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doubt, the great consumption of fish during Lent which led principally to the opulence of the traders, and eventually to those curious privileges which were enjoyed by their body at home and abroad.'

We have not the slightest doubt that some of the Billingsgate salesmen do that which those of Greece are said by Mr. Badham to have done keep villas, and live in style.' Doubtless they have good dinners and good wines, stately wives and fashionable daughters out somewhere Southgate or Clapton way; and when papa has taken off his apron, washed away the fishscales, and made himself otherwise presentable, he returns to the bosom of his family after the day's labours are ended. He is, however, not like other City men; he must be at business by five in the morning, and his work is ended by eleven or twelve o'clock. They all assemble, many scores of them, in time for the ringing of the market-bell at five o'clock. Each has his stand, for which a rental is paid to the corporation; and as there are always more applicants for stands than stands to give them, the privilege is a valued one. Some of these salesmen have shops in Thames Street, or in the neighbouring lanes and alleys; but the majority have only stands in Billingsgate. Some deal mostly in one kind of fish only, some take all indiscriminately. In most cases (as we have said), each, when he comes to business in the morning, has the means of knowing what kind and quantity of fish will be consigned to him for sale. The electric telegraph does all this work, while we laggards are fast asleep. Of the seven hundred regular fishmongers in the metropolis, how many attend Billingsgate we do not know; but it is probable most of them do so, as by no other means can proper purchases be made. At any rate, the number of fishmongers' carts within a furlong or so of the market is something enormous. The crack fishmongers go to the stalls of the salesmen who habitually receive consignments of the best fish; and as there is not much haggling about price, a vast amount of trade is con

ducted within the first hour or two. Porters bring in the hampers and boxes of fine fish, the fishmongers examine them rapidly, and the thing is soon done. Of course, anything like a regular price of fish is out of the question; the supply varies greatly, and the price varies with the supply. The salesman does the best he can for his client, and the fishmonger does the best he can for himself.

But the liveliest scene at Billingsgate, the fun of the affair, is when the costermongers come. This may be at seven o'clock or so, after the 'dons' have taken off the fish that command a high price. How many there are of these costermongers it would be impossible to say, because the same men (and women) deal in fruit and vegetables from Covent Garden, or in fish from Billingsgate, according to the abundance or scarcity of different commodities. Somehow or other, by some kind of freemasonry among themselves, they contrive to learn, in a wonderfully short space of time, whether there is a good supply of herrings, sprats, mackerel, &c., at the 'Gate,' and they will flock down thither literally by thousands. The men and boys all wear caps leather, hairy, felt, cloth, anything will do; but a cap it must be, a hat I would not be orthodox. The intensity displayed by these dealers is very marked and characteristic ; they have only a few shillings each with which to speculate, and they must so manage these shillings as to get a day's profit out of their transactions. They do not buy of the principal salesmen. There is a class called by the extraordinary name of bommarees or bummarecs (for what reason even the oldest inhabitant' could not tell), who buy largely from the leaders in the trade, and then sell again to the peripatetics the street dealers. They are not fishmongers; they buy and sell again during the same day, and in the market itself. The bommaree, perched on his rostrum (which may be a salmon-box or a herring-barrel), summons a group of costermongers around him, and puts up lot after lot for sale. There

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ask, what is the quantity of fish which in a day, or in a year, or any other definite period, is thus sold at Billingsgate? Echo answers the question; but the Clerk of the Market does not, will not, cannot. We are assured by the experienced and observant Mr. Deering, who has filled this post for many years, that all statements on this particular subject must necessarily be mere guesses. No person whatever is in possession of the data. There are many reasons for this. In the first place, there are no duties on fish, no customs on the imported fish, nor excise on that caught on our own coasts; and therefore there are no official books of quantities and numbers. In the second place, there is no regularity in the supply; no fisherman or fishmonger, salesman or bommaree, can tell whether to-morrow night's catch will be a rich or a poor one. In the third place, the Corporation of the City of London do not charge market-dues according to the quantity of fish sold or brought in for sale; so much per van or waggon, so much per smack or cutter, so much per stand in the market-these are the items charged for. In the fourth place, each salesman, knowing his own amount of business, is not at all likely to mention that amount to other folks. Out of (say) a hundred of them, each may form a guess of the extent of business transacted by the other ninety-nine; but we should have to compare a hundred different guesses, to test the validity of each. Nor could the carriers assist us much; for if every railway company, and every boat or steamer owner, were even so communicative as to tell how many loads of fish had been conveyed to Billingsgate in a year, we should still be far from knowing the quantities of each kind that made up the aggregate. On these various grounds it is believed that the annual trade of Billingsgate cannot be accurately stated. Some years ago Mr. Henry Mayhew, in a series of remarkable articles in the

Morning Chronicle,' gave a tabulated statement of the probable amount of this trade; and about five or six years later, Dr. Wynter,

in the Quarterly Review,' quoted the opinion of some Billingsgate authority, that the statement was probably not in excess of the truth. We will therefore give the figures, the reader being quite at liberty to marvel at them as much as he likes:

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29,000 boxes, 7 in a box. 400,000, averaging 10 lb. each.

15,000 barrels, 50 to a barrel. 1,600,000, averaging 5lb. each. 2,470,000, at 2lb, each.

65,000 barrels, 300 to a barrel. 97,520,000, at lb. each. 23,620,000, at 1lb. each.

250,000 barrels, at 150 each. 100,000 barrels, at 500 each. 265,000 baskets, at 150 each. 9,000,000, at 6 to 1 lb. 17,920,000, at 6 oz. each. 36,600,000, at I lb. each.

