If, early on a summer morning before the smoke of countless fires had narrowed the horizon of the metropolis, a spectator were to ascend to the top of St. Paul’s, and take his stand upon the balcony, that with gilded rail flashes like a fringe of fire upon the summit of the dome, he would see sleeping beneath his feet the greatest camp of men upon which the sun has ever risen. As far as he could distinguish by the morning light he would behold stretched before him the mighty map of the metropolis; and could he ascend still higher, he would note the stream of life overflowing the brim of hills which enclose the basin in which it stands.

In the space swept by his vision would lie the congregated habitations of two millions and a half of his species—but how vain are figures to convey an idea of so immense a multitude. If Norway, stretching from the Frozen Ocean down to the southern extremity of the North Sea, were to summon all its people to one vast conclave, they would number little more than half the souls within the London bills of mortality. Switzerland, in her thousand valleys, could not muster such an army; and even busy Holland, within her mast-thronged harbours, humming cities, and populous plains, could barely overmatch the close-packed millions within sound of the great bell at his feet. As the spectator gazed upon this extraordinary prospect, the first stir of the awakening city would gradually steal upon his ear. The rumbling of wheels, the clang of hammers, the clear call of the human voice, all deepening by degrees into a confused hum, would proclaim that the mighty city was once more rousing to the labour of the day, and the blue columns of smoke climbing up to heaven that the morning meal was at hand. At such a moment the thought would naturally arise in his mind,—In what manner is such an assemblage victualled? By what complicated wheels does all the machinery move by which two millions and a half of human beings sit down day by day to their meals as regularly and quietly as though they only formed a sung little party at Lovegrove’s on a summer’s afternoon? As thus he mused respecting the means by which the supply and demand of so vast a multitude is brought to agree, so that every one is enabled to procure exactly what he wants, at the exact time without loss to himself or injury to the community, thin lines of steam, sharply marked for the moment, as they advanced one after another from the horizon and converged towards him would indicate the arrival of the great commissariat trains, stored with produce from all parts of these isles and from the adjacent continent. Could his eye distinguish in addition the fine threads of that far-spreading web which makes London the most sensitive spot on the earth, he would be enabled to take in at a glance the two agents—steam and electricity—which keep the balance true between the wants and the supply of London.

If our spectator will now descend from his giddy height, and will accompany us among the busy haunts of men, we will attempt to point out to him whence those innumerable commodities, which he has seen pouring into the town, have been obtained, the chief marts to which they are consigned, and the manner in which they are distributed from house to house. Had London like Paris its octroi, the difficulty of our task would be limited to the mere display of official figures, but, thanks to a free policy, we have no such means of getting at strictly accurate estimates, and must therefore content ourselves with the results of patient inquiry among the foremost carriers—the railway companies—aided by such other information as we have been able to procure. For the sake of convenience, and of sequence, let us imagine that the principal daily meal is proceeding, and, according to the order of the courses, we will endeavour to trace the various edibles to their source—the fish to its sea—the beast to its pasture—the wild animal to its lair—the game to its cover—and the fruit to its orchard; to point out how they are netted, fattened, bagged, gathered, and conveyed to their ultimate destination—the great red lane of London humanity. Let us begin with fish, and that unrivalled fish-market which all the world is aware rears its head by London Bridge.

Those who remember old Billingsgate, with its tumble-down wharf, and dock half choked with corruption and oyster-shells—a dirty remnant of the days of Elizabeth—will enter with pleasure Mr. Bunning’s new market. Through its Italian colonnade are seen the masts of the fishing smacks, and the brown wharves of the opposite side—a pleasing picture, which instantly fixes the artistic eye. The busy scene within the market between the hours of five and seven in the morning, is one of the marvels of the metropolis. Billingsgate is the only wholesale fish-market in London, and it may therefore be imagined how great must be the business transacted within its walls. Of old, nine-tenths of the supply came by way of the river, the little that came by land being conveyed from the coast, at great expense, in four-horse vans. Now the railways are day by day supplanting smacks, and in many cases steamers; for by means of its iron arms, London, whilst its millions slumber, grasps the produce of every sea that beats against our island coast, and ere they have uprisen it is drawn to a focus in this central mart. Thus every night in the season the hardy fishermen of Yarmouth catch a hundred tons (12,081 yearly), principally herring, which, by means of the Eastern Counties Railway, are next morning at Billingsgate. The South-Western Railway sends up annually, with the same speed, 4,000 tons of mackerel and other fish, the gatherings of the south coast. The North Western collects over night the “catch” from Ireland, Scotland, and the north-east coast of England, and adds to the Thames-street mart 3,578 tons, principally of salmon, whilst the Great Northern delivers to the early morning market, or sometimes later in the day, 3,248 tons of like sea produce. The Great Western brings up the harvest of the Cornish and Devonshire coasts, chiefly mackerel and pilchards, to the amount of 1,560 tons in the year; and the Brighton and South Coast conveys the incredible number of 15,000 bushels of oysters, besides 4,000 tons of other fish. Nearly one-half in fact of the fish-supply of London, instead of following as of old the tedious route of the coast, is hurried in the dead of night across the length and breadth of the land to Billingsgate, and, before the large consumers in Tyburnia and Belgravia have left their beds, may be seen either lying on the marble slabs of the fishmongers, or penetrating on the peripatetic barrow of the costermonger into the dismal lanes and alleys inhabited by “London Labour and the London Poor.” These prodigious gleanings from what Goldsmith might well call the “finny deep,” are conveyed from the termini in spring-vans, drawn by two and occasionally by four horses. Salmon comes in boxes, herrings in barrels, and all other kinds of fish in baskets. Sometimes as many as sixty of these vans will arrive in the narrow street leading to the market in the course of two or three hours, and the scene of confusion occasioned by their rushing among the fishmongers’ carts and the costermongers’ barrows, the latter often amounting to more than a thousand, is almost as great as that at Smithfield; for the fish, like the live-stock trade, has long outgrown its mart: and Billingsgate, as much as Smithfield, is choked for want of space. Let the visitor beware how he enters it in a good coat, for, as sure as he goes in in broad cloth, he will come out in scale armour. They are not polite at Billingsgate, as all the world knows, and “by your leave” is only a preliminary to your hat being knocked off your head by a bushel of oysters or a basket of crabs. In the early part of the morning, the traffic is carried on in comparative quiet, for the regular fishmongers, who have the first of the market, conduct their business with little disturbance, but it would gladden the heart of a Dutch painter to see the piled produce of a dozen different seas glittering with silver and brilliant with colour. Gigantic salmon, fresh caught from the firths and bays of Scotland, or from the productive Irish seas, flounder about, as the boxes in which they have travelled disgorge them upon the board. Quantities of delicate red mullet, that have been hurried up by the Great Western, all the way from Cornwall, for the purpose of being furnished fresh to the fastidious palates at the West End; smelts brought by the Dutch boats, their delicate skins varying in hue like an opal as you pass; pyramids of lobsters, a moving mass of spiteful claws and restless feelers, savage at their late abduction from some Norwegian fiord; great heaps of pinky shrimps; turbots, that lately fattened upon the Doggerbank, with their white bellies bent as for some tremendous leap; and humbler plaice and dabs, from our own craft—all this bountiful accumulation forms a mingled scene of strange forms and vivid colours, that no one with an eye for the picturesque can contemplate without interest. Neither is the scene always one of still life, for it is no rare occurrence for the visitor to behold a yelling knot of men dragging with ropes through the excited crowd a royal sturgeon, nine feet in length. If the spectator now peeps down the large square opening into the dismal space below, which appears like the hold of a ship lately recovered from the deep, he will see the shell-fish market, where piles of blue-black muscles, whelks, and grey cockles turned up with yellow, give the place a repulsive aspect of dirt and slop. There are but few buyers seen here, and they are generally women belonging to the costermonger class, for the men rather disdain the shell-fish trade. These female itinerants may be noticed wandering about from basket to basket, occasionally gouging out a whelk from the shell with the thumb, to test the lot, and then passing on to the next.

