little superfluities. Then, just as the penny wallflower had struck, and the two roots of daisies, which cost per ditto, were beginning to try to open, and the hollyhock looked as if it might live, and the lupin had still a few leaves left, and the Canterbury-bell had one live shoot on,-just as "the garden" was really promising to rear at least one root, the woman that lived in the two-pair back hung a heavy coverlet on the clothes-line (the line itself consisting of six separate pieces), and it broke, and every root broke too, and not one again raised its head. Then Billy was always bowling his hoop, and could never turn it without going on the other bed; and the dustman had placed his basket on the two scarlet runners that were coming up; and where the nasturtiums were set earwigs were ever creeping in and out, and long-bodied wire-worms, that looked up at Billy as if they would like to taste of his little bare legs, and from which he always ran in screaming. Then they had told Mrs. So-and-so to save her soapsuds, to pour on the roots of the little bit of grape-vine which only shewed a leaf here and there; and she, wishing to oblige her landlady, had put the suds in the saucepan again, blown the fire, and emptied the contents, boiling hot, into the hole she made by the grape-vine!

"All a-blowing! all a-growing!" Saw you that poor woman turn round at the well-known sound? Had you been nearer you might have heard the low sigh she heaved. See, she has purchased with her last halfpenny a bunch of bluebells and primroses, and these she will place in water on her window-sill; and, while her face rests upon her hand, she will see miles beyond the little back yard, with its water-butt and cinder-heap, which her window overlooks, even as far off as the home of her childhood. The little cottage beside the wide open common, which was yellow with gorse and broom in summer, and purple with heath-bells in autumn, will again rise before her. In fancy she will hear the bees murmur as they went to and fro from her father's garden-will see the beds of flowers which she called her own; the old apple-tree, robed in white and crimson blossoms; hear the very chirp of the sparrows that built in the thatched roof, under which the honeysuckle climbed. She will again picture the rustic stile the walk along the green lane, when the hedges were white with May, when his arm was placed gently around her waist, who is now working in chains in some penal settlement. He, who was so good and so kind to her, until he was allured to London, where he met with evil companions, and first starved, then, stupified with gin, went forth in the stilly dark night, and returned home a housebreaker. See! her eyes are closed-she has fallen asleep in her broken chair; a tear still lingers in her eyelashes, and a faint sad

smile rests on her wan lips-for she fancies that she again hears the village-bells ringing, and that she is walking between those rows of graves, beneath the avenue of elms, with her bible and prayerbook in her hand, and about to enter the humble pew in which her father and mother (long since dead) knelt beside her in prayer. She awakes with a sigh; the sunshine falls on the chimney-pot opposite. She hears the drunken dustman, who lives beneath her, again quarrelling with his wife; the cry of "Beer!" in the street, then the smell from the sewer ascends; and, bringing in her flowers, she closes the window, and sits down to earn one-halfpenny per hour at the needlework supplied to her by that heart of nether millstone, the Great Nebuchadnezzar, through whose fiery furnace so many are compelled to pass, and in which such numbers perish, as they yield to his stern decree, because they know no other way by which they can obtain bread; garments made beneath burning sighs and scalding tears, that seem hot enough to blister the backs of those who wear them. God help thee, poor woman! thou canst not see it, although we can; there is an angel's face shining through every tear thou hast shed over those flowers, and looking upon thee with mild and pitying eyes.

See those old men and women "pottering" about the bit of ground before the almshouses; they also feel the cheering influence of spring. Although each plot or bed would but little more than make a grave, were a tolerable breadth of walk left between, they find a pleasure in cultivating so small a patch of earth, every inch of which brings something to remembrance as it is turned over: that root was given by old William, who is dead; the other by John, who is dying; from this, last summer, were cut the flowers he placed in a comrade's coffin; that his wife, long dead, brought all the way from the country, when she went to see her daughter at Croydon, and was so poor, that she had to walk back—and that walk caused her death; for, while heated, she sat before the door in the cool, calm April evening-it "chilled" her, and she died. Honest old bedesman! I could kiss off the tear that fell on the blue sleeve of thy old coat, were it not for pride or shame. "Two years ago, sir; she was but seventy!" and thy heart still softens, and thy tears fall when her image rises before thee, for in thy eyes she never looked aged, but rose green and fresh through the memory of other years, even as when thou first didst woo her, walking between the quiet woods along the canal near Croydon, when the forget-me-not looked into the water at its shadow, and the crimson foxglove made a red streak like sunset in the crystal mirror, and no one then dreamed that a railway would bare its iron back where the silver water reflected both