362 The London Markets. LApRIL, 
As civilization, and consequently luxury, increased, their tents became” 
permanent buildings of solid materials—the ground on which they were 
erected became the source of income to proprietors or public bodies, and 
the Turkish bazaar, the Italian piazza, the Spanish placa, and the 
English market-place, gradually succeeded to those ruder marts of do- 
mestic commercial intercourse. 
Still convenience was considered without reference to beauty, and 
more particularly in London, where our market-places have remained 
rude and vulgar buildings, while, on the continent, they have long since 
assumed that architectural appearance which renders them an ornament 
instead of a disgrace to the places in which they have been erected. 
In London our markets have long been nuisances in themselves, as 
well as to the neighbourhood in which they are placed. Rows of un- 
sightly booths — brick, mortar, and timber, mingled together, without 
taste or form, and the buildings placed so contiguous to each other, as 
scarcely to admit a free passage between the meat, fish, and vegetables, 
which they displayed for sale, while this passage was also impeded by 
the offal, formed the general character of our London markets. All 
that the ground proprietors have thought about, was, how to get the 
greatest number of standings in a certain given space ; and all that ever 
entered the occupiers’ heads, was, how to dispose of their meat, &¢. to the 
best advantage. These were the only ideas with which our markets have 
been hitherto constructed, no one having hitherto chosen to think and 
see that these advantages might be quite as easily, if not with more 
facility, obtained, by being united with architectural regularity ; and 
that this architectural regularity would cost no more than the unsightly 
buildings which disgrace our present market-places, since the same 
quantity of material and labour would have constructed them with ar- 
chitectural proportion. 
A walk through the markets of London will convince any spectator of 
the truth of this statement, for there is not one, we believe, that does 
not form a complete illustration of our observations. Look at St. James’s, 
Clare Market, Newport Market, Carnaby Market, Hungerford Market, 
and, again, at the east end of the town, at Newgate and Leadenhall 
Markets — one and all of the same character —a congregation of low, 
vulgar buildings, without any more form or proportion than if they had 
been built by the butchers, fishmongers, and greengrocers who inhabit 
them. 
Markets should, likewise, never be in the direct thoroughfares of a 
city, although they should not be far removed from them ; for nothing is 
more disagreeable than the passage through a market, to those whose 
business is not in it: nor could this slight removal from the general 
thoroughfare affect its trade, since the market is sought by purchasers, 
and very seldom owes any part of its success to the chance custom of 
casual passengers. 
What can be a more disgusting, not to say disgraceful, scene, than 
Whitechapel Market presents to the eye of the passenger, while the feet 
of the pedestrian are slipping about among the offal, or the horses of one’s 
carriage perpetually impeded by oxen and sheep, goaded on into the 
neighbouring slaughtering houses. Yet this is the scene which, for 
nearly a mile, greets the traveller at the only eastern entrance to the 
metropolis ; and all the disgusting appearances of raw meat and its ap- 
pendages, is added'to the brutality of manner and language, which is, 
