fragments of a stationer's shop, torn to pieces
by a hurricane; no tormenting wind to ruffle
the leaves of the cabmen's capes, to fan the
chesnut fire to a magnificent crimson bloom, to
wrench feloniously at the cold bright weather-
cock coronet of St. Martin's Church that you
pitied and shuddered to see so high up aloft in
its fickle, solitary, and chilly splendour—
admirable type of royal happiness. No angry
wind was running about, as if to warm itself, or
screaming round corners in a helpless, imbecile,
and mendicant way. No wind was there to sway
the golden perches, caught but never landed, that
dangle and flicker over the doors of "fishing-
tackle" shops; or to blow almost off its hook
the crown of black rag strips, or the suicidal
negro baby at the marine store shop entrances.

No, quite the reverse. The street-sweeper's
legs are not black purple, nor is the crouching
Lascar in bed-linen at all frozen, nor are the
objectionable songs sold to him in the Row as
Christian tracts, blown about like scattered
doves. No, the day is one when the great grey
endless terraces ring sharp and hopefully under
the lounging foot, and sordid wretches in
tindery rags pass with baskets full of fragrant
blood-brown wallflowers on their arms, and
children run after people with quilled-up bunches
of violets that they long to keep; and if you
were now to wander out to the great flat nursery
gardens round Fulham, you would find slow
melting snows of blossoms on every tree. As
for Covent-garden now, it is a halo of delight,
like a fairy tableau, and you expect to see the
ballet come dancing up between the banks of
Barcelona nuts, whose shingle is oranges and
winter apples, and whose boulders are Valencia
melons.

I am out taking notes on my shining thumb-
nail,because (as I have said) it seems to me, and
has long seemed to me, that there is no Blue or
Red Book, no Post-office Directory, where you can
hope to find the proper addresses and directions
of the London ghosts. Though every square
stone in the London pavement is really a
tombstone, containing pressed down beneath it some
old association, legend, or memory, some dry
flower of poetry long ago, trodden under foot;
when, long since, the fresh turf was first
turned into a continuation of the great stone
case of this Babylon cemetery of ours, and its
life was swallowed up by the spreading death
that is still gnawing away at the suburbs,
fretting further and further, like a spreading
iron-mould, or a widening blot. London history
loses interest from its diffusion. Once seize
strongly the real prominent associations of a
district or a street, and for ever after when you
pass the houses seem tapestried with names and
legends. London has always been the stage of
England, and every street of it is a volume of
its history.

It is a curious fact in street science, not, I
think, before recorded, that every state of wind
and weather drives its peculiar flock of people
into the street, who are seen at that time, at no
other time, and at that time only. This is a fact
beyond all contradiction; why it is, I know not,
but I believe it may be traced to deep physiological
causes, and is connected with very subtle
laws of attraction, cohesion, and sympathy. The
causes have alliances, Dr. Regenbogen thinks,
with electricity and magnetism, and are most
highly curious proofs of the preponderance in the
present age of the nervous above the muscular,
and all the coarser organisations. There are
your north-east people, your sou'-west-people,
your nor'-west people, and your—— But why
need I box the whole compass when the fact is
so palpable to a keen observer. It is useless to
tell me that this is an imagination, and is really
caused by the moods of my own weatherbeaten
mind being influenced by the weather. This is
absurd; the wind being sour and north-east does
not make me north-east, nor all the people I meet
north-east; no, the simple fact, scientifically
proved (only science is jealous and will not
record it), is, that the north-east wind brings
out north-east people. It appears at first a wild
assertion, but it is true that, during the sour,
bitter, blighting, ill-tempered prevalence of the
east wind, you meet no good-looking person, no
virtue, no beauty, no honesty, no worth. Every
third person is a money-lender or a fraudulent
bankrupt; the costermongers are pickpockets,
crack-skulls, and cut-throats to a man. Poverty
prevails— lean, greasy, buttoned-up poverty— not
struggling and hopeful worth, but bilking, lying,
skulking, and hopeless. You meet no decent
comely old age crowned with the white coronet
of time, wisdom's mark of brevet rank and coming
promotion. No, not one, but rather sour
nutcracker-men, with no kind, full lips like the rims
of decanters, but screw-snippers, Harpagons born
of Sycoraxes, skinflints who have come out for a
breathing after having cut off their eldest son
with a shilling, turned their favourite daughter out
of doors because she burnt the breakfast muffin,
written six dunning letters, and kicked their pet
dog violently down stairs. All the officers you
meet then are bullies, all the doctors quacks, all
the lawyers rogues, all the clergymen sceptics, all
the women are ugly, and all the men cheats.
North-east people's faces are blue and yellow, the
nose is frosty red, and the lips are white; they are
slovenly in dress, and insolent in manner; they
always drive the wrong side of the road, and
tread on your corns— in fact they are NORTH-
EAST people, and one cannot go further than
that. Ill-conditioned, suicidal, felonious people,
&c., they are generally middle-aged, and often
old and spiteful.

It was only yesterday, however, under this
very same pompous church, reared by Gibbs, of
Aberdeen, that I met nothing but mild, pleasant,
sweet-eyed south-west people, and it put me in
a good mood for kindly note-taking.

What dust-powdered antiquarian can tell us
what Norman king, in intervals of malvoisie-
drinking and boar-hunting, gave the name of an
Hungarian saint to this parish outside the walls?
What had the anchorite Bishop of Tours (only
fancy an anchorite bishop), who with eighty monks
beat their backs nightly to a cruel red in their