"WONDERFUL are the works of nature," as Mick Montague observed to me, on emerging from the puppetshow.

So they are, to be sure-and so is the far-famed city of Westminster.

The far-famed city of Westminster, as every fool knows, has a famous abbey. Now this famous abbey, in days of yore, was a sanctuary for thieves, robbers, murderers, and other pious reprobates, who took to their heels as soon as pursued by the myrmidons of the law; and, once they laid violent hands upon the hem of some old monk's garment, or got into the sanctuary, as this sink of perdition was called, they were forthwith as safe as the church, and snapped fingers at the constable-provided always they had money wherewith to fee the monks, in default of which they were incontinently pushed out of the sanctuary, and delivered over to the officers of justice. This refuge of atrocious criminals tended, no doubt, greatly to the honour and glory of God, and materially enhanced, in those days, the respectability of Westminster.

There was another class of semiclerical scamps, who flourished in these days, and in this neighbourhood, called Palmerins, or Palmers, most reverend rascals, who, with a scrip on their shoulders, a scallop in their hats, and peas (boiled) in their shoes, went blackguarding round the country, under pretence of selling Saracen's heads, cut off in the Holy Land, and other relics-begging, moreover, what they could beg, borrowing what they could borrow, and stealing what they could steal; and this they did, as all scamps of their persuasion do, for the love of God.

The sanctuary has been abolishedthe monks have been sent to the treadmill-the most dreadful punishment that could possibly be inflicted upon their reverences-and the palmerins have gone to a tropical climate, which I only indicate as the antipodes of the

Holy Land; nor would any body be a whit the wiser concerning the palmers, or palmerins, were not the hamlet, or collection of houses appropriated peculiarly to them, called and known as Palmerin's or Palmer's Village to this very day.

Of all the human burrows in and about London, there is not one comparable, in its way, to Palmer's Village, into which I followed my fair little guide, under an archway not much more than four feet high, close to the mouth of which stood a steamengine of peculiar, and to me incomprehensible, construction - the engineer uttering at intervals a short and rapid guttural sound, which I then conceived to be a warning to passengers to avoid the engine, but which more matured experience has informed me is simply an announcement to the nobility, gentry, his friends, and the public, that his steam. ing apparatus contains "baked taters, a halfpenny a piece-all hot-all hot!"

For the information of the curious in such matters, who may be induced by my description to essay the wonders of Palmer's Village, I take the liberty to observe, that, at the further end of the tunnel, or archway, aforesaid, is a step, over which new comers are apt to break either their shins or noses, which accident is facetiously called by the villagers paying your footing. When your footing is thus paid, by your footing being lost, you emerge into an alley or avenue, fifteen inches wide, or thereabouts, affording room for one person, and no more, to pass along, and fenced on either side with old barrel staves, broken iron hoops, and rotten paling of every variety of scantling. Within the fence, on either side this pathwhich, I should have observed, is neither paved, nor flagged, nor bituminized, but simply one aboriginal puddle from end to end-are arranged the gardens of the respective tenements, two or three palings being

fairly and jealously apportioned, by our hospitable entertainer, in four nearly equal portions, or "halves,' which were consumed in much less time than I take to tell it. Bridget-little Bridget, I should say, that young lady's admirable mother being known in Palmer's Village as "the Bridget" having begun to put away, and the couple of plates and brace of saucers, which had stood us instead of a service of plate, having been washed, the elder Bridget, gazing at me with an expression of countenance, such as one puts on when regarding some rare and curious animal new caught, broke out in full flood with

"Arrah! now, Lord have mercy upon us, what brought you here at all,

alannah?"

"I came here to get something to do," said I-" to better myself."

"To better yerself? An' is it fallin' down dead in the could streets wid the hunger ye call betterin' o' yerself? Haye ye ever a trade, honey?"

"The devil a trade," said I, with as much carelessness as I could as

sume.

"Nor no money?"

"Not a cross," replied I, diving into my penniless pockets, after the manner of the factory-boy.

"Nor any body to look to yees?" enquired the lady of Seville.

"Nobody but myself."

"Oh! wirra-oh! wirra-oh! wirrasthrue-my poor boy-my poor boy!" began the Cork woman, wringing her hands, poking down her head between her knees, moving her person backwards and forwards with a motion not at all unlike a bumboat rolling at anchor, and commencing one of those unearthly and barbarous yells, which the learned and cultivated old Irish let out at times of distress and lamentation; a practice which, in this poor woman's case, was really indicative of concern, and therefore less abhorrent to my feelings than the hired yells of the mercenary savages who follow funerals, proclaiming to the ears of the whole country round that they are neither more nor less than wild beasts howling in the wilderness.

