THE 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 barefooted 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 lilac-tree 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 prayer-book 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 your images and the broad-branched oak, beneath which ye were then seated.

Spring brings with it Easter—the first holiday that brightens on the departing gloom of winter. Then we hear mingled with the cry of “All a-blowing! all a-growing!” the reedy notes of penny trumpets, and the beat of tiny drums, and the shrill pipings of yellow wooden whistles: and tired children walk home from Greenwich with little dolls on their arms; and mothers carry their sleeping babies without murmuring; and little feet, that “scarcely stir the dust,” come plodding on, just as their young fathers and mothers had done some three or four-and-twenty years ago. Here, one on each side clung to her gown, there he carried another pick-a-back, who kept grinding his organ as he rode; while the fourth slept, covered over with the shawl, regardless of the busy crowds that were hurrying to and fro. Surely there was no selfishness in the enjoyment of the day on the part of the parents, shared as it was by those dear dusty children, the eldest not five years old, the youngest not so many months; and two of them carried every inch of the five miles back. For days after will those children talk about what they saw in the park at Greenwich, in the fair, and on the road; and their dreams will be of gilt gingerbread horses, and swings high as the tall trees, and booths, and music, the distant river, old pensioners with wooden legs and spyglasses, donkeys on Blackheath, swarthy gipsies, drinks of beer, and the heads and tails of shrimps. They will mimic the sights, and try to imitate the sounds, and go sounding and drumming through the house until the trumpet refuses to speak, and the drum is burst, and not a wire is left inside the threepenny organ. Then their grandfathers and grandmothers (if they were not with them) will come and ask a hundred questions as to what they saw, and what they did, and whither they went; and, from the answers they receive, go away convinced that there are no other children in this huge overgrown London to be compared with their grandchildren. May heaven shower its blessings on the conceit, and they never have cause to think otherwise!

Besides such groups as these, the pavements were almost blocked up with little carts, in which many a kiss and many a scratch were exchanged, and in these children squalled and smiled as they were dragged part of the way to the fair. And the little nurserymaid, who still wore her workhouse dress, was compelled to turn round every few minutes and to threaten what she would do at the impudent but good-natured boys who would help to shove on the little chaise, and cram a portion of their oranges or gingerbread into the children’s mouths. Then one fine-looking, dark-eyed lad, after a harmless fight with the little maid, by some kind of freemasonry, was a minute or two after helping her to draw the chaise, and they went on chatting and laughing together, while he divided his fairings with her. On looking at that lad more closely, we remembered that for a month he brought our water-cresses, that for a fortnight he knocked at our door and called “Butcher!” then we lost sight of him for some weeks, and when he made his appearance again he came with our daily newspaper, followed by a dog, which he set on our favourite cat. Times got worse, and he came with another boy; and they swept the snow from the pavement for a penny, and as much bread and cheese as they could eat. Then he opened and shut a shop, but had the misfortune to break a pane of glass; and as it was on Tuesday when the accident took place, and he was informed that the price of the pane would be stopped out of his week’s wages; and as he calculated what that would amount to, and found that it would swallow up his whole week’s earnings, why he went to breakfast, and never returned; and, just before Easter, he had raised a basket, and, either by money or credit, obtained a goodly show of roots and flowers, and, instead of “Water-cresses!” “Butcher!” or “Paper!” we heard his cheerful and well-known voice in the street, crying “All a-blowing! all a-growing!” He is now aspiring to a donkey and cart, and if we err not, to the little nursery-maid in the mob-cap and workhouse dress, and sweet smiling countenance (when pleased), which proclaims her to have come “of gentle kin.”

Now bundles of rhubarb, that run all to water in the pies and puddings, may be seen in the greengrocers’ shops; and little new waxy potatoes, that have no taste, are ticketed a shilling a pound; and small gooseberries, that have the flavour of green-tea leaves, given to the old charwoman, and which she has kept stewing on the hob for a full hour, are ditto per half pint; and asparagus, that looks like candle-wicks, is tied up in bundles; while little salads made of two radishes, a couple of onions, a few slices of beet-root, mustard, cress, and a halfpenny bunch of water-cresses, sit in little baskets marked sixpence, and try to tempt the passers-by to purchase. Now men, who smell of the aroma of old woods, stand before the doors of public-houses, with young honeysuckles and eglantine, the roots buried in moss; and violets and primroses, fresh and blowing in their own native earth, just as they were dug up on the sunny banks by Sanderstead, or in the tree-shaded lanes around Cobham.

Finally, old hats, boots, shoes, and cast-off garments of every description are routed out at the cry of “All a-blowing! all a-growing!” and exchanged for flowers, the bearers of which barter on the principle of getting all they can and giving as little as possible in return. Even the lady of the house cannot resist the entreaties of her children, who, attracted by the well-known call, and the sight of the basket of flowers outside the window, drag her to the door, and let her have no peace until she has purchased the lovely heath, the beautiful Iris, the pot of American primroses, or the gaudier group of gold and silver-coloured crocuses. The servant-girl must also have her flower-pot in the high attic window, and she looks at it the first thing in the morning and the last at night, and feels thankful, in the words of Solomon, that “the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”