relish for the Londoners' table that the small red radishes do to an American's appetite.

A man, curious in such things, has estimated as follows the yearly sales of this appetizing little green relish :

Covent Garden Market, 2,000,000 bunches, Farringdon Market, 15,000,000 bunches, Borough Market, (Southwark), 1,000,000 bunches, Spitalfield's Market, 500,000 bunches, Portman Market, 260,000 bunches, and Oxford Market, 200,000 bunches. It will be seen that Cockneys relish greens very much.

A little of everything can be procured at Covent Garden. Here are peddlers of account books, lead pencils, watch chains, dog-collars, whips, chains, curry-combs, pastry, money-bags, tissue-paper for the tops of strawberry-pottles, and horse-chestnut leaves for garnishing fruit-stalls; coffee-stalls, and stalls of pea-soup and pickled eels; basket-makers; women making up nosegays; and girls splitting huge bundles of water-cresses into little bunches.

Here are fruits and vegetables from all parts of the world; peas, and asparagus, and new potatoes, from the south of France, Belgium, Holland, Portugal, and the Bermudas, are brought in steam-vessels. Besides Deptford onions, Battersea cabbages, Mortlake asparagus, Chelsea celery, and Charlton peas, immense quantities are brought by railway from Cornwall and Devonshire, the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey, the Kentish and Essex banks of the Thames, the banks of the Humber, the Mersey, the Orwell, the Trent, and the Ouse.

The Scilly Isles send early articles by steamer to Southamp ton, and thence to Covent Garden by railway. Strawberries are sent from gardens about Bath. The money paid annually for fruits and vegetables sold in this market is estimated at three millions sterling: for 6 or 700,000 pottles of strawberries; 40,000,000 cabbages; 2,000,000 cauliflowers; 300,000 bushels of peas; 750,000 lettuces; and 500,000 bushels of onions. In Centre-row, hot-house grapes are sold at 25s. per pound, British Queen and Black Prince strawberries at 18. per ounce, slender French beans at 38. per hundred, peas at a

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guinea a quart, and new potatoes at 48. 6d. per pound; a mossrose for half-a-crown, and bouquets of flowers from one shilling to two guineas each.

Green peas have been sold here at Christmas when they are deemed a luxury, for three pounds a quart, and asparagus has brought, in the same season, a pound, and rhubarb, a pound and five shillings a bunch.

The cries of the children peddling violets are sometimes almost heartrending, as these little waifs are very often fasting for a whole day before they can realize a few pennies to buy their food, to say nothing of food for those who have sent them to peddle the violets.

There is an Artesian well under Covent Garden Market, 280 feet deep, which supplies 1,600 gallons an hour, sufficient for the needs of the market people, most of which is consumed in watering flowers and vegetables, or in giving horses to drink. There are elegant conservatories over the collonades of the market fifteen feet broad and fifteen feet high, for the preservation of the more costly and delicate plants and flowers. From this market nearly all the button-hole flowers which are vended at from a penny to four-pence a piece are obtained for the use of the London "swells."

One of the most curious places in London is the Orange and Nut Market, in Hounsditch. This market is chiefly in the hands of the lowest kind of Jews, men in greasy garments, and having frightfully hooked noses. The Costermongers come here for oranges, nuts, and lemons, to sell or hawk them around the suburbs or slums of London. The market is called Dukes'Place Market. There is a big, massive, Synagogue, a lot of ancient-looking houses, the oranges themselves have a cobwebbed appearance, and the people are all dingy here. The nuts are for sale in sacks, and the baskets have a dilapidated look. The Jews, in all countries, are an industrious and economical people, and in London, as elsewhere, they monopolize the most profitable and least laborious occupations. They are represented by lawyers, members of Parliament, great bankers, like Rothschild, merchants, like Solomons, and men of liberal

taste, like Sir Francis Goldsmid. London is estimated at 48,000.

The number of Jews in

Each dwelling around this Orange Market seems as if it had been partially consumed by fire, for not one of the shops have a window, and they are comparatively empty, save where a crate of oranges, or a bag of nuts, are exposed for sale. A few sickly fowls,

looking as if they were dyspeptic, wander here picking up crumbs among the orange baskets and nut sacks, and dirty, ragged little Jewish children, play around with great equanimity among the rubbish. The disputes among the loud-voiced Costermongers who come here with their little wagons and jackasses, to draw their fruit, and the Jews who have all glib-toned, smooth voices, at some times, when the oranges are changing hands from sellers to buyers-are very amusing.

There I saw slatternly-looking girls sorting the good from the bad fruit, and one big, tall Jewish wench, was engaged over

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a barrel of common black grapes, plunging her dirty arms down in the barrel and pulling up the decayed fruit which she gave to a little child who stood by her, and ate of them greedily from her hand. Some of these Jewish fruit-traders take in as much as £200 in a day's sale of oranges, from Costermongers. Most of these oranges are sent to the Jews on commission. Years ago the Jew boys had a monopoly of the orange peddling trade, but now the monopoly is in the hands of Irish boys, who are more eloquent, more aggressive, and more popular, than the Jews, and consequently sell they more fruit.

Farringdon Market, near the Strand, on the sloping surface of the hill, upon which the Holborn and Fleet street stand, is one of the principal markets in London, though it covers but an acre and a half. The ground and buildings cost about £200,000. The market building is 480 feet long at the centre, 41 feet high, and 48 feet broad, and has a court-yard in the centre of which the wagons, and baskets, and market lumber, are placed. The court, or, as it is called, the quadrangle, is generally filled with vegetables and fruit.

CHAPTER XXX.

SECRETS OF A RIVER.

T had been a stormy night in the London streets. In the Strand the shopkeepers' assistants were hurriedly fastening the shutters upon the windows of their masters shops, eager to escape the hurricane of rain which swept over the London housetops, and tore through the lanes of brick and mortar like an enraged fiend. Thirsty souls who were draining huge mugs of malt liquor in the many publics along Thames street, looked out with scared faces on the river which was beating its sides angrily against the shipping and lesser craft.

The waters of the Thames ran high and wild, and down in the Pool and by Limehouse Reach, huge ships bearing the colors of many nations at their peaks, swung and rocked in the seething tides, while black night and the angry shades of the coming storm gathered around their twinkling red and blue signal lamps, which lazily danced from their yards over the surface of the river, leaving faint streaks of light that were ever and anon swallowed by the angry waters. Boatmen were anxiously securing wherries and fastening them under bridges and by water-stairs, and all the while the clouds above lowered, and the sweeping gusts of rain stung the faces of those who were unfortunate enough to be in the streets without shelter. Shutters slapped and banged in and out, and chimney pots were whirled about by the fierce and howling winds.

I had been on a tour of inspection, with a friend and a police