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different classes of articles, and potatoes and coarser produce are assigned a distinct quarter. Vegetables and fruit are tolerably well separated, and flowers and plants are found together. The west side of the square is covered with potted flowers and plants in bloom, and a gay, beautiful, and fragrant display they make. The supply of "cut" flowers for bouquets, or, to use the oldfashioned word, nosegays, is very large, including "walls," daffodils, roses, pinks, carnations, &c., according to the season. The carts and waggons with vegetables are drawn up close together on three sides of the market. A waggon-load of fine fresh cabbages, of clean-washed turnips, carrots, or cauliflowers, or an area of twenty square yards covered with the latter beautiful vegetable, or either of the others piled in neat stacks, is a pleasing sight. Here are onions from the Bedfordshire sands or Deptford, cabbages from Battersea, asparagus from Mortlake and Deptford, celery from Chelsea, peas from Charlton, these spots being each famous for the production of these particular articles, though the supply may be larger from other places. By and by the greengrocers come jogging in; and the five spacious streets leading to the market in time become crowded with a double row of their vehicles. The costermongers and venders of water-cresses, and itinerant dealers who have taken up the trade as a temporary resource, arrive with their donkey-carts, trucks, or baskets. The Irish basket-women, who

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ply as porteresses, and will carry your purchase to any part of the town, jabber in Erse, and a subdued clamouring sound tells you that the business of the day has really begun. As fast as the retail dealer makes his bargains a porter carries the articles to his market-cart, pushing through the crowd with the load on his head as well as he can. The baskets of "spring onions" and young radishes are thronged by the itinerant dealers trying to drive hard bargains. It is interesting to watch for a short time the business of the flower-market.

This is the Londoners' flower-garden, and is resorted to in the early summer morning by many a lover of flowers compelled by his occupation to live in the densely-crowded parts of London, and who steals a few moments from the busy day to gratify one of the purest tastes. This out-of-door floral exhibition has undergone an extraordinary improvement within the last few years, and it is really an attractive show. It keeps alive a taste which in many instances would otherwise languish; and it is not a little "refreshing" to see the humble mechanic making a purchase of a root of "hen and chicken daisies," a "black" wall-flower, or a primrose, to ornament the window of his workshop. Some who love flowers better than they understand how to treat them, while making their purchase, gather instructions for keeping them fresh and healthy. The "pot' plants are bought in ones and twos by private persons; but the itinerant dealer fills his basket or donkey-cart, and will be met with in his perambulations during the day in most parts of London in spring and summer. The most common plants are pelagorniums, fuchsias, verbenas, heliotropes, amaranthus, cockscombs, calceolarias, roses, myrtles, and other greenhouse plants. The cut flowers are purchased for the decoration of public rooms, and by persons who love the exquisite beauty of flowers, and by itinerant dealers, chiefly females, who make them up into small bouquets and vend them in the streets. The smart clerk purchases them for a posy, and to stick a fine pelagornium in the button hole is not a practice to be despised, albeit a glass phial filled with water on a corner of his desk would perhaps be as good a destination. The sweet-briar which the flower-girl offers for sale in the crowded street gives out a fragrance which is most delicious, as its odours are momentarily inhaled by the hasty passenger proceeding to scenes so different from those which it recalls. The costermongers, who may be seen in all the great wholesale markets of London, Smithfield excepted, unless they may go there to speculate in horseflesh for the boiler, or to buy a donkey, are a very singular race, and in their sharp commercial habits come nearer to the Jews than any other class. From their appearance any one would infer that their purchases would be confined to a few bunches of water-cresses, but they often buy considerable quantities of the best description of articles; and though, still judging from appearances, it would seem to display a very reckless degree of confidence in each other, they not unfrequently club their money and buy up an advantageous lot on favourable terms, though it is not easy to perceive by what arrangement they can divide the bargain amongst each other without serious disputes. The narrow and dirty streets which they inhabit may often be seen gay with a rich display of potted flowers and plants which they are about to carry through the town for sale; and at other times an unwonted aspect of purity is given to the vicinity by a profuse supply of the finest cauliflowers. The costermongers may be divided into several ranks, the lowest being scarcely worthy of the name, as he only purchases in small quantities which he can carry off in his basket. siderable degree above him is he who carries his commodities from street to street on a truck with a capacious board on the top, shelved at the edges; but it must be stated that the truck is only a hired one, either for the day or the

*See No. VIII. Street Noises,' vol. i. p. 134.

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week; the costermonger who owns a donkey, and a rough cart which seems to have been rudely made by his own hands, is indeed worthy of his name and character, and he may save money if he is not too fond of low sports; but a prince among the tribe is he who has not only cash for any chance speculation which may turn up, but possesses accumulated capital in the shape of trucks which he lets out at a fixed rent to his less fortunate or less steady brethren. One man of this class, who lives near the Elephant and Castle,' has forty of these trucks. They cost from 27. to 27. 10s. when new: he is not so extravagant as to buy them fresh from the maker, but picks them up when misfortune obliges one of the fraternity to descend to a humbler rank in the profession. The charge for letting them out is 4d. a-day, or 2s. a-week, but without the board at the top 3d. and Is. 6d.; and in winter the price for each sort is only 1s. 6d. Sometimes one of these wealthy truck-men will buy up on very advantageous terms large quantities of such articles as are in season, and he can sell again to the drawers of his trucks cheaper than they can buy in small quantities in the market. He knows better than to employ the buyers as his servants, but is content with a small profit and no risk, and as he gets so handsome an income from his trucks he ought to be content. A boy of the lowest class commencing his career in Covent Garden Market, if he be prudent, sharp, and intelligent, and is fortunately exempt from the vices of his companions, has a better and surer prospect of making a fortune, if he pursues a right course, than most of the youths of the middle class.

