S UB URBAN LONDON. 347 



street ; the shops, a large number of which were ale-houses, soon 

 were displaced in a great measure by plain, small villas of stone, 

 or stuccoed brick, standing two or three rods back from the street, 

 with dense shrubbery, enclosed by high brick walls before them. 

 Gradually the houses ran together and became blocks ; omni- 

 buses, market-carts, heavy "vans" (covered luggage wagons), 

 and pleasure-carriages, constantly met and passed, and when we 

 had walked about three miles, the village had become a compact, 

 busy town strangely interrupted once by a large, wild, wholly 

 rustic common. Then the town again : the side- walk encroached 

 upon by the grocers and hucksters; monster signs of "entire" 

 ales and ready-made coffins, and "great sacrifices" of haberdash- 

 ery and ladies' goods ; the street wide and admirably paved, and 

 crossed at short but irregular intervals by other narrower streets, