THE CATASTROPHE OF TWELVE HOURS. 663 



stump of a besom, are all the household gear and culinary utensils to 

 be generally found in these retreats of want. ' 



Strange as it may seem, the whole of these ruins were constantly 

 inhabited, and at the epoch of the present narrative forty-five human 

 beings were to be found within their precincts. They formed a sort 

 of colony, as completely excluded from the rest of the world as if 

 living amongst the ruins of Balbec, as the court formed a cul-de-sac 

 at one extremity, and laterally was bounded by the dead walls 

 of lofty warehousing, whilst its entrance was so uninviting that few 

 voluntarily advanced beyond its antique gateway, save its own inha- 

 bitants. The four first houses on the right-hand side were occupied 

 by as many wretched-looking old couples, old men and equally old 

 women, who picked up a scanty subsistence by vending matches, 

 blacking, or small wares, about the streets and outskirts of this me- 

 tropolis of the manufacturing world ; the fifth house on the same side 

 contained no less than ten inmates, women and girls, who supported 

 themselves ostensibly by dressing flocks. On the opposite side dw r elt 

 families, consisting of children of all ages, ragged and dirty urchins, 

 beggars, pickpockets, and prostitutes, living with their parents or 

 not, as the case might be. The sixth house in the row stands rather 

 farther back than its companions, and is somewhat smaller, and looks 

 as if it had been thrust in by main force between its neighbour and 

 the boundary wall, for its timbers were all awry, one window-frame 

 seemed jutting out, and its door-posts approximated oddly, so that 

 taken altogether it presented a most miserable and ricketty ap- 

 pearance. 



CHAPTER II. 



h Fearful of a living grave." BROWNE'S Pastorals. 



In the middle of September, 1832, when that singular, and somewhat 

 equivocal disease, the cholera, was at its zenith; when the minds of all 

 classes were too much disturbed by undefined fears, to admit of the 

 adoption of any rational measures ; when selfishness had, in too many 

 instances, swallowed up all better and kindlier feelings a family of 

 seven persons was occupying the sixth cottage on the right-hand side 

 of the court described in the last chapter Robert and Sarah Hodg- 

 son ; three boys, of the various ages of seventeen, fifteen, and ten ; a 

 daughter, thirteen years old, with their grand'am, now verging on 

 eighty, though still a hale and vigorous woman, composed its mem- 

 bers, with a tame jackdaw, and a grimy-looking, and apparently not 

 a very young nor amiable cat. Every thing was clean, as far as 

 cleanliness could exist in such a hovel; but every thing bore, marks 

 of the extremest poverty. The furniture was barely equal to what 

 has been already mentioned. A few broken and defaced specimens 

 of Derbyshire spar and lead ore might, however, be seen on the 

 mantel-piece, marking to the observant eye that the family had been 

 either born in the mountainous districts of that county, or had, during 

 some period of their lives, resided there. How the family found 

 resting-places for the night appeared somewhat difficult of expla- 



