1829.] AJairs iw General. 207 



The Londoners are not aware that they are on the eve of being- 

 starved. This would be a revolution, indeed ! The Peels, Eldons, and 

 Wellingtons, the feuds of King's college, and the triumphs of Brougham's 

 college; the marriage of the little Queen of Portugal, with her uncle or 

 her father; the "family jars" of Lord EUenborough with his frizeur 

 or his pretty wife ; and the drowning of the Horticultural Society with 

 Secretary Sabine, daffodill in hand, would be all forgotten in this over- 

 whelming calamity. The statement has reached the alai'med corporation in 

 the shape of evidence, that in the course of another twelve months of the 

 Lowtherian system, the corporation system will be no more ; tliat Lord 

 IMayor's day will be a nullity ; the world be put on short allowance, and 

 the only beings capable of existence will be those delicate creatures 

 who dance all night at Almack's, and who live all day upon the recollections 

 of a boiled chicken. The fact is, that the " improvements," such is the 

 preposterous abuse of words, are knocking down all the markets with a 

 ten-thousand-man power, as Professor Spurzheim would saj^. St. 

 James's INIarket is long since powder of quick lime and dust of bricks ; 

 turbot is to be looked for there no more. Westminster INIarket is as the 

 glories of Baalbec, and even as the ruins of Palmyra, a bewitching relique, 

 but in utter overthrow. There men, and women like men, congregate 

 no longer ; the lamb bleats no more in its folds, and the ox is as unknown 

 as the camelopard. Westminster Market is, like the member for West- 

 minster's popularity, down to the ground, irrecoverably down ! Another 

 noble mart, interesting not less to the curious in topography, than to the 

 curious in turnips, Carnaby INIarket, the grand vegetable depot of the 

 whole province bounded by the north of the metropolis, is faded as a 

 flower of the field ! Fleet INIarket is tottering to its fall ; the word of 

 fate has gone forth against it ; — hath not Alderman Waithman spoken his 

 anathema, and have not the Common Council in their folly responded to 

 his absurdity .'' Hungerford Market is crushed into non-existence between 

 new protubei-ances of half baked brick, and old piles of dilapidated 

 stone ; and the next six months will see the Antiquarian Society pastur- 

 ing a committee upon its site, and in the due course of years afterwards 

 giving the learned an accurate report of the number of herrings and 

 watchmen supposed to have been seen at one time lying on its pave- 

 ments. But it is not to be supposed that this catastrophe has approached 

 unobserved : the friends of fish have at length erected themselves into an 

 attitude of proud resistance to the general system of public spoliation ; 

 this, however, they have not done by the more natural or certain mode of 

 tying Lord Lowther, neck and heels, and sending him in the first herring 

 buss to Holland, or elsewhere ; but by projecting a general reconstruc- 

 tion of the market, of which, in fairness, we give their own statement : — ' 



" The site of the ancient Hungerford Market afFords every facility for the 

 supply of all water-borne commodities, particularly fish ; whilst its convenient 

 approaches give free access to the public from every quarter. 



" Besides the accommodation of a general market, this site will present 

 another popular benefit of great importance. VV^hen the old London Bridge 

 shall have been removed, the numerous steam-boats which daily arrive and 

 depart from the river will be easily brought to Hungerford wharf; and there 

 (ahnost in the centre of the metropolis) to land and embark passengers from a 

 jetty to be erected for that purpose ; by which means the remote and inconve- 

 nient distances, and dangerous end)arkation at the Tower and Custom House, 

 will be avoiilcd. 



" 'J'lie circumstance of the Hungerford estate being the freehold property of 



