sit on the eaves to sun themselves; that the
shrewd starlings avoid the place with a
side-long, cock-eyed glance of aversion; that the
homely sparrows (and Heaven knows they
are not difficult to please) alight timidly, hop
irresolutely in its loathsome precincts, and
fly hurryscurry away; preferring rather to go
crumbless to their nests than pick the crumbs
from our table. What live things could thrive
in Slaughterhouse Court, save obscene rats,
and Chance the one-eyed terrier, who belongs
to the costermonger (who has not got, I am
afraid, a worse name than he deserves), and a
mildewed cock, with a broken crest, and such
poor, sodden, sallow human rubbish as we are?
I doubt if Mr. Gooze, of Gooze Cottage,
Highgate, troubles himself with much thought
about Slaughterhorse Court. He may say
with an opaque wheeze to his friend Broome,
the ex dust-contractor, or to his crony, Grubb,
the retired bone-boiler, "Them houses down
Low Lane brings me a deal of money; "but
what does he know, what does he think of,
what does he care for the want, and crime, and
misery, that dirt and sub-letting (both to be
laid at his door) have wrought and are wreaking
in Slaughterhorse Court. Heaven mend
us all! We are all selfish. What should I
care about the wretchedness of Slaughterhorse
Court if I didn't live up it?

It is not only that Mr. Gooze drinks his
Port, and smokes his pipe, and grows his
geraniums, and keeps his gig at Gooze
Cottage, Highgate, out of the rents of our court;
Slaughterhorse Court supports other
landlords. Gentlemen, friends of the middleman, of
the sub-letting system, stop at No. 5, up our
court, and take your fill of the beauties of
sub-letting. No. 5 is the rottenest, filthiest
house in our rotten filthy court. The woodwork,
brickwork, stonework, are all rotten.
The entrance passage shelves down like the
entrance to a public-house cellar; the window
frames have shrivelled, and left gaps between
them and the window-cases. 'There is not a
right angle among them. I would bet my
morrow's dinner (if I earn one) that not one
of the dingy panes of glass that have not yet
been displaced by foul rags, tattered great
coats, impossible flannel petticoats, brown
paper, and scraps of the Newgate school of
publications, has been cleaned for twenty
years. The tenants have stripped what little
piping or guttering there ever was away: the
door-posts which were garnished with plates
and bells, when there was only a moderate
number of tenants—say, a dozen or a score,
at No. 5—now present only the caverns of
defunct bell-pulls, and one twisted, rusted
bell-wire.

The different floors of this disreputable
tenement are let and sub-let to an infamous
degree of minuteness. It is not the sub-
division of a house into so many rooms to so
many tenants that I object to: it is that every
room should in its turn be subdivided; that
beds should be underlet, that in the garrets
the very floors, sometimes, should be at a
premium, that in the cellar one Phelim
Connor—whom I would not libel by saying
that he was from Ireland—pays a few shillings
a week for a miserable den, into which he
crams as many of his miserable countrymen
and women as can afford to pay a few pence
a night. I am poor and miserable, I know,
but I am bold enough to lift up my voice
against our court, because the evidence is
there full, broad staring in the face of God's
heaven, to bear me out; because I am ready
at any time of the day to say to the gentlemen
who live among plate-glass windows,
ventilated rooms, chimnies that don't smoke,
and doors that will shut, in Great Goliah
Street, close by: "Walk in, gentlemen, hold
your noses, tread gingerly; but walk in and
satisfy yourselves. Not only number five, but
many more numbers. Don't we want a little
water? Don't we want a little soap? If we
were better lodged, don't you think we should
have a slight temptation to exert ourselves
to get better fed and better taught? Depend
upon it you would not have to sit on so many
fever inquests, so many starvation inquests,
so many murder inquests. If you would only
have a word or two with our landlord, Mr.
Gooze, you would not so often hear our voices
quarrelling and blaspheming as you pass on
your way to counting-house or to chapel.
You would not be forced to pass through our
court with fear and trembling after nightfall.
You would not be compelled to expend so
much virtuous indignation at vestry at the
doings of that abominable den, Slaughterhorse
Court: useless indignation, seeing that
you allow the abomination to remain."

If you don't believe me, come and live up
our court. Associate with Mr. Phelim
Connor's lodgers, and his lodgers' lodgers,
including the animalculæ. You are educated
men: draw a parallel between Nebuchadnezzar
grazing like an ox, and us, wallowing
like pigs. Buy your victuals at the miserable
little chandler's shop, where Mrs. M'Cann
earns an ignoble livelihood by selling offal a
little dearer than she bought it. Come! you
are sure to find somebody at home. Some of
our children are always sprawling or fighting
in the dirt; some of our gentlemen are
always smoking their pipes at the doorways;
some of our ladies are always cowering or
wrangling on the doorsteps.

Am I without hope for our court? Oh no!
I have lived up it many years (I dwelt in
Swag Alley—Grubb's Rents before), and have
seen a very dismal and weary succession of
dirty, fighting, unwashing years; but within
the last few mouths hope—faint and distant,
yet hope still—begins to peer above the
horizon. From my window, at number eight,
I can see the nearly completed tower of a
public establishment for baths and
wash-houses at the very corner of our court where
erst was Muggins's beershop; a model lodging-
house, at three shillings a head per week for