kisses, of fifteen that she had rocked in vain,—
tell how she lost all, and strove to satisfy the
craving of her heart by taking to her wretched
home some other woman's child, and loving
it. Men would not slightingly shrug their
shoulders then—the Lord Seymours of the
House of Commons perhaps would not laugh.

"The fair sum of six thousand years''
Traditions of civility—"

what is it, if we are content that there should
be six thousand places like Wild Court in
London!

Six thousand worse places we might have
said, for Wild Court is not half so savage as
many a lane, court, or alley with a gentler
name, taken from fields, roses, and fountains,
from harps of angels, or from Paradise itself.
From the front attic, just now untenanted, of
one house in Wild Court we passed to the
back attic, where an Irishwoman keeps house
in her husband's absence, and is as happy as
the stairs are long. Down-stairs we go,
noting that the sky is visible through a crack
in the corner of the wall, down a dilapidated
yet rather ample staircase, with thick old
balustrades of solid oak, and in the backroom
next below there is a sickly middle-aged man,
who remembers and knows nothing, sitting
by the fire, and a woman all astir with an
enormous baby. In the front room there is
nobody adult, and little or no furniture at
home. Our general impression after peeping
in was that we had seen a perfectly bare room
and a baby in the middle of it coiled up in a
coalbox. The rooms were lofty, the staircase
as we still journeyed downward very much
broken, but still bordered with stout oaken
balustrades, and lower down, the rooms which
are of good size and pitch, were wainscoted.
The rent of one exceeds three shillings, and
each is rented of the landlord by one family,
which sublets to another or two others. There
are fourteen houses in Wild Court, within the
walls of which there sleep every night more
than a thousand people.

These sleep not only as lawful tenants
thronging all the rooms, but as illegal tenants,
miserable creatures who at night-fall crowd
into them and take possession of the staircases.
In the morning they depart, leaving
the little yard behind the back-door of each
house, sometimes covered six inches deep with
filth. In those yards cesspools and rotten
water-butts are neighbours, and the dustheaps
are placed under the parlour windows.
Underneath each house there is an unpaved
cellar open to the court, which is used only as
a receptacle for garbage. Until the way was
stopped some weeks ago, one of those cellars
was entered nearly every night for two or
three years by thieves, who passed from it,
by a hole in the floor made for their especial
use, into an untenanted room, which was their
rendezvous. And because the use made of
that room was notorious, nobody offered to
become its tenant.

On the whole, however, the aspect of the
fixed population of the place—and we saw
much of it, for we were there during the
dinner hour,—and all the men, women, and
children able to move, who were not looking
at us out of doors, were looking at us out of
windows—the aspect of the fixed population
was not hopeless. There were thoughtful
faces, kindly faces, and there was not one
repellent word or look. A disappointed
suitor in Chancery would no doubt be ready
to make affidavit respecting these people, that
as a class they did not seem to be greater
rogues than the lawyers for whom their rooms
seem to have served as Chambers some two
centuries ago. The rags hung upon poles
from many upper windows like triumphal
banners, the occasional festoons of hareskin,
the faces of young girls looking down with
favour on our small procession, out of bowers
often partly tapestried with hareskin, might
have been tricked out by a lunatic into the
fantastic picture of a small triumphal march.
The strange men with clean faces were indeed
gazed at with quiet and perplexed wonder
rather than watched with intelligent interest
and sympathy; but they had a known right
to be there, for they represented a society
that had bought the property, and therefore
might, if it pleased, walk up and down stairs
on it till doomsday.

For we must explain now that the nobleman
to whom we have referred already was Lord
Shaftesbury, the Chairman of the Society for
Improving the Condition of the Labouring
Classes, and that the gentlemen by whom he
was accompanied were officers of that society
or labourers on behalf of public health who
had been specially invited. In the last class are
to be numbered the genius of the past Board
of Health, Mr. Chadwick, and the genius of
the present Board, Sir Benjamin Hall. Both
took part in the inspection.

There are fourteen houses in Wild Court,
of which thirteen have been obtained by the
society. These it is proposed thoroughly to
revise and amend. They are to be converted
into decent and wholesome dwellings, offering
every accommodation that good health can
need, at the same rent now charged for such
lodging as we have in part described. The
conversion to Christianity of heathen
dwellings in our courts and alleys is, we are glad
to say, now made a main object of consideration
with the society over which Lord Shaftesbury
presides. There is good reason why
this should be the case, because it is found
that instead of six per cent, the largest
amount likely to be realised on the construction
of new model lodging houses—a good
per-centage on an admirable work—the
conversion of bad houses into good promises to
yield much more abundant profits. Such
conversion promises indeed to yield no less than
fifteen per cent, according to experience obtained
in Charles-street, and so to provide
room for more extensive operations, as well