Busiest among the busy is seen the “Bommeree,” or middleman—sometimes called the forestaller. The province of this individual is to purchase the fish as it comes into the market, and divide it into lots to suit large and small buyers, separating the qualities according as they are designed for St. James’s or St. Giles’s. These worthies used at one time to forestal the market extensively, when they felt certain, from the state of the tide, that no fish supplies could be poured in for the day, but now the railway defeats their tactics, and the utter uncertainty of the arrivals has done away with this branch of their business. After the “trade” has been supplied, and the serge-aproned “regulars” have loaded their light spring carts, there comes, especially in certain fish seasons, an eruption of purchasers of a totally different character—the costermongers of streets. This nomade tribe, which wanders in thousands from market to market, performs a most important part in the distribution of food. They are for the greater part the tradesmen of the poor, and by their energy and enterprise secure to our working-classes many of the fruits of both sea and land, which they would never taste but for them. About seven o’clock the army of street-vendors, foot and “donkey,” for the greater number rattle up in barrows drawn by that useful animal, begin visibly to change the whole hue and appearance of the place. Young fellows in fustian coats and Belcher handkerchiefs throng the market, and board the smacks, “chaffing,” higgling, joking, and swearing—but never fighting, for the costermonger has too much to do at present to make physical demonstrations. Among the most eager of the itinerant salesmen the visitor speedily distinguishes the Judaic nose. The Hebrews, who are in great force about this neighbourhood on account of the dried-fruit trade, which is mainly in their hands, deal largely also in fish. The poorer members of the fraternity purchase the bigger portion of the fresh-water supply, such as plaice, roach, dace, &c., in fact, nearly everything caught by the Wandsworth fisherman, whose picturesque “bawley” boats, which often contain both his family and fortune, may generally be seen moored in the stream between Battersea reach and Kew bridge, a mass of brown nets and umber canopies lit up by the brilliant red caps of their owners, just such as Constable loved to paint in the foregrounds of his landscapes. These fish, if not alive, must at least retain the spasmodic quivering of the flesh which remains immediately after death, or the Jews will not buy, for reasons we suppose connected with their religion, since their chief trade is among the rich and poor of their own people. The Wandsworth fishermen also supply all the white-bait that is consumed at Greenwich and Blackwall: it is caught generally between the latter place and Woolwich at night, and it is singular that a fish which is among the most delicate we have, should flourish in one of the foulest parts of the foulest river in Europe. The area of the market, as soon as the costermongers appear, speedily becomes broken up into numbers of little circles, strictly intent upon the eye of individuals who take up a position high over their heads upon the boards or stands. These are the salesmen, disposing by auction of the fish consigned to them. Some of the dealers are moneyed men, and will lay out their fifty pounds of a morning, re-selling to their fellows again at a profit. The smaller capitalists combine in threes and fours, and thus manage to get their commodities at wholesale prices. The activity of the market mainly depends upon the season of the year and the amount of fish. The energy of these peripatetics is surprising: they look in at Billingsgate, and if the supply runs short they are off again immediately to Covent Garden, for they deal in everything, and the barrow that one morning you see filled with fresh herrings, the next is blooming with plums. If, on the contrary, a large cargo of sprats comes suddenly into London, or if soles should be unusually plentiful, it is known in an incredibly short space of time all over the town, and they flock to the market in thousands; as many as five thousand is the usual attendance on such occasions. These costermongers absorb more than a third of the whole Billingsgate supply; of sprats and fresh herrings they take fully two-thirds. Turbot and all the costlier fish they purchase sparingly, but they buy largely when it chances to be cheap, as in the cholera year of 1849, when prime salmon went a-begging at four-pence a pound! If the market is dull, and prices are high, the fact is speedily known, and the cry of “No smacks at the Gate,” is sufficient to turn the current immediately in the direction of the “Garden.”

Steam, as we have already intimated, has revolutionized the fish-trade, and is rapidly sweeping away the whole fleet of smacks propelled by sails, as ruthlessly as the rail did stagecoaches. A few years ago all the oysters were brought by water to Billingsgate; but a short time since a great natural bed, called the Mid Channel Bed, which stretches for forty miles between the ports of Shoreham and Havre, was discovered, and, the dredging-ground being free to all comers, a vast field of wealth has been opened to fishermen, especially as from the proximity of the Brighton and South Coast Railway the produce can be sent immediately to town, and escape the dues of metage and other tolls to which all fish landed at the market is liable. Seaborne oysters are thus placed at a great disadvantage, and the different companies owning them justly complain at a city exaction which takes a large sum annually out of their pockets, besides the charge for porterage it entails upon the purchasers. Mr. Alston, who is, without doubt, the largest oyster-fisher in the world, sent up in one year between 40,000 and 50,000 bushels from his fishery, Cheyney Rock, near Sheerness, and paid 800l. for metage. The whole trade paid no less than 3,000l., and this for services which their own men could do as well as themselves, were it not for a custom which enforces idleness upon the smack people.[21]

The “scuttle-mouths,” as they are termed from their huge shell, pay no attention to season, and consequently oyster-day has now in a great degree lost its significance. The 4th of August is still, it is true, the opening day at Billingsgate, but the supply from without has taken the wind out of its sails. Only those who have witnessed the crowds filling all the streets leading to the market long before the hour of business—six o’clock in the morning—can understand the eagerness exhibited of old to obtain some of the first day’s oysters. All this is now gone. There were not more than eighteen smacks at the opening of the present year, and, few as were the arrivals, the buyers were not eager. The Mid-Channel oysters, which have thus disturbed the old trade, are of a large and by no means delicate kind, such as come from Tenby, Jersey, &c.—coarse fish, eaten by rough men—third-class oysters, in fact, which rarely penetrate to the West End, unless to make sauce. Real natives are greater aristocrats among their fellows than ever; the demand for them has for a long time far exceeded the supply, and the price has consequently risen. Of the birth, parentage and nurture of this delicate fish, a curious tale could be told. Designed for fastidious palates, much care and attention is bestowed upon its breeding. The habituÉ of the Opera, who strolls up the brilliantly lighted Haymarket towards midnight, and turns into any one of the fish supper-rooms that line its western side, little dreams of the organization at work to enable him to enjoy his native. Most of the oysters, with the exception of the Mid-Channel bed, are regularly cultivated by different companies, who rear and tend them at different parts of the south coast, and of the Thames at its mouth. Of these companies there are nine, in addition to individuals who possess and work what might be called sea-farms, several of which are miles in extent. In all the beds there is a certain space dedicated to natives. At Burnham, Essex, the “spat,” or fecundated sperm, is stored in large pits, and sold as native brood, which is afterwards “laid” in that portion of the different beds appropriated to privileged oysters. Here the young natives remain for three years, when they are generally brought to market. So far their education is left, in a certain degree, to nature; but once in the possession of the fish-shopkeepers, art steps in to perfect their condition. They are now stored in large shallow vats, being carefully laid with their proper sides uppermost, and supplied daily with oatmeal: a process which is calculated rather to fatten than to flavour, and there are many who think that, like show cattle, they are none the better for over-feeding. “Natives,” packed in barrels, form one of the articles of food that is largely sent out of London into the country, as all persons know who travel much at Christmas time, and notice with astonishment the pyramids of oyster-barrels which crowd the platforms of all the termini of the metropolis.

The frying-pans of London are mainly supplied with soles all the year round by the trolling-boats of Barking, of which there are upwards of 150 belonging to different companies. They fish the North Sea off the coasts of Yorkshire and Holland, particularly the Silver and Brown banks. Of old the smacks used to carry their own catch to Billingsgate, but the loss of time was so great, that latterly fast-sailing cutters have been employed to attend upon the fishing-smacks and bring their produce to market packed in ice. Of this splendid craft, which can sail almost in the eye of the wind, there are forty; and the total number of seamen employed is not less than 2,000, the greater part of whom have been taken as boys from the workhouse, and trained by this capital service into first-rate seamen. It is curious to follow the small proceedings of the world into their ultimate results. The gastronome, smiling complacently as he withdraws the cover and reveals a well-browned pair of soles, would never guess that they and their kind are the immediate cause of a happy transmutation of parish burthens into the right arm of our strength. Eels are constantly imported to Billingsgate by the Dutch boats. The galliots never moor close alongside the wharf, as the wells in which they bring their fish alive cause them to draw too much water, but they anchor midway in the stream, by twos and threes—their brown sides, flat bows, with high cheek-bones, like their navigators, and bright verd-green rudders, adding to the picturesque appearance of the river. The great fat creatures brought by them mainly supply the eel-pie houses, and contribute largely, we are informed, to that oleaginous kind of soup which people too hungry to be curious mistake for veritable oxtail and calves’ head. The Dutch boats do not, however, confine themselves to eels. They deal in turbot, soles, and all kinds of flat-fish, such as frequent the Dogger Bank, much to the discredit of our native enterprise, neglecting, as we do, the splendid deep-sea fishing-ground off the south-west coast of Ireland, where cod and salmon are to be found in abundant quantities, whilst those who know the west coast well, declare there is turbot enough in Galway Bay “to supply the whole of Europe for the next hundred years.”

We believe, however, it is now in contemplation to go to work upon a large scale in those waters, having screw-steamers to collect the produce, and bring it to Milford Haven alive in wells, from which port it would come, vi the South Wales and Great Western Railways, to Billingsgate, within twenty-four hours after it was caught. The value of screw steamers having capacious wells has been fully tested by Mr. Howard, of Manningtree, Essex, who fitted an engine and screw into one of his welled fishing-smacks. Scarcely a lobster, out of twenty thousand put alive into the boat, was lost, whilst large numbers of those brought in sailing smacks perish. Salmon, cod, and other fish, are brought alive with the same success in the welled steamers from the North Sea and the coast of Scotland. It is almost time that some new ground were found in place of the famous Dogger Bank, which has now been preyed upon by so many nations for centuries, and has supplied so many generations of Catholics and Protestants with fast and feast food. No better proof that its stores are failing could be given than the fact that, although the ground, counting the Long Bank and the north-west flat in its vicinity, covers 11,800 square miles, and that in fine weather it is fished by the London companies with from fifteen to twenty dozen of long lines, extending to ten or twelve miles, and containing from 9,000 to 12,000 hooks, it is yet not at all common to secure even as many as four score fish of a night—a poverty which can be better appreciated when we learn that 600 fish for 800 hooks is the catch for deep-sea fishing about Kinsale.