My landlady kept undulating, howling, and wirrastruing, for at least an hour by Westminster clock-a most satisfactory expression, no doubt, of her desire for the success of a young Irish adventurer, but not quite so gra

tifying to my feelings, howled over in this manner, as if I had been no better than a lost mutton.

When her lungs were quite gone, and she had arrived at that state of pulmonary exhaustion which the faculty are in the habit of expressing scientifically by the strictly professional periphrasis of "bellows to mend," the orange-woman expressed a decided opinion, that a little drop of cream of the valley would do her all the good in the world, enquiring of your humble servant in the same breath, whether I had ever, in my life, tasted cream of the valley. I revolved in my own mind all the lacteous modifications that had ever traversed my œsophagus, as, for instance, curds and whey, strawberries and cream, pedlar's cream, iced cream, cream cheese, milk punch, Glasgow ditto, sack posall other milks and creams, moreover, whereof the dairy man knows less than the perfumer, such as cold cream, milk of roses, and the likeIrish white wine I thought of, and buttermilk-but was at last fairly driven to confess that I was innocent of the flavour of cream of the valley.

set

"Arrah, do ye know, at all at all, what it is, ye gommaugh?" enquired the orange woman, indignantly.

"No, indeed, ma'am," replied I, abashed at the limited extent of my lacteous information.

"Why thin," said my hostess, rapturously" 'tis nothing at all but the sweetest of mountain dew, wid roses and lilies in it!"

"Good heavens !" exclaimed I, licking my lips; "then it must be nectar, indeed."

Little Bridget was quickly dispatched for a quartern of this precious fluid, and returned in less than five seconds-live where you will in London, the public-house is always next door but two-ushering in a rather elderly lady, with a compressed lip and severe eye-a lady formally introduced to me as Mrs Spikins, what lived in the two-pair front, and took in washing. Little Bridget set about scouring the chair for the accommodation of this lady, who amused herself, in the interval, in discussing the cream of the valley with our hostess, that very discussion being, to say the truth, the sole purpose she had in view --for I could not help wondering that the preliminary screaming and howl

ing of her neighbour had by no means acted so attractively as the magnet of a quartern of gin.

Gin! cheap luxury of the labourer in London-sweet solace of the labourer's wife-mother's milk of the Jabourer's child! Gin! to procure thee, what will not mechanics do, and what will not their wives consign to the disinterested keeping of "my uncle!" Gin! thou pallid demon, reflecting thy hideousness in every face we meet-slow poison thou, but sure -how many thousands of hapless wretches hast thou consigned to an early and unpitied grave!

Mrs Spikins seemed to consider the pallid demon a very choice spirit, and sipped and gossipped, and gossipped and sipped, until more than two quart erns, or three either, of the mountain dew, with roses in it, had evaporated from the face of the earth. My unfortunate condition, and hardly less fortunate prospects, formed a not inconsiderable topic of discourse between Mrs Spikins and my landlady-a thousand modes of livelihood being proposed to me, and abandoned, from their impossibility, as soon as mooted. At last, Mrs Spikins, slapping both legs with both hands, and expanding her lipless mouth, grinned a declaration of discovery, and protested that she knew a wrinkle that would make my fortune. This being the very object most at heart, I implored the lady what took in washing to keep me no longer in suspense; whereupon the lady informed me, that somebody had told some other body as told her, that at all the daily newspaper offices throughout the metropolis, the advertisements were exhibited gratis, and that, if I got up betimes, and went round from one to the other, I should surely see something to suit me to a nicety.

It was now long past midnight, and the cream of the valley being all gone, the lady what took in washing having also gone the moment that the cream of the valley aforesaid was fully discussed, there seemed nothing for it but to go to bed, which we accordingly did, in manner and form following:-Little Bridget having disrobed behind the chair, slipped under the counterpane, Bridget the great then unloosed her dresses and decorations, as far as decency would permit, put out the rushlight, and turned in with her daughter; the only arrangement practicable for

me being to repose "heads and points" on the outside of the patchwork quilt, whereon I laid myself down to rest accordingly, regretting much that the Londoners would be unable to avail themselves of my transcendent talents until the following day, and fully determined to have nothing to do with any employer who would not come down with a handsome salary, treat me as one of the family, and give me a share in the business.