Turbot.

200,000, at 7 lb. each. 1,220,000, at 3 lb. each.

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Prawns. Shrimps

600,000.

12 tons, at 120 to 1lb. 192,295 gallons, at 320 to a pint.

These figures nearly take one's breath away. What on earth becomes of the shells of the five hundred million oysters, and the hard red coats of the eighteen hundred thousand lobsters and crabs, besides the shells of the mussels, cockles, and winkles, which are not here enumerated? Another learned authority, Mr. Braithwaite Poole, when he was goods manager of the London and North Western Railway Company, brought the shell-fish as well as the other fish into his calculations, and startled us with such quantities as fifty million mussels, seventy million cockles, three hundred million periwinkles, five hundred million shrimps, and twelve hundred million herrings. In short, putting this and that together, he told us that about four thousand million fish, weighing a quarter of a million tons, and bringing two million sterling, were sold annually at Billingsgate! Generally speaking, Mr. Poole's figures make a tolerably near approach to those of Mr. Mayhew; and therefore it may possibly be that we Londoners-men and women, boys, girls, and babies -after supplying country folks, eat

about two fish each every average day, taking our fair share between turbot, salmon, and cod at one end of the series, and sprats, periwinkles, and shrimps at the other. Not a little curious is this ichthyophagous estimate. If Mr. Frank Buckland, Mr. Francis, and the other useful men who are deavouring to improve and increase the artificial rearing of fish, should succeed in their endeavours, we

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shall, as a matter of course, make an advance as a fish-eating people. And on this matter we may say, that if the reader wants to know where to get first-rate fish, well dressed and well served, he may wend his steps some day to one of the fish ordinaries at Billingsgate, at such hostelries as the 'Three Tuns,' the Queen's Head,' or the 'Antigallican.'

ONCE IN A LIFE.

E sat beneath a summer sky,

WE

All round us summer sunshine lay;

We sat together in the bay,
My sweetheart Kate and I.

O! there was throbbing at my heart,
And in my soul the pain was great;
I spoke, 'We sail to-morrow, Kate,
And you and I must part.'

In mine my darling laid her hand;
Trust me!' with faithful lips she said;
Ah! there were never lips so red
And sweet in all the land!

I know not how these things may be,
But, while she answered, like a spell
The wailing thunder rose and fell
And died across the sea.

Closer in mine she stole her hand,
And two soft eyes looked up and down,
Ah! there were never eyes so brown
And deep in all the land!

'Look, sweetheart, look!' she said; 'I heard

The storm!' O me! all round the bay

The seething clouds were high and gray;

I looked and spoke no word.

But fast in mine I griped her hand,
And rained my kisses on her hair;
Ah! there were never curls so fair
And golden in the land!

We parted. O! the lifelong pain
That from that day of parting grew!
'Sweetheart,' she said, 'I will be true
Till death shall part us twain!'

O! would I had been wrecked at sea,
And tossed and torn by waves and wind,
Or ever I came home to find

My Kate no more to me!

Or ever I came home again

My winsome Kate was dead-was dead!
'Till death shall part us twain,' she said-
'Till death shall part us twain.'

Here, where she lies alone, I stand,
And in my soul hot pulses beat;
Ah! there was never one so sweet
To me in all the land!

Strange fatal clouds across the sea!
Strange, bitter day that saw us part!
For hope is dead within my heart,
And never more shall be!

No more!-I shall behold her face
No more! The shadows round me creep,
Love! I would lay me down and sleep
With thee a little space.

ARTISTS' NOTES FROM CHOICE PICTURES.
Le Chapeau de Brigand.

T Brigand is not one of our great

HE painter of the Chapeau de

masters-not by any means a painter of the first rank, even among English painters; nor is the picture one that he would have selected as representative of his powers. But as we don't confine our reading to great authors, or look only at the principal books of the secondary men, so with painters and their paintings, we often find pleasure in minor works and smaller artists, when the great and the profound would be felt as vapid or wearisome. And the chances are that these minor works are the best as well as the pleasantest. To very few is it given to ascend the highest heaven of invention; but most men are safe when not soaring. Icarus or Mr. Cocking might have been trusted with a job hack or a Worthing car, with little risk of broken neck or melted wing.

Uwins, a Londoner, and trained in London-or, to be strictly accurate, let me say, born just outside the great city, on Hermes Hillsweetly rural mount it seemed to native eyes-hill of classic name but cockney memory; for it owed its title not to reverence of god Mercury, but Doctor de Valangin, a

very different sort of personage, and stood over against the gardens not of Academe but White Conduit House-Uwins, born on Hermes Hill, educated at Islington, and apprenticed in Somers Town, grew up in that hearty unaffected love of simple country sights and manners which was so distinctive of the lower middle-class Londoner, born on the other side of 1800, and to which we owe the making of many an admirable painter, and much of the fresh unsophisticated breath of nature which animates their pictures. Enjoying the country-that favourite old-fashioned cockneyism exactly expressed the feeling-and liking to watch the employments and amusements of the country people, Uwins, when he turned painter, naturally depicted what he loved to observe; hence his earliest pictures are plain country views; and then, as he got accustomed to drawing the figure, followed Gleaners' and 'Higglers,' and Children gathering Raspberries,' 'Plaiting Straw,' or 'Shelling Peas;' with 'Hop Gardens,' 'Hop Pickers,' and so forth: not 'high art,' certainly, but true art; natural, honest, and charming.

Before he painted the Chapeau however, he had been to Italy, and,

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