Towards the latter end of August the great herring season commences. Yarmouth is the chief seat of this branch of the piscatory trade. Every night when the weather is fine the fishermen of this old port “shoot” upwards of 300 square miles of net. Neptune in his ample arms never gave the ocean so magnificent an embrace. The produce of this wholesale sweeping of the sea is brought to town by the Eastern Counties Railway. They come up to Billingsgate packed in barrels and in bulk, and the number sold in the year seems almost fabulous, being upwards of a billion. Next to the herring fishery the sea-harvest of most importance to the poor of London is that of sprats, which come in about Lord Mayor’s Day, and it is a popular belief that the first dish is always sent to the chief magistrate of the city. If a telegraph were to be laid down to all the alleys and courts, the fact of a large arrival of these little creatures at Billingsgate would not be sooner made known to the lower orders than, by some mysterious process, it is at present. Mr. Goldham, the clerk of the market, accustomed as he is to the sudden invasions of the costermongers, informs us that the scene on board the smacks laden with sprats is really frightful. The people hang thick as sea-weed from the rigging, throng the decks, and swarm on every available inch of plank, until the wonder is that the whole of the puny fleet does not capsize with the weight. The cause of the scramble is that the street sellers will not buy until they have seen the sample, and every one consequently tries to gain the highest point, that he may look down into the hold, whilst a man tumbles about the sprats with a shovel, in silver showers. The plaice season succeeds to that of sprats, with the interval of mackerel, which continues until the end of May, when Scotland and Ireland begin to pass down their salmon into the market. But where do all the lobsters come from? The lovers of this most delicious of the crustaceÆ tribe will probably be astonished to learn that they are mainly brought from Norway. France and the Channel Islands, Orkney, and Shetland, do, it is true, contribute a few to the metropolitan market, but full two-thirds are reluctantly, and with much pinching and twisting, dragged out of the thousand rock-bound inlets which indent the Norwegian coast. They are conveyed alive in a screw-steamer and by smacks, in baskets, sometimes to the extent of 20,000 of a night, to Great Grimsby, and are thence forwarded to town by the Great Northern Railway—another 10,000 arriving perhaps from points on our own and the French coast. The fighting, twisting, blue-black masses are taken as soon as purchased to what are termed the “boiling-houses,” of which there are four, situated in Duck and Love Lanes, close to the market; and here, for a trifling sum per score, they change their dark for scarlet uniforms. They are plunged into the boiling cauldron, basket and all, and in twenty minutes they are done. Crabs are cooked in the same establishments, but their nervous systems are so acute, that they dash off their claws in convulsive agony if placed alive in hot water. To prevent this mutilation, which would spoil their sale, they are first killed by the insertion of a needle through the head. The lobster trade is mostly in the hands of one salesman, Mr. Saunders, of Thames Street, who often has upwards of 15,000 consigned to him of a morning, and who causes no less than 15,000l. a year to flow into the fishy palms of Norwegians for this single article of commerce. As to the total supply of fish to the London market, we borrow the following estimate from Mr. Mayhew’s very clever book on “London Labour and the London Poor.” The figures seemed to us at first sight so enormous, that we hesitatingly submitted the table to one of the largest salesmen who assured us that it was no over-statement:—

And now for the piÈce de rÉsistance.

London has always been celebrated for the excellence of its meat, and her sons do justice to it; at least it has become the universal impression that they consume more, man for man, than any other town population in the world. It was a sirloin, fresh and ruddy, hanging at the door of some Giblett or Slater in a former century, that inspired, we suspect, the song which ever since has stirred Englishmen in a foreign land, “The Roast Beef of Old England.” The visitor accustomed to the markets of our large provincial towns would doubtless expect to find the emporium of the live-stock trade for so vast a population of an imposing size. The foreigner, after seeing the magnificence of our docks—the solidity and span of our bridges—might naturally look for a national exposition of our greatness in the chief market dedicated to that British beef which is the boast of John Bull. What they do see in reality, if they have courage to wend their way along any of the narrow tumble-down streets approaching to Smithfield, which the great fire unfortunately spared, is an irregular space bounded by dirty houses and the ragged party-walls of demolished habitations, which give it the appearance of the site of a recent conflagration—the whole space comprising just six acres, fifteen perches, roads and public thoroughfares included. Into this narrow area, surrounded with slaughter-houses, triperies, bone-boiling houses, gut-scraperies, &c., the mutton-chops, scrags, saddles, legs, sirloins, and rounds, which grace the smiling boards of our noble imperial capital throughout the year, have, for the major part, been goaded and contused for the benefit of the civic corporation installed at Guildhall.[22] The best time is early in the morning—say one or two o’clock of the “great day,” as the last market before Christmas-day is called. On this occasion, not only the space—calculated to hold 4,100 oxen and 30,000 sheep, besides calves and pigs—is crammed, but the approaches around it overflow with live stock for many hundred feet, and sometimes the cattle are seen blocking up the passage as far as St. Sepulchre’s church. If the stranger can make his way through the crowd, and by means of some vantage-ground or door-step can manage to raise himself a few feet above the general level, he sees before him in one direction, by the dim red light of hundreds of torches, a writhing party-coloured mass, surmounted by twisting horns, some in rows, tied to rails which run along the whole length of the open space, some gathered together in one struggling knot. In another quarter, the moving torches reveal to him now and then, through the misty light, a couple of acres of living wool, or roods of pigs’ skins. If he ventures into this closely wedged and labouring mass, he is enabled to watch more narrowly the reason of the universal ferment among the beasts.

The drover with his goad is forcing the cattle into the smallest possible compass, and a little further on half a dozen men are making desperate efforts to drag refractory oxen up to the rails with ropes. In the scuffle which ensues the slipping of the ropes often snaps the fingers of the persons who are conducting the operation, and there is scarce a drover in the market who has not had some of his digits broken. The sheep, squeezed into hurdles like figs into a drum, lie down upon each other, “and make no sign;” the pigs, on the other hand, cry out before they are hurt. This scene, which has more the appearance of a hideous nightmare than a weekly exhibition in a civilised country, is accompanied by the barking of dogs, the bellowing of cattle, the cursing of men, and the dull blows of sticks—a charivari of sound that must be heard to be appreciated. The hubbub gradually abates from twelve o’clock at night, the time of opening, to its close at 3 P.M. next day; although during the whole period, as fresh lots are “headed up,” individual acts of cruelty continue. Can it excite surprise that a state of things, the worst details of which we have suppressed, because of the pain which such horrors excite, sometimes so injures the stock that, to quote the words of one of the witnesses before the Smithfield Commission, “a grazier will not know his own beast four days after it has left him?” The meat itself suffers in quality; for anything like fright or passion is well known to affect the blood, and consequently the flesh. Beasts subjected to such disturbances will often turn green within twenty-four hours after death. Mr. Slater, the well-known butcher of Kensington and Jermyn-street, states that mutton is often so disfigured by blows and the goad, that it cannot be sold for the West-end tables. Many of the drovers we doubt not are ruffians, but we believe the greater part of this cruelty is to be ascribed to the market-place itself, which, considering the immense amount of business to be got through on Mondays and Fridays, is absurdly and disgracefully confined. According to the official account, the number of live stock exhibited in 1853 was—

But this is far from giving a true idea of the whole amount brought into London. Much stock arrives in the capital which never enters the great mart. For example, Mr. Slater, who kills per week, on the average, 200 sheep and from 20 to 25 oxen, says, in his evidence before the Smithfield Commission, that he buys a great deal of his stock from the graziers in Norfolk and Essex. Again, “town” pigs are slaughtered and sent direct to the meat market, while many sheep are bought from the parks, where they have been temporarily placed till they find a purchaser. A much more correct estimate of the flocks and herds which are annually consumed in London may be gathered from a report of the numbers transmitted by the different lines of railway, compiled from official sources by Mr. Ormandy, the cattle-traffic manager of the North-Western Railway. From this able pamphlet we extract the following table:—

These numbers show at a glance what a part the railway plays in supplying animal food to the metropolis, and how trifling in comparison is the amount that travels up on foot. The Eastern Counties lines, penetrating and monopolizing the rich breeding and fattening districts of Norfolk and Essex, bring up the largest share. Many of the little black cattle, that tourists see in Scotland climbing the hills like cats, come directly from these counties, having some months before been sent thither from their native north to clothe their bones with English substance. By the same line we receive a fair portion of that great foreign contribution to our larders, the mere shadow of which so frightened our graziers some years ago, principally Danish stock, which finds its way from Tonning to Lowestoff, a route newly opened up by the North of Europe Steam-ship Company. The North-Western is next in rank as a carrier of live stock. This line takes in the contributions from the Midland Counties, and, by way of Liverpool, abundance of Irish and Scotch cattle. The Great Northern is perhaps destined to surpass both in the quantities of food it will eventually pour into London, running as it does through the northern breeding districts, and receiving at its extremity the herds which come from Aberdeen and its neighbourhood.