The Borough Market is well supplied with vegetable produce, but there is no catering here for a wealthy class of consumers: the market is held three times a-week. Hungerford can scarcely be regarded a wholesale market, the dealers who have shops here being chiefly supplied from Covent Garden. Farringdon Market has not realized the expectations which were entertained of its importance, but produce is brought to it by the growers on two days in the week, and it is a good deal resorted to by the itinerant venders, those especially who sell hot baked potatoes and the criers of water-cress. Spitalfields is the largest potato market in the metropolis, as, besides being convenient to the growers in Essex, whence the chief supply by land-carriage is obtained, it is in the midst of a dense population of the poorer class. It is difficult to obtain an estimate worthy of much confidence relative to the consumption of potatoes in London, but it is really enormous, and of late years has increased in a greater ratio than the increase of population would warrant. The most extensive potato-salesmen are established in Tooley Street, where they have warehouses adjacent to the river. There are some retail dealers who dispose of thirty tons of potatoes per week, in quantities of a few pounds weight at a time, all weighed in the scale; but ten tons is considered as a very good amount of business in this article, and sales of this extent only occur in particular quarters of the town where the means of the population do not rise much above poverty. One wholesale dealer in Spitalfields Market can store up a thousand tons or 14,000 sacks on his premises. The Irish Railway Commissioners estimated the quantity of food consumed by an adult living wholly upon vegetable food at eleven lbs. per day, inclusive of waste, which is very great; the quantity

consumed by the next class, who enjoy a limited use of other kinds of food, they ascertained to be two lbs. ; and those who were unrestricted as to the nature of their food consumed one lb. of vegetable food. Now, taking the population of London requiring a supply of potatoes from the market at 1,500,000, and allowing the consuming powers of a population of 1000 adults and children to be equal to that of 655 adults, we have in the metropolis the full consuming power of 982,250 persons. As so many other vegetables are used besides potatoes, would it be very far wrong to estimate the consumption at one lb. for each adult per day, that is, 3070 tons per week, or say 3000 tons, and 156,000 tons per year? Even if some reduction were made on this estimate, the quantity would still be very great. Not more than one-half of this supply is obtained from the metropolitan counties, chiefly Essex and Kent. When prices range high, the inland supplies are brought thirty miles or more, a great distance for so bulky an article. The quantity conveyed by the railways is very trifling, and steam-boats only occasionally bring ten or fifteen tons when other freight is not to be obtained. There remains, then, probably from seventy to eighty thousand tons for the supply by water, the larger proportion of which comes from land on the banks of the Humber, Trent, and Ouse, which is fertilized by artificial flooding and the deposit of a rich silt. Scotland ranks the next, afterwards Jersey, and lastly Devonshire. Scarcely any potatoes reach London from Ireland, as they have hitherto been more profitably consumed in the production of bacon and pork; and the small quantity of foreign which have arrived since the alteration of the tariff has not proved good enough for the London market. In the busy season of the year there is always a considerable number of vessels laden with potatoes lying off the wharfs adjacent to Tooley Street; those from Yorkshire being of 50 to 120 tons; the Scotch vessels from 80 to 150 tons; and those from Jersey are sometimes as large as 300 tons. At the same time the yards which communicate with the wharfs are crowded with the waggons and carts belonging to the retail dealers waiting for a supply. For about three months in the year this water-side trade is suspended, but it revives again in the month of October.

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CX.-THE ADMIRALTY AND THE TRINITY HOUSE.

THE Admiralty, which forms the left flank of the detachment of Government offices drawn up in line opposite the Banqueting House at Whitehall, cannot stand a very critical examination on its architectural merits. Well; it is not the only plain and homely body in which a mighty spirit has been lodged. These three huge sides of a square, without even an attempt at ornament-excepting the posts, which the polite call pillars, at the grand central entry-which resemble nothing on earth so much as an overgrown farmstead, which have had that architectural screen, almost as tasteless as themselves, drawn before them like a Mokanna's veil, from a dim sense that not even stone walls could hear with patience the remarks that must necessarily be made upon them if fully exposed to view are the unlikely form in which is lodged the mind that wields the naval power of Britain.

There sit the Commissioners of the Admiralty, the Board which, except for two years, separated from each other by the lapse of more than a century,* have been invested with the government of the navy of England since the Revolution. The First Lord of the Admiralty (who is a member of the Cabinet) and his four junior Lords hold their deliberations there. They prepare the navy estimates,

* Prince George of Deumark was Lord High Admiral in 1707-8; the late King, when Duke of Clarence, in 1827-8; with these exceptions the office has been in commission since 1688.

VOL. V.

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