The grey dawn of morning was beginning to appear, when I started from my dreams of lord mayors and gold chains, bags of money, ribs of roastbeef, and I know not what other delicacies, and prepared to make a tour of the newspaper offices, preliminary to fixing on some light and profitable business-light, because I had a natural and instinctive antipathy to work

As

and profitable, because I had a natural and instinctive fondness for money. In short, a sinecure, I concluded, would be just the thing for my money, and came to the conclusion that, if there was a sinecurist advertised for in any of the morning papers, I would start off, and offer my services on the spur of the moment. I walked through the streets on my way towards the Strand-(which I expected to find a smooth pebbly beach, with bathing-boxes and fishing-boats lying all about, enlivened by groups of little bare-legged urchins wading in search of shrimps)-the sons of labour were hastening in all directions to the commencement of their daily toil-the milk-man sent forth his peculiar cry

and the little half-naked chimneysweepers, bare-legged and black, emitted " sw-e-e-p," with a melancholy that struck me to the heart. I will not fatigue the reader with the difficulties I encountered in finding my way to the newspaper offices-his experience of a first visit to London will supply him amply with tender recollections of his own exploratory annoyances-let it be enough that the newspaper office was opened at last, and a copy of the paper, reeking from the press, having been pasted, by a dirty devil, upon a sheet of brown paper in the outer office or countinghouse, for the convenience of persons advertising, I was permitted gratui tously to consult the same. I gazed for some minutes, in speechless astonishment, at the vast number and

extraordinary diversity of the announcements, from the first ship for Madras and Calcutta, which formed the advanced guard, down to the plain cook, who could have a twelvemonth's character from her last place; or the valet, who could dress hair, air lapdogs, and had no objection to town or country. I was there informed, that if the relatives of Muggins, who was born in the year 1701, and was not unreasonably supposed to be defunct, would apply to Figgins, attorney-atlaw, they (the Mugginses, to wit) would hear of something to their advantage; and that if Higgins, who ran away from home, having first broken the till, and carried off his father's loose change, would return to his disconsolate parents, all would be forgiven, and he would be afforded an early opportunity of breaking the till a second time, and running away as before. Next came awful announcements of sales, under decrees of the High Court of Chancery-lodgings to let in different parts of the town, every lodging of them being, curiously enough, exactly within five minutes' walk of all the public offices-boarding-houses, musical and select, in the immediate vicinity of Russell Square; every boardinghouse out of the United States being in this vicinity, and no other, where one lady or one gentleman, or a gentleman and his wife, or a wife and her gentleman, or two sisters, or two brothers, or three or more twins, or a limited or unlimited number of select ladies or gentlemen, might be received into a corresponding number of vacancies, at all prices, from fifteen shillings a-week to fifty, extras not inclusive. Sir John Brute, I observed, informed tradesmen and the public, that "he would be accountable for no debts that might be contracted by his wife, Lady Brute, she having left his house without any provocation whatever." Her ladyship, in the advertisement immediately following, "requests the public to suspend their judgment upon the circumstances, until she is sufficiently recovered from the dreadful beating received from her drunken spouse, to lay the particulars of her connubial felicity before them." The landlord of the Cat and Compasses, Little Cow Cross Street, Smithfield, informs Mr Erasmus Twig, that if he (Twig) does not, within three calendar days, pay his bill at the Cat and

Compasses, his portmanteau, with the contents, will be sold to defray expenses

which announcement, when Twig beholds, he is ready to burst with laughing, well knowing that the devoted portmanteau contains nothing more saleable than brick-bats and sawdust. Next came announcements for sale of heroic horses, who will rather die than run-all and singular being the genuine property of a gentleman -horse-chopper, understood.

There was an announcement from Morison, the pill-monger, informing a discerning public how many of his agents had been convicted of manslaughter, and how much his poison was to be had for per bushel-there were also numerous puffing rhodomontades from other unhanged quacks. I observed, that "a surgeon was required for a free pauper (!) emigrant ship, bound for Botany Bay—he would be accommodated with a passage out, but not home-would not be required to go aloft, but expected to take his turn at the pumps-no wages-a fellow of the college of physicians preferred." Application was directed to be made, by the applicants for this highly paid office, to "Judas Iscariot Crimp, government transportation agent, Birchen Lane, Cornhill."

How I lamented my hard fate in not being a fellow of the college of physicians!

I read with much attention a requisition for "a classical assistant, who would be expected to take, in addition, the highest mathematical and junior copy-book classes-French, the language of the school-would have the charge of the boys during playhours, and sleep in the dormitorysalary £20 per annum, tea and washing not included. N. B.-Must be a graduate, in honours, of Oxford or Cambridge.”

"Curse on my stingy old aunt," I exclaimed, in a fury, "for not sending me to Oxford or Cambridge, where I might have graduated in honours, and so made sure of this splendid situation for life! What care I for tea

and as for washing, I thank my stars that I have always been accustomed to wash for myself."

Thus I repined-but where was the use of repining?-I was not, alas! a graduate in honours of Cambridge or Oxford.

An advertisement from a young