The foreign supply last year of cattle, sheep, pigs, and calves, was more than a seventh of the entire number sent to London. The daily bills of entries at the Custom House furnishes us with a valuable indication of the fields from which we have already received, and may in future expect to receive still further additions of what Englishmen greatly covet—good beef and mutton at a moderate price. The arrivals by steam in the port of London in 1853 were as follows:—

Holland, Denmark, and the Hanseatic Towns, it will be seen, were the principal contributors. A more striking example of the influence of the legislation of one country in modifying the occupations of the people of another could not be cited, than the manner in which Sir Robert Peel’s tariff revolutionized the character of Danish and Dutch farming. Before 1844 the pastures of the two countries, more especially the rich marshes of Holland, were almost exclusively devoted to dairy purposes: the abolition of the duty on live stock in that year quickly introduced a new state of things. The farmers began to breed stock, and consequently turnips and mangel-wurzel have been creeping over fields, where once the dairy-maid carried the milking-pail, as gradually as one landscape succeeds another in the Polytechnic dissolving views. We get now from both countries excellent beef, especially from Jutland, whose lowing herds used formerly to go to Hamburg—and who has not heard of the famous Hambro’ beef? We may expect in time to receive still finer meat from this quarter, for the Danes have been sedulously improving their breed, and agriculturists, who saw the beasts which were sent over to the last Baker-street show, admitted that they were in every respect equal to our own short-horns. It is gratifying to note how ready the world is to follow our lead in the matter of stock-breeding. Bulls are bought up at fabulous prices by foreigners, and especially by our cousins on the other side of the Atlantic, for the purpose of raising the indigenous cattle to the British standard. An American, for instance, purchased, for 1,000l., a celebrated bull bred by Earl Ducie, though unfortunately the animal broke his neck on his passage out. Another noble specimen was secured, we have heard, for the same quarter, for 600l.

The supply of sheep and lambs has, during the last twenty years, stood nearly still; for in 1828 there were brought to market 1,412,032, and in 1849 but 1,417,000, or only an extra 4,000 for the 500,000 mouths which have been added to the metropolis between these two periods. That London has of late years abjured mutton, as our immediate ancestors appear to have done pork, the evidence of our senses denies. How, then, are we to explain this stagnation in the Smithfield returns? By the fact that a new channel has been found in the rapid rise of Newgate market, the great receptacle of country-killed meat brought up to town by the railways. Those who remember the place forty years ago state that there were not then twenty salesmen, and now there are two hundred. This enormous development is due to steam, which bids fair to give Newgate, in the cold season at least, the lead over Smithfield. The new agent has more than quadrupled the area from which London draws its meat. Twenty years ago eighty miles was the farthest distance from which carcases ever came; now the Great Northern and North-Western railways, during the winter months, bring hundreds of tons from as far north as Aberdeen, whilst some are fetched from Hamburgh and Ostend. Country slaughtering will in time, we have little doubt, deliver the capital from the nuisances which grow out of this horrible trade. Aberdeen is in fact becoming little else than a London abattoir. The style in which the butchers of that place dress and pack the carcases leaves nothing to be desired, and in the course of the year mountains of beef, mutton, pork, and veal arrive the night after it is slaughtered in perfect condition. According to returns obligingly forwarded to us by the different railway companies, we find that the following was the weight of country-killed meat by the undermentioned lines:—

Thus no less than 36,487 tons of meat are annually “pitched” at Newgate and Leadenhall markets. As the Scotch boats convey about 700 tons more, we have at least 37,187 tons of country-killed meat brought into London by steam, and these immense contributions are totally independent of the amount slaughtered at Smithfield, which is estimated to average weekly 1,000 oxen, 3,000 sheep and lambs, and 400 calves and pigs. We have given the average supply; but on some occasions the quantity is enormously increased. The Eastern Counties line during one Christmas week deposited at Newgate about 1,000 tons of meat; and the weight sent by other companies on the same day would be proportionately large. No less than forty waggons were waiting on one occasion to discharge their beef and mutton into the market. And what does our reader imagine may be the area in which nine-tenths of this mass of meat are sold? Just 2 roods 45 perches, having one carriage entrance, which varies from 14 to 18 feet in width, and four foot entrances, the widest of which is only 16 feet 6 inches, and the narrowest 5 feet 8 inches. No wonder that, as we are informed by more than one of the witnesses before the Smithfield Inquiry Commission, there is often not sufficient space to expose the meat for sale, and it becomes putrid in consequence. Though we have acquired the fame of being a practical people, it must be confessed that we conduct many of our every-day transactions in a blundering manner, when we cannot provide commodious markets for perishable commodities, or even turn out an omnibus that can be mounted without an effort of agility and daring.

Mr. Giblett, the noted butcher, late of Bond Street, calculates that the amount of meat brought by the railways into Newgate is three times that supplied by the London carcase butchers, who annually send 52,000 oxen, 156,000 sheep, 10,400 calves, and 10,400 pigs. Taking this estimate, and applying it also to the Leadenhall market, we shall have at

This we are convinced is still below the truth, for we have not included the country-killed meat sold at Farringdon and Whitechapel markets.[24] The total value of this enormous supply of flesh cannot be much less than fourteen millions annually.

These figures demonstrate that the falling off of sheep sent to London is solely because they now come to town in the form of mutton. It is sent to a much greater extent than beef, in consequence of its arriving in finer condition, being more easily carried, and better worth the cost of conveyance on account of the larger proportion of prime joints. Indeed, the entire carcase of the oxen never comes, since the coarse boiling-pieces would have to pay the same carriage as the picked “roastings.” Newgate, be it remembered, is eminently a West End market, and fully two-thirds of its meat find its way to that quarter of the town. Accordingly, most of the beef “pitched” here consists of sirloins and ribs; and, in addition to whole carcases of sheep, there are numerous separate legs and saddles of mutton. This accounts for a fact that has puzzled many, namely, how London manages to get such myriads of chops. Go into any part of the metropolis, and look into the windows of the thousand eating-houses and coffee-shops in the great thoroughfares, and in every one of them there is the invariable blue dish with half a dozen juicy, well-trimmed chops, crowned with a sprig of parsley. To justify such a number, either fourfold the supply of sheep must come to London that we have any account of, or in lieu of the ordinary number of vertebrÆ they must possess as many as the great boa. When the prodigious store of saddles which the country spares the town have once been seen the wonder ceases. “Sometimes I cut 100 saddles into mutton-chops to supply the eating-houses,” says Mr. Banister, of Threadneedle Street.

The weather preserves a most delicate balance between Newgate and Smithfield. Winter is the busy time at the former market, when meat can be carried any distance without fear of taint. As soon as summer sets in, Smithfield takes its turn; for butchers then prefer to purchase live stock, in order that they may kill them the exact moment they are required. Sometimes as many as 1,200 beasts and from 12,000 to 15,000 sheep are slaughtered in hot weather on a Friday night, in the neighbourhood of Smithfield, for Saturday’s market. Every precaution is taken on the railways to keep the meat sweet. The Eastern Counties Company provide “peds,” or cloths cut to the shape of the carcase or joint, for the use of their customers, and sometimes it is conveyed from the north in boxes. When, in spite of care, it turns out to be tainted, the salesman to whom it is consigned calls the officer of the market, by whom it is forthwith sent to Cow Cross, and there burnt in the nacker’s yard. According, however, to a competent witness—Mr. Harper—bad meat in any quantity can be disposed of in the metropolis to butchers living in low neighbourhoods, who impose it upon the poor at night. “There is one shop, I believe,” he says, “doing 500l. per week in diseased meat. This firm has a large foreign trade. The trade in diseased meat is very alarming, and anything in the shape of flesh can be sold at about 1d. per pound or 8d. per stone.”

If the reader is not already surfeited with the mountains of meat we have piled before his eyes, let us beg his attention for a few minutes to game and poultry, which we bring on in their proper course. Leadenhall and Newgate, as all the world knows, are the great metropolitan depÔts for this class of food, especially the former, which receives perhaps two-thirds of the entire supply. The quantities of game and wild birds consigned to some of the large salesmen almost exceeds belief. After a few successful battues in the Highlands, it is not at all unusual for one firm to receive 5,000 head of game, and as many as 20,000 to 30,000 larks are often sent up to market together. All other kinds of the feathered tribe which are reputed good for food are received in proportionate abundance. If it were not for the great salesmen, many a merry dinner would be marred, for the retail poulterers would be totally incapable of executing the constant and sudden orders for the banquets which are always proceeding. The good people at the Crystal Palace have already learned to consume, besides unnumbered other items, 600 chickens daily; and from this we may guess how vast the wants of the entire metropolis. The sources from which game and poultry are derived are fewer than might be imagined. The Highlands and Yorkshire send up nearly all the grouse; and scores of noblemen, members of Parliament, and other wealthy or enthusiastic sportsmen, who are at this present moment beating over the moors, and walking for their pleasure twenty-five miles a day, assist to furnish this delicacy to the London public at a moderate rate.

Pheasants and partridges mainly come from Norfolk and Suffolk; snipes from the marshy lowlands of Holland, which also provides our entire supply of teal, widgeon, and other kinds of wild fowl, with the exception of those caught in the “decoys” of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. From Ostend there are annually transmitted to London 600,000 tame rabbits, which are reared for the purpose on the neighbouring sand dunes. We are indebted to Ireland for flocks of plovers, and quails are brought from Egypt and the south of Europe. In most of our poulterers’ windows may be seen the long wooden boxes, with a narrow slit, in which these latter birds are kept until required for the spit. Not long since upwards of 17,000 came to London vi Liverpool, whither they had been brought from the Campagna, near Rome. Of the 2,000,000 of fowls that every year find a resting-place vis-À-vis to boiled tongues on our London tables, by far the greatest quantity are drawn from the counties of Surrey and Sussex, where the Dorking breed is in favour. Ireland also sends much poultry. No less than 1,400 tons of chickens, geese, and ducks are brought to town annually by the Great Western Railway, most of which are from the neighbourhood of Cork and Waterford, whence they are shipped to Bristol. Londoners are accustomed to see shops of late years which profess to sell “West of England produce,” such as young pork, poultry, butter, and clouted cream. All these delicacies are brought by the Great Western Railway, and are principally the contributions of Somersetshire and Devonshire. The bulk of the geese, ducks, and turkeys, however, come from Norfolk, Cambridge, Essex, and Suffolk—four fat counties, which do much to supply the London commissariat, the Eastern Counties Railway alone having brought thence last year 22,462 tons of fish, flesh, fowl, and good red herrings.

For pigeons we are indebted to “our fair enemy France,” as Sir Philip Sydney calls her, but now we trust our fast friend. They proceed principally from the interior, and are shipped for our market from Boulogne and Calais. How many eggs we get from across the Channel we scarcely like to say. Mr. M’Culloch considers that the capital receives from 70,000,000 to 75,000,000—a number which we think must be much below the mark, seeing that the Brighton and South Coast line brings annually 2,600 tons, the produce of Belgium and France. At Bastoign, in the latter country, there is a farm of 200 acres entirely devoted to the rearing of poultry and the production of eggs for the supply of London.

No perfectly accurate account can be given of the number per annum of poultry, game, and wild birds which enter Leadenhall and Newgate markets; but the following estimate was handed to us by a dealer who turns over 100,000l. a year in this trade. As the list takes no account of the quantity which goes direct to the retailer, nor of the thousands sent as presents, it must fall short of the actual consumption:—

In addition to its dead game and wild fowl, Leadenhall market is quite a Noah’s ark of live animals. Geese, ducks, swans, pigeons, and cocks, bewilder you with their noise. Intermingled with these birds of a feather are hawks, ferrets, dogs and cats, moving about in their wicker cages, and almost aggravated to madness by the proximity of their prey. The major portion of the live stock is designed either for sporting purposes or for “petting” and breeding, and do not belong to the commissariat department. Of the dead game and poultry, the seven railways bring to London about 7,871 tons weight in the course of the year.

In taking leave of the poultry-yard we are reminded of the dairy, and of the large establishments required to fill the milk-jugs of London. There are at the present moment, as near as we can learn, 20,000 cows in the metropolitan and suburban dairies, some of which number 500 cows apiece. Even these gigantic establishments have been occasionally exceeded, and one individual, several years ago, possessed 1,500 milkers—a fact fatal to the popular superstition, that notwithstanding many attempts, no dairyman could ever muster more than 999. The terrible ravages of pleuro-pneumonia, which many believe to be a contagious disease, have cured the passion for such extensive herds. The larger dairies of the metropolis are on the whole admirably managed, and the cows luxuriate in airy outhouses, but the smaller owners are often confined for space, and the animals are sometimes cooped in sheds, placed in tiers one above another. The country dairymaid laughs at the ignorance which the Londoner betrays of rural matters when on a visit to her master, but she would be perplexed in her turn if told that in the capital they fed the cows chiefly upon brewers’ grains, and milked them on the second story? A few years since Mr. Rugg appalled the town, which had forgotten Matthew Bramble, Esq., and the “New Bath Guide,” by detailing a nauseous process which he affirmed was in use among cunning milkmen for the adulteration of their milk. There was, however, a great deal of exaggeration in the account, and Dr. Hassell, whose analysis of various articles of food in the Lancet are widely known, states that the “iron-tailed cow” is the main agent employed in the fraud, and that the only colouring matter he has been enabled to discover is annatto. Nearly all the cream goes to the West-End; and one dairyman living at Islington informed us that he made 1,200l. a year by the trade he carried on in that single article with the fashionable part of the town. It must be evident, upon the least consideration, that the London and suburban dairies alone could not supply the metropolis. If each of the 20,000 cows give on the average twelve quarts a day, the sum total would only be 240,000 quarts. If we suppose this quantity to be increased by the exhaustless “iron-tailed cow,” of which Dr. Hassell speaks, to 300,000 quarts, the allowance to each individual of the two millions and a quarter of population would be little more than a quarter of a pint. This is clearly below the exigencies of the tea-table, the nursery, and the kitchen, and we do not think we shall make an overestimate if we assume that half as much again is daily consumed. Here again the railway, which in some cases brings milk from as far as eighty miles, makes up the deficiency. The Eastern Counties line conveyed in 1853 to London, 3,174,179 quarts, the North-Western 144,000 quarts, the Great Western 23,400 quarts, the Brighton and South Coast 100 tons, and the Great Northern as much perhaps as the North-Western. The milk is collected from the farmers by agents in the country, who sell it to the milkmen, of whom there are 1,347, to distribute it over the town. In course of time it is possible that town dairies may entirely disappear. Cowsheds, often narrow and low, in thickly-populated localities, cannot be as healthy for the animals as a purer atmosphere; and though experiment has shown that they thrive admirably when stalled, the food they get in these urban prisons can hardly be as wholesome as that provided by the verdant pastures of the farm. The milk which comes by railway has, however, this disadvantage, that it will not keep nearly so long as the indigenous produce of the metropolitan dairies. The different companies have constructed waggons lightly hung on springs, but the churning effect of sudden joltings cannot be altogether got rid of.

Of the vegetables and fruit that are brought into the various markets of the capital, but especially to Covent Garden, a very large quantity is grown in the immediate neighbourhood. From whatever quarter the railway traveller approaches London, he perceives that the cultivation of the land gradually heightens, until he arrives at those suburban residences which form the advanced guards of the metropolis. The fields give place to hedgeless gardens, in which, to use a phrase of Washington Irving, “the furrows seem finished rather with the pencil than the plough.” Acre after acre flashes with hand-glasses, streaks of verdure are ruled in close parallel lines across the soil with mathematical precision, interspersed here and there with patches as sharp cut at the edges as though they were pieces of green baize—these are the far-famed market-gardens. They are principally situated in the long level tracts of land that must once have been overflowed by the Thames—such as the flat alluvial soil known as the Jerusalem Level, extending between London Bridge and Greenwich—and the grounds about Fulham, Battersea, Chelsea, Putney, and Brentford. Mr. Cuthill, who is perhaps the best authority on this subject, estimates that there are 12,000 acres under cultivation for the supply of vegetables and 5,000 for fruit-trees. This seems an insufficient area for the supply of so many mouths, but manure and active spade husbandry compensate for lack of space. By these agencies four and sometimes five crops are extracted from the land in the course of the year. The old-fashioned farmer, accustomed to the restrictions of old-fashioned leases, would stare at such a statement, and ask how long it would last. But his surprise would be still greater at being told that after every clearance the ground is deeply trenched, and its powers restored with a load of manure to every thirty square feet of ground. This is the secret of the splendid return, and it could be effected nowhere but in the neighbourhood of such cities as London, where the produce of the fertilizer is sufficiently great to keep down its price. And here we have a striking example of town and country reciprocation. The same waggon that in the morning brings a load of cabbages, is seen returning a few hours later filled with dung. An exact balance as far as it goes is thus kept up, and the manure, instead of remaining to fester among human beings, is carted away to make vegetables. What a pity we cannot extend the system, and turn the whole sewerage by drain-pipes entirely into the rural districts, to feed the land, instead of allowing it, as we do, to run into the Thames and pollute the water to be used in our dwellings.

