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X.-A DAY AT DAY AND MARTIN'S."

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GAY, the author of the well-known Fables,' published, somewhat above a century ago, a lively work under the title of Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London; in which he thus addresses the "shoe-blacks," an important fraternity at that time:

“Go, thrive : at some frequented corner stand;
This brush I give thee, grasp it in thy hand;
Temper the foot within this vase of oil,
And let the little tripod aid thy toil;
On this methinks I see the walking crew,

At thy request, support the miry shoe;

The foot grows black that was with dirt embrown'd,
And in thy pocket jingling halfpence sound.
The Goddess plunges swift beneath the flood,
And dashes all around her showers of mud:

The youth straight chose his post; the labour ply'd

Where branching streets from Charing Cross divide;

His treble voice resounds along the Mews,

And Whitehall echoes- Clean your Honour's Shoes!'"'

One of the early numbers of Mr. Knight's London,' wherein the above lines are cited, thus records a modern revolution in the blackball world" In one of the many courts on the north side of Fleet Street, might be seen, somewhere about the year 1820, the last of the shoe-blacks. One would think that he deemed himself dedicated to his profession by Nature, for he was a negro. At the earliest dawn he crept forth from his neighbouring lodging, and planted his tripod on the quiet pavement, where he patiently stood till noon was past. He was a short, large-headed son of Africa, subject, as it would appear, to considerable variations of spirits, alternating between depression and excitement, as the gains of the day presented to him the chance of having a few pence to recreate himself, beyond what he should carry

*Gay gives to the shoe-black a mythological descent from the Goddess of Mud.

home to his wife and children. For he had a wife and children, this last representative of a falling trade; and two or three little woollyheaded décrotteurs nestled around him when he was idle, or assisted in taking off the roughest of the dirt when he had more than one client. He watched, with a melancholy eye, the gradual improvement of the streets; for during some twenty or thirty years he had beheld all the world combining to ruin him. He saw the foot-pavements widening; the large flag-stones carefully laid down; the loose and broken piece, which discharged a slushy shower on the unwary foot, instantly removed: he saw the kennels diligently cleansed, and the drains widened: he saw experiment upon experiment made in the repair of the carriage-way, and the holes, which were to him as the old familiar faces' which he loved, filled up with a haste that appeared quite unnecessary, if not insulting."

We may picture to ourselves an old gentleman of the last century, with his foot upon a stool, reaping the lustrous fruits of the shoe

black's labours, as a sequel to the cry of" Clean your Honour's Shoes!" But (to quote from the same work),-"The cry is no more heard. The pavements of Whitehall are more evenly laid than the ancient marble courts of York Place, where Wolsey held his state, and Henry revelled; and they are far cleaner, even in the most

K

inauspicious weather, than the old floor beneath the rushes. Broad as the footways are, as the broadest of the entire original streets, the mightiest of paving-stones is not large enough for the comforts of the walker; and a pavement without a joint is sought for in the new concrete of asphaltum. Where the streets which run off from the great thoroughfares are narrow, the trottoir is widened at the expense of the carriage-road; and one cart only can pass at a time, so that we walk fearless of wheels. If we would cross a road, there is a public servant, ever assiduous, because the measure of his usefulness is that of his reward, who removes every particle of dirt from before our steps. No filth encumbers the kennels; no spout discharges the shower in a torrent from the house-top. We pass quietly onwards from the Horse Guards to the India House without being jostled off the curbstone, though we have no protecting posts to sustain us; and we perceive why the last of the shoe-blacks vanished from our view about the time when we first noticed his active brothers at every corner of Paris -a city then somewhat more filthy than the London of the days of Anne."*

But if this be so-if the streets be so incomparably cleaner now than they were a century ago (and no one can doubt it), what must become of the blacking-makers? The shoe-blacks of old became street-sweepers by degrees, from utter want of custom; and it might be feared that the vendors of the "incomparable jet"-the "easyshining" composition which produces "the most brilliant lustre ever beheld," and will "keep good in any climate"-would likewise be driven to seek another source of employment. By no means. The blacking-makers are more important personages now than ever they were; they surprise us with magnificent buildings-more like mansions than factories-and with horses and waggons, travellers and agents, and all the commercial machinery incident to a large branch of manufacture. What sort of blacking the Londoners used a century ago, or who were the persons by whom it was made, we do not know; but if the streets are less miry now than they were then, and yet blacking be more generally used by all classes, we arrive at a sort of logical deduction, that we are a more cleanly people than our ancestors -that the boots and shoes of 1843 are more resplendent than those of 1743. A city clerk or a London tradesman, instead of applying to the

* London, vol. i. 'Clean your Honour's Shoes,' p. 18.