Sinks of London Laid Open | Page 2

we have been told

concerning them, is, to use the common phrase, but mere hearsay. We
remember reading, some few years ago, of one of those begging gentry
boasting of being able to make five shillings a day. He considered that
sixty streets were easily got through, from sunrise to sunset, and that it
was strange indeed if he could not collect a penny in every street. Now,
this very same anecdote we read, not many days since, in a new work,
entitled, "A History of the Working Classes," as something, of course,
just brought to light.
The story, too, in that by-gone piece of notoriety, "Pierce Egan's Life in
London," about the beggar's opera, where the lame and the blind, and
other disordered individuals, were said to meet nightly, in a place
called the "back slums," to throw off their infirmities, and laugh at the
credulity of the public, was, not a great many weeks ago, trumped up
into a paragraph in one of our weekly journals as a fact just discovered,
and the curious were referred to a certain house in St. Giles's, in
corroboration thereof. Indeed, we think it would be easy to prove that
what little is known of the Common Lodging House, and those people
the Cadgers, is neither more nor less than mere reports, and which like
the generality of reports, contain not always the truth.
It certainly appears strange that those two subjects, which offer such an
abundance of original matter to writers and other observers of mankind,
should have remained so long without any other notice than merely that
they were known to exist. Seemingly strange, however, as this
singularity is, sufficient reasons, perhaps, may be given for it. There
can be little doubt, at least there is none in our mind, that since the
commencement of the Spectator and Tatler, periodicals have
principally assisted in developing, if we may so term it, the powers of
observation. Intelligent readers of this kind of literature would naturally
turn away from the insipid stuff of the rhymer, and the equally
sentimental trash of the getter-up of fiction, of which our old magazines
were mostly composed, to the more rational parts of the publication,
such as original essays, critiques, stories which had really some truth
for their foundation, or any thing which bore the stamp of newness.
This secret of attraction would, of course, soon be found out, by those
most interested in the sale; but the grand introduction of utility was at

that period when the Waverley novels made their appearance. Then,
instead of the exaggerated imaginings of a diseased brain, with all its
superhuman agency, we had History beautifully blended with Fiction,
or rather Truth, accurate descriptions of nature, and correct pictures of
life, both high and low. We all remember what powerful sensations
those literary wonders at first created, and what a crowd of imitators
followed in their train. The Magazines soon caught up the tone, and
became doubly interesting, with the lives of private soldiers, "Two or
Three Years in the Peninsula," and the "Subaltern." The camp and the
man-of-war now poured forth their vast stories of anecdote and
adventure, in all shapes and sizes--octavo and article--sketches of
character, local customs and antiquities, filled up the other attractions
of the day; and to read for improvement, while we read for amusement,
was almost considered the fashionable employment of time.
These excellent topics, doubtless, had their season, and when done, our
wholesale dealers in wisdom, the Publishers, well knew that their great
patron, the public, would not be content with what had gone before.
Something was to be again produced, that would make the press move;
and that something, we believe, every one will agree with us, that,
notwithstanding the splendour of Genius which the imaginative tribe
are endowed with in this mental age, was to be that which was
new--that, in fact, which would sell. This, as might be expected, caused
the booksellers and their hacks to look around them, and the tempting
gilt which the former held out, (scanty though the quantity always be!)
was yet too keen a spur to the flagging wits of hungry scribblers, to
allow them to lie idle. Society was once more ransacked, and that
which formerly gave pleasure was now found to be too old for
entertainment. Bad practices were discovered to exist amongst those
with whom honesty was thought to dwell--the seat of justice was found
to be but the seat of corruption--and so high in repute had Unions risen
in the land, that they even extended to the very pests of society--the
men who lived by plunder. It is to this desire for change, then, that we
are indebted for those admirable novels of the French writer Paul de
Kock, which have lately appeared;