The care and attention bestowed by the market-gardeners is incredible to those who have not witnessed it; every inch of ground is taken advantage of—cultivation runs between the fruit-trees; storming-parties of cabbages and cauliflowers swarm up to the very trunks of apple-trees; raspberry-bushes are surrounded and cut off by young seedlings. If you see an acre of celery growing in ridges, be sure that, on a narrow inspection, you will find long files of young peas picking their way along the furrows. Everything flourishes here except weeds, and you may go over a 150-acre piece of ground without discovering a single one. Quality, even more than quantity, is attended to by the best growers; and they nurse their plants as they would children. The visitor will sometimes see “the heads” of an acre of cauliflowers one by one folded up in their own leaves as carefully as an anxious wife wraps up an asthmatic husband on a November night; and if rain should fall, attendants run to cover them up, as quickly as they cover up the zoological specimens at the Crystal Palace when the watering-pots are set to work.

Insects and blight are also banished as strictly as from the court of Oberon. To such a pitch is vigilance carried, that, according to a writer in Household Words, blight and fungi are searched after with a microscope, woodlice exterminated by bantems dressed in socks to prevent too much scratching, and other destructive insects despatched by the aid of batches of toads, purchased at the rate of six shillings a dozen!

The continual extension of London is, however, rapidly encroaching upon all the old market-gardens, and they are obliged to move farther a-field: thus high cultivation, like a green fairy-ring, is gradually widening and enlarging its circle round the metropolis. The coarser kinds of vegetables are but sparingly grown in these valuable grounds, but come up in large quantities from all parts of the country; and some of the choice kinds are now reared far away in Devonshire and Cornwall, where they are favoured by the climate. It would be interesting to get an authentic statement of the acreage dedicated to fruit and vegetables for the London market, but we find the information unattainable. Mr. Cuthill calculates that there are 200 acres employed around the metropolis in the growth of strawberries, and 5 acres planted as mushroom-beds. Cucumbers were once very largely cultivated. He has seen as many as 14 acres under hand-glasses in a single domain, and has known 200,000 gherkins cut in a morning for the pickle-merchants. Strangely enough, they have refused to grow well around London ever since the outbreak of the potato disease. The disastrous epidemic of 1849, we have little doubt, had much to do with the diminished supply, for the cholera soon brought about the result desired by Mrs. Gamp, “when cowcumbers is three for twopence,” prices quite explanatory of the indisposition of the land to produce them. The very high state of cultivation in the metropolitan market-gardens necessitates the employment of a large amount of labour; and it is supposed that no less than 35,000 persons are engaged in the service of filling the vegetable and dessert-dishes of the metropolis. This estimate leaves out those in the provinces and on the Continent, which would, we doubt not, nearly double the calculation, and show a troop of men and women as large as the entire British army. There are five marts in London devoted to the sale of fruit—Covent Garden, Spitalfields, the Borough, Farringdon, and Portman-markets,—besides a vast number of street offsets, such as Clare-market, in which hawkers generally stand with their barrows. Covent Garden is not only their type, but it does nearly as much business as all of them put together, and for that reason we shall dwell upon it to the exclusion of the others.

At the first dawn of morning in the midst of squalid London, sweet country odours greet the early-riser, and cool orchards and green strawberry slopes seem ever present to the mind.

If those who seek pleasure in gaiety have never visited the market in its prime, let them journey thither some summer morning, and note how fresh will seem the air, and how full of life the people, after the languid waltz in Grosvenor Square. The central alley of the “Garden,” as it is called by the costermongers, is one of the prettiest lounges in town; and, whether by chance or design, it exhibits, in its arrangement from east to west, a complete march of the seasons. At the western entrance the visitor is greeted with the breath of flowers; and there they show in smiling banks piled upon the stalls, or sorted with frilled edges into ladies’ bouquets. As he proceeds, he comes upon the more delicate spring vegetables—pink shafts of the oriental-looking rhubarb, delicate cos lettuce, &c.; still further along the arcade, the plate-glass windows on either side display delicate fruits, done up in dainty boxes, and set off with tinted paper shreds. Behind these windows also might be seen those rarities which it is the pride of London market-gardeners to provide, and in producing which they all struggle to steal the longest march upon time—a sieve-full of early potatoes, each as small and costly as the egg of a Cochin-China fowl—a basin-full of peas, at a guinea a pint—a cucumber marked 5s., and strawberries 18s. the ounce.

The market-gardeners of Penzance are beginning to send up many of these early vegetables, the mildness of the south-western extremity of Cornwall giving them a wonderful advantage over every other part of the kingdom. Gentlemen’s gardeners also contribute somewhat, by sending to the salesmen such of the produce of their glazed houses as is not consumed in the family, and receive articles in return of which they happen to have an insufficient quantity themselves. These forced vegetables give way, it is true, as the season advances; but when in, they are always most to be found at that end of the walk nearest the rising sun. As the year proceeds, the lustier and more natural fruits are displayed—peaches that have ripened with blushing cheek to the wind, gigantic strawberries, raspberries, nectarines, or blooming plums. Feathery pines add their mellow hue; and when these fail, the colour deepens into amber piles of oranges, umber filberts, and the rich brown of Spanish chestnuts, the produce of the waning year.

To leave, however, our fancied procession of the seasons, and to return to the actual business of the market. As early as two o’clock in the morning, a person looking down the dip of Piccadilly will perceive the first influx of the daily supply of vegetables and fruit to Covent Garden market: waggons of cabbages, built up and regularly faced, with the art rather of the mason than the market-gardener; light spring-vans fragrant with strawberries; and milk-white loads of turnips which slowly roll along the great-western road, and bring the produce of the fertile alluvial shores of the Thames to the great west-end mart. The pedestrian proceeding along the southern and eastern roads sees the like stream of vegetable food quietly converging to the same spot. From this hour, especially upon a Saturday morning, until nine o’clock, the scene at the market itself is of the most exciting description.

Without some organization it would be impossible to receive and display to the advantage of the buyer and seller the varied products that in the grey of the morning pours into so limited a space. Accordingly, different portions of it are dedicated to distinct classes of vegetables and fruits. The finest of the delicate soft fruit, such as strawberries, peaches, &c., are lodged, as we have mentioned, in the central alley of the market—the inmost leaf of the rose. On the large covered space to the north of this central alley is the wholesale fruit-station, fragrant with apples, pears, greengages, or whatever is in season. The southern open space is dedicated to cabbages and other vegetables; and the extreme south front is wholly occupied by potato-salesmen. Around the whole quadrangle, during a busy morning, there is a party-coloured fringe of waggons backed in towards the central space, in which the light green of cabbages forms the prevailing colour, interrupted here and there with the white of turnips, or the deep orange of digit-like carrots; and as the spectator watches, the whole mass is gradually absorbed into the centre of the market. Meanwhile the space dedicated to wholesale fruit sales is all alive. Columns of empty baskets twelve feet high seem progressing through the crowd “of their own motion.” The vans have arrived from the railways, and rural England, side by side with the Continent, pours in its supplies from many a sheltered mossy nook. It is very easy to discover by a glance which are the home-grown, which the foreign contributions. There stand the English baskets and sieves, solid and stout as Harry the Eighth, amidst little hampers, as delicate as French ladies, and seemingly as incapable of withstanding hard usage. Yet some of these have come from Algiers, others from the south of France with greengages, and the majority from Normandy. France is beginning to send large quantities of peaches and nectarines, carefully packed with paper-shavings in small boxes; and even strawberries this summer have found their way here from the same quarter. The frosts which sometimes occur in the early part of the year, destroy nearly all the fruit-crops in the neighbourhood of London; and were it not for the bountiful stores which are brought from abroad, Covent Garden would be little better than a desert.

The repeal of the high duty upon foreign fruit has so far widened the field of supply that it can no longer be destroyed by an unusual fall of the mercury. By means of the telegraph, the steamboat, and the railroad, we annul the effects of frost, obliterate the sea, and command, at a few hours’ notice, the produce of the Continent. When there is a dearth in this country the fact is immediately noticed by the great fruit-dealers in the City: the telegraph forthwith conveys the information to Holland, France, and Belgium; and within forty hours steamers from one or other of these countries will be seen making towards the Downs and adjoining coasts, and in another six their cargoes, fresh plucked from the neighbourhoods of old Norman abbeys and quaint Flemish stadthouses, are blooming in Covent Garden. Fruit that will bear delay comes up the Thames by boat, and is discharged at the wharfs near London Bridge, but the major part eventually finds its way to the “Garden.” The South-Western and South-Eastern are the two principal lines for foreign fruit: the former brings large quantities of Spanish and Portuguese produce—such as oranges, grapes, melons, nuts, &c.; the latter conveys apples, pears, strawberries, peaches, nectarines, &c., from Dover, to which place they are brought by steamers. To show how enormous is the supply from abroad, we give, on the authority of the goods-manager of the South-Eastern line, the amount brought by them in one night:—

In all 195 tons; out of which 135 were from across the water. The Brighton and South Coast transmit the produce of Jersey and Dieppe—apples, pears, and plums—to the extent last year of about 300 tons. Of vegetables the Great Northern is the principal carrier; last year they brought to town the enormous quantity of 45,819 tons of potatoes, besides 1,940 tons of other vegetables. The potatoes mainly proceed from the fen country. Walnuts generally come by the Antwerp boats, which sometimes carry cargoes of between 400 and 500 tons. Everybody who has travelled in the Low Countries remembers the magnificent walnut-trees which grow along the sides of the canals as commonly as elms in our own country. These eke out our scantier native stores, and help to make cosier the after-dinner chat over the glass of port. During two mornings that we visited Covent Garden we saw 613 bushel-baskets of strawberries that had just come from Honfleur, and upwards of 1,000 baskets of greengages arrived from the same neighbourhood during the week. As we gazed, on one of these occasions upon the solid walls of baskets extending down the market, crowned with parapets of peach and nectarine boxes, we wondered in our own minds whether it would ever be all sold, and the wonder increased as waggon after waggon arrived, piled up as high as the second-floor windows of the piazza. Venturing to express this doubt to a lazy-looking man who was plaiting the strands of a whip, “Blessee, sir,” he replied without looking up from his work, “the main part on ’em will be at Brummagem by dinner-time.” True enough, while we had been guessing and wondering, a nimble fellow had run to the telegraph and inquired of Birmingham and a few distant towns whether they were in want of certain fruits that morning. The answer being in the affirmative, the vans turned round, rattled off to the North-Western station, and in another hour the superfluity of Covent Garden was rushing on its way to fill up the deficiency of the midland counties. Thus the wire and steam, both at home and abroad, cause the supply to respond instantly to the demand, however wide apart the two principles may be working.

The strawberry trade of Covent Garden is not likely, however, at present to fall into the hands of foreigners. The London market-gardeners have long looked with justice upon this fruit as particularly their own. By the skill they have bestowed upon its culture it has advanced enormously, both in flavour and size, from the old standard “hautboy” of our fathers, and which foreigners mainly cultivate to the present day. Mr. Miatt, of Deptford, is the great grower; by judicious grafting he has produced from the old stock half-a-dozen different kinds, the most celebrated being the “British Queen,” which attains a prodigious size. Large quantities of strawberries are sent to the market in light spring-vans. They are placed in 1 lb. punnets or round willow baskets, or they are carefully piled in pottles, and the process of “topping-up,” as it is called, is considered quite an art in the trade. The rarest and ripest fruit, which goes direct to the pastrycooks, is still more deftly treated. Lest it should be injured by jolting, horse is exchanged for human carriage. A procession of eight or ten stout women, carrying baskets full of strawberry-pottles upon their heads, may often be seen streaming in hot haste up Piccadilly, preceded by a man, like so many sheep by a bell-wether. It is probable that they have trudged all the way from Isleworth with the fruit, and, as they frequently make two journeys in the day, the distance traversed is not less than twenty-six miles.

After strawberries, perhaps peas are the most important article produced by the market-gardeners. Dealers, in order to consult the convenience of hotel-keepers and such as require suddenly a large supply for the table, keep them ready for the saucepan; and not the least curious feature of Covent Garden, about midday, is to see a dense mass of women—generally old—seated in rows at the corner of the market, engaged in shelling them. One salesman often employs as many as 400 persons in this occupation. The major part of these auxiliaries belong to the poor-houses around; they obtain permission to go out for this purpose, and the shilling or eighteen pence a-day earned by some of the more expert is gladly exchanged for the monotonous rations of the parish. In the autumn, again, there will be a row of poor creatures, extending along the whole north side of the square, shelling walnuts, each person having two baskets, one for the nuts, another for the shells, which are bought by the catsup-makers. The poor flock from all parts of the town directly a job of the kind is to be had. If a fog happens in November, thousands of link-boys and men spring up with ready-made torches; if a frost occurs, hundreds of men are to be found on the Serpentine and other park waters, to sweep the ice or to put on your skates: there are, in the busy part of the town half-a-dozen fellows ready of a wet day to rush simultaneously to call a cab “for your honour;” and every crossing when it grows muddy almost instantly has its man and broom. A sad comment this upon the large floating population of starving labour always to be found in the streets of London.The busiest time at the market is about six o’clock, when the costermongers surround Covent Garden with their barrows, and hundreds of street hawkers, with their hand-baskets and trays, come for their day’s supply. The same system of purchase is pursued here as at Billingsgate—the rich dealers buy largely and sell again, and the poorer club their means and divide the produce. The regular street vender who keeps his barrow, drawn by a donkey or a pony, looks down with a certain contempt upon the inferior hawkers, principally Irish. They only deal in a certain class of vegetables, such as peas, young potatoes, broccoli, or cauliflowers, and have nothing to do with mere greens. Another class of purchasers are the little girls who vend watercresses. Such is the demand for cresses, that they are now largely cultivated for the market, the spontaneous growth proving quite inadequate to the demand. They are produced principally at “Spring Head,” at Walthamstow, in Essex, and at Cookham, Shrivenham, and Faringdon, on the line of the Great Western, which brings to town no less than a ton a week of this wholesome breakfast salad. The best, however, come from Camden Town. Most people fancy that clear purling streams are necessary for their production; but the Camden Town beds are planted in an old brick-field, watered by the Fleet Ditch; and though the stream at this point is comparatively pure, they owe their unusually luxuriant appearance to a certain admixture of the sewerage. A great many hundreds of bunches are sold every morning in Covent Garden; but the largest share goes to Farringdon Market. The entire supply to the various metropolitan markets cannot be less than three tons weekly. Rhubarb is almost wholly furnished by the London market-gardeners. It was first introduced by Mr. Miatt forty years ago, who sent his two sons to the Borough Market with five bunches, of which they only sold three. From this time he continued its cultivation, notwithstanding the sneers at what were called his “physic pies.” As he predicted, it soon became a favourite, and now hundreds of tons weight are sold in Covent Garden in the course of the year. It would be impossible to give any precise account of the fruit and vegetable produce that is poured day by day into London; for the authorities themselves only know how many baskets arrive, not how much they contain. The railway returns give us the quantity brought from a distance, and we find that the seven lines transmit annually somewhere about 70,000 tons of vegetables and soft green fruit. This is irrespective of dried fruit, oranges, &c.—a business of itself, involving great interests, and employing an immense capital, and of which we will say a few words.

The foreign-fruit trade has its head-quarters in the city. The pedestrian who walks down Fish Street Hill would assuredly never surmise that at certain seasons a regular fruit exhibition is kept up within those dull brick houses, before which the tall column lifts its head. All the world knows the Messrs. Keeling and Hunt, whose effigies seem to stand, in the public eye, upon a vast pyramid of pine-apples. This firm hold sales of various kinds of fruit in their auction-rooms in Monument Yard. On these occasions the long apartments make a show, before which, for quantity at least, that of Chiswick pales. Pine-apples by thousands, melons, forbidden fruit, and mangoes, fill the room from end to end; so famous indeed is the display, that there are lithographic engravings of it, in which the salesmen are seen walking about as perplexed, apparently by the luscious luxuriance around them, as Adam might have been in his own happy garden. The pine-apple market is of modern date. The first cargo was brought over about twenty years ago, and since that time the traffic has rapidly increased, and at the present moment 300,000 pines come yearly into the port of London, of which nine-tenths are consigned to Messrs. Keeling and Hunt, the original importers. They are principally from the Bahamas, in the West Indies, where they grow almost spontaneously; but of late years they have been more carefully cultivated, and grafts of our best hothouse pines have been taken out to improve their quality. There is a fleet of clippers appropriated to the carriage across the sea of this single fruit. The melons come from Spain, Portugal, and Holland. Spain is known to abound in melons, for Murillo’s beggar-boys are perpetually eating them; but we believe it will be news to most Englishmen that the land of dykes supplies London with fragrant cargoes of an almost tropical fruit. The largest foreign-fruit trade, however, by far, is that in oranges. We shall perhaps astonish our readers when we tell them that upwards of 60,000,000 are imported for the use of London alone, accompanied by not less than 15,000,000 lemons. Any time between December and May the orange clippers from the Azores and Lisbon may be seen unloading their cargoes in the neighbourhood of the great stores in Pudding and Botolph Lanes. There are 240 of these fast-sailing vessels engaged in the entire trade, and of this fleet seventy at least are employed in supplying the windows of the fruiterers and the apple-stalls of London. All these fruits, together with nuts and walnuts, apples, plums, pears, and some peaches, &c., are disposed of weekly at the auction sales in Monument Yard to the general dealers, the majority of whom are located in Duke’s Place, close at hand, and are mostly Jews. Indeed we are informed that many of them are the identical boys grown up to manhood that used some twenty-five years ago to sell oranges about the streets, and whose old place has gradually been taken by the Irish. They act as middlemen between the importers and the tribe of peripatetics who, at certain times of the day, resort hither to fill their baskets and barrows. Covent Garden also supplies retailers with oranges and nuts, especially on Sunday mornings, when the place is sometimes crowded like a fair. The following bill of quantities, drawn up by Mr. Keeling, is derived, we believe, from the Custom House returns:—

Of the amount of bread consumed in London we have no specific information, but there are data which enable us to approximate to the truth. Porter, in his “Progress of the Nation,” gives us the returns of eight schools, families, and institutions, containing 1,902 men, women, and children, each of whom ate on the average 331¹/16 lbs. of bread per annum. Now if we multiply this quantity by the number of the inhabitants of the metropolis—2,500,000, or thereabouts—we have a total of 413,700,000 half-quartern loaves of 2 lbs. weight each. The flour used in puddings, pies, &c., we throw in as a kind of offset against the London babies under one year old. Some of this bread is a contribution from the country, and one Railway—the Eastern Counties—brought last year 237 tons 12 cwts. to town.

