promised, his thousand a year or so, while mamma
and the lovely Eliza are prancing it down the
square, or plunging up to Madame Mantalini's,
or mapping out their fifth or sixth " steet
dinner," or writing "kerds " for the third ball.
Madame Mantalini already holds bills of papa's
for a very large amount, and presently will be
pressing. By-and-by the poor pelican dies a
little suddenly, and very awkwardly too, perhaps
only the day' before the festival to which the
commander of the forces had been got to come;
and then we have whispers and shrugs, and a
wail of sympathy— "Very bad that of poor
Dawson Dowdall! I hear not a sixpence for
the creditors. Mantalini has his bill for eight
hundred."

ATTILA IN LONDON.

"HE destroyed, but did not create," was
history's verdict upon the crowned ruffian who
impiously styled himself " the scourge of God."
The money-making Attilas of to-day are destroying
small tenements at a rate hitherto without
parallel in this country, and create nothing in
their place which can be used as dwelling-
houses by the labouring poor. In many parts
of London these are being literally swept away
wholesale, their inmates cast upon the streets,
and their sites occupied by edifices which,
however well calculated to pay, do not provide either
hole or kennel for those who have been compelled
to renounce their all that a new company may
flourish, a railway be made, or a gigantic
thoroughfare be symmetrically formed.

Let us take the neighbourhood of Cow-cross
and the adjacent parishes of St. Sepulchre and
Clerkenwell as examples. Starting from the
Metropolitan Railway station in the Farringdon-
road, and diving into the courts and alleys near,
we speedily recognise the too familiar horrors.
Pigsties, dung-heaps, dogs, children, and
costermongers' refuse, jammed together into a
heterogeneous and inextricably confused mass, fringe
all the squalid homes to the right and left of
the narrow courts branching off the roadway.
Standing with your back to the entrance of any
one of these courts, you look far away across the
line of railway over a vast and desolate waste.
Continue your researches and pass up the streets
behind you towards Smithfieid, and you come
upon a dreary desert, in which wooden hoardings
alone show the explorer where streets once
were. The parish of St. Sepulchre has been so
devastated and laid bare that its local charities
are lying fallow for want of poor householders
to claim their benefits. Forty poor parishioners
are entitled to a small sum per year by the will
of a benevolent citizen, and, in a district which
a few years ago held thousands of poor, forty
are not to be found who are eligible for the
charity. "Can you keep me on the list,
sir, now that I'm forced to live out of the
parish?" is necessarily answered in the
negative; for it is held that the will of the founder
must be read literally, so the funds accumulate
and the people starve. " Applying to Chancery
to know what we ought to do with it," is the
ultimate intention of the parochial authorities;
but meanwhile the money lies idle, and those
who by every law of humanity and common
sense are entitled to it, wend their weary way
to other parishes, to become burdens upon
other rates. Either this, or they die. It is
impossible to gain definite information
concerning the bulk of those ejected by a great
company's lust for conquest. The occupation
of a lifetime, the petty little business which
seems so insignificant to those accustomed to
deal with large sums, but which rears, and
clothes, and feeds a family, are sacrificed without
compunction, almost without complaint.
Wonderful improvements going on everywhere,
is the complacent cry as we save five minutes in
a cab-ride, or are carried smoothly underground
from one suburb to another. Yet many of these
improvements have occasioned as much misery
as a war, have brought sorrow to as many
families as a pestilence, and have made the
necessaries of life as unattainable as in a famine.
In vain do you attempt to trace the process by
which the hundreds and thousands of dispossessed
tenants find new shelter. " They get on
somehow; at all events, they can't come to us,
because they're no longer in our parish. Bless
you, this sort o' thing soon finds its level in this
country," is a fair sample of the answers
received to a question we have put to
different authorities in various parts of the
metropolis. If you ask the speaker if he knows of
any houses being built in the vicinity of the
size and rental of those pulled down, the
answer is invariably No. Turn which way you
will, the story is the same. Large tracts of
occupied land bought, families turned out, and
warehouses or stately mansions rising up.

Let us visit the roof of this busy-looking
house in the St. Pancras-road, and look down,
Asmodeus-like, on the scene below. Standing
quietly on its lift, we sail upwards in a jerky
and semi-dislocated fashion until we reach the
upper story of the great printing-works we are
in. Each floor we pass through has its own
characteristics, which are scarcely mastered
before the floor itself disappears like a dissolving
view, and the machinery and men and boys
at work on it give way to another and equally
busy set. They are nearly all skilled workmen,
earning good wages; and as I clutch their master
round the waist for safety, I ask him their
way of life and place of abode. My guide and
mentor waits until we reach the top floor, and
taking me to the roof, silently motions me to
look down. "That heap of rubbish is where
my best folder's little house stood three months
ago; yonder pile of old bricks is all that's left
of the homes of the three compositors you asked
about below; and where the old timbers stretch
across the road is the spot where several of my
other work men lodged. They've found other
places now, but it's very inconvenient at times,
and has put them to a good deal of expense.
Besides, they're all people who are in regular