Now let us see how much sack goes to all this quantity of bread—with what rivers of stout, &c., we wash down such mountains of flesh. According to the excise returns, there were 747,050 quarters of malt consumed in London in the year 1853 by the seventeen great brewers. As each quarter of malt, with its proportionate allowance of hops, produces three and a half barrels of beer, we get at the total brew of last year 1,614,675, or pretty nearly a thousand million tumblers of ale and porter. On countless sign-boards of the metropolis this last is advertised by the title of “entire,” and it is thus that the liquid and its name arose. Prior to the year 1730, publicans were in the habit of selling ale, beer, and twopenny, and the “thirsty souls” of that day were accustomed to combine either of these in a drink called half-and-half. From this they proceeded to spin “three threads,” as they called it, or to have their glass filled from each of the three taps. In the year 1730, however, a certain publican, named Horwood, to save himself the trouble of making the triune mixture, brewed a liquor intended to imitate the taste of the “three threads,” and to this he applied the term “entire.” His concoction was approved, and, being puffed as good porters’ drink, it speedily came to be called porter itself. Of the seventeen great London breweries, the house of Truman, Hanbury, Buxton, and Co. stood in 1853 at the top of the list, having consumed 140,000 quarters of malt, and paid to the excise 180,000l., or enough to build two ninety-gun ships, at the usual cost of a thousand pounds per gun. The visitor in proceeding through this establishment realizes, perhaps better than in any other place, the enormous scale on which certain creature-comforts for the use of the town are produced. As he walks between the huge boilers in which 1,600 barrels are brewed nearly every day, or makes the circuit of the four great vats, each containing 80,000 gallons of liquor, or loses himself amid the labyrinth of 135 enormous reservoirs, which altogether hold 3,500,000 gallons—he begins to fancy himself an inhabitant of Lilliput, who has gone astray in a Brobdignagian cellar. There is a popular notion that the far-famed London stout owes its flavour to the Thames water: this, however, is a “vulgar error.” Not even the Messrs. Barclay, who are upon the stream, draw any of their supply from that source, but it is got entirely from wells, and those sunk so deep, that they and the Messrs. Calvert, whose brewery is half a mile distant upon the opposite side of the river, find they are rivals for the same spring. When one brewery pumps, it drains the wells of the other, and the firms are obliged to obtain their water on alternate days. Whether it is owing to the increase of the great breweries and of other manufactories, which alone consume millions of barrels of water yearly, we know not, but it is an ascertained fact, that the depth of water in the London wells has for the last twenty-five years been diminishing at the rate of a foot a year. “It is comforting to reflect,” said one of the great brewers, “that the reason simply is, because the water which used to be buried underground is now brought up to fill the bodies, wash the faces, and turn the wheels of two millions and a half of people.”

If the underground stock of water is shrinking, it has increased vastly on the surface. The seven companies which supply the metropolis bring in between them 44,000,000 gallons daily—a quantity which, large as it is, could be delivered in twenty-four hours by a brook nine feet wide and three feet deep, running at the rate of three feet per second, or a little more than two miles per hour.

The inability of figures to convey an adequate impression to the mind of the series of units of which the sums are composed renders it impossible to give more than a faint idea of the enormous supplies of food required to victual the capital for a single year. But the conception may be somewhat assisted by varying the process. Country papers now and then astonish their readers by calculations to show how many times the steel pens manufactured in England would form a necklace round their own little town, or how many thousand miles the matches of their local factory would extend if laid in a straight line from the centre of their market-place. Let us try our hand on the same sort of picture, and endeavour to fill the eye with a prospect that would satisfy the appetite of the far-famed Dragon of Wantley himself.

If we fix upon Hyde Park as our exhibition-ground, and pile together all the barrels of beer consumed in London, they would form a thousand columns not far short of a mile in perpendicular height.

Let us imagine ourselves on the top of this tower, and we shall have a look-out worthy of the feast we are about to summon to our feet. Herefrom we might discover the Great Northern road stretching far away into the length and breadth of the land. Lo! as we look, a mighty herd of oxen, with loud bellowing, are beheld approaching from the north. For miles and miles the mass of horns is conspicuous winding along the road, ten abreast, and even thus the last animal of the herd would be 72 miles away, and the drover goading his shrinking flank considerably beyond Peterborough. On the other side of the park, as the clouds of dust clear away, we see the great Western road, as far as the eye can reach, thronged with a bleating mass of wool, and the shepherd at the end of the flock (ten abreast) and the dog that is worrying the last sheep are just leaving the environs of Bristol, 121 miles from our beer-built pillar. Along Piccadily, Regent-street, the Strand, Fleet-street, Cheapside, and the eastward Mile-end road line, for 7½ miles, street and causeway are thronged with calves, still ten abreast; and in the great parallel thoroughfares of Bayswater-road, Oxford-street, and Holborn, we see nothing for nine long miles but a slowly-pacing, deeply-grunting herd of swine. As we watch this moving mass approaching from all points of the horizon, the air suddenly becomes dark—a black pall seems drawn over the sky—it is the great flock of birds—game, poultry, and wild-fowl, that, like Mrs. Bond’s ducks, are come up to be killed: as they fly wing to wing and tail to beak they form a square whose superficies is not much less than the whole enclosed portion of St. James’s Park, or 51 acres. No sooner does this huge flight clear away than we behold the park at our feet inundated with hares and rabbits.

Feeding 2,000 abreast, they extend from the marble arch to the round pond in Kensington Gardens—at least a mile. Let us now pile up all the half-quartern loaves consumed in the metropolis in the year, and we shall find they form a pyramid which measures 200 square feet at its base, and extends into the air a height of 1,293 feet, or nearly three times that of St. Paul’s. Turning now towards the sound of rushing waters, we find that the seven companies are filling the mains for the day. If they were allowed to flow into the area of the adjacent St. James’s Park, they would in the course of the 24 hours flood its entire space with a depth of 30 inches of water, and the whole annual supply would be quite sufficient to submerge the city (one mile square) ninety feet. Of the fish we confess we are able to say nothing: when numbers mount to billions, the calculations become too trying to our patience. We have little doubt, however, that they would be quite sufficient to make the Serpentine one solid mass. Of ham and bacon again, preserved meats, and all the countless comestibles we have taken no account, and in truth they are little more to the great mass than the ducks and geese were to Sancho Panza’s celebrated mess—“the skimmings of the pot.”

Such, then, is a slight sketch of the great London larder. It may be imagined that many of these stores come to the metropolis only as to a centre for redistribution, and are again scattered over the length and breadth of the land. This, however, is not the case. The only line that takes food in any quantities out of London is the North-Western. This railway speeds into the midland counties, but especially to Birmingham, 350 tons of fish consigned to the country dealers, and to the nobility and gentry. As we have before seen, van-loads of fruit are often despatched in the same direction. The South-Eastern conveys large quantities of grain down the line, and the London and Brighton and South Coast takes annually to Brighton twenty-six tons of meat and 1,100 cattle; and here all the food carried out of London in bulk ends. A constant dribble of edibles, it is true, is continually escaping by the passenger trains, of which the railways take no notice in their goods-department traffic; but it must be remembered that a much larger quantity is perpetually flowing unheeded into the London commissariat through the same channels. Of the stout and porter brewed in the metropolis by the great houses, again, one-seventh perhaps finds its way abroad—a drop in comparison to that which must be contributed by the 2,482 smaller brewers of the town, and the great contingent supplied by Guinness, Allsopp, and other pale-ale brewers. This simple statement will suffice to make it evident that in the foregoing picture we have given anything but “heaped measure.”

The railways having poured this enormous amount of food into the metropolis, as the main arteries feed the human body, it is distributed by the various dealers into every quarter of the town, first into the wholesale markets, or great centres, then into the sub-centres, or retail tradesmen’s shops, and lastly into the moving centres, or barrows of the hawkers, by which means nourishment is poured into every corner of the town, and the community at large is supplied as effectually as are the countless tissues of the human body by the infinitely divided network of capillary vessels. According to the census of 1851, these food-distributors are classified in the following manner:—

If to this total of 71,254 we add the wandering tribe of costermongers, hawkers, and stall-keepers, estimated at 30,000 persons, we shall have an army exceeding 100,000 persons; and, as indirectly there must be quadruple this number of persons employed, the merest pauper among the population has hundreds of invisible hands held out to provide him with the necessaries and comforts of life. The smooth working of this great distributive machine is due to the principle of competition—that spring which so nicely adjusts all the varying conditions of life, and which, in serving itself, does the best possible service to the community at large, and accomplishes more than the cleverest system of centralization which any individual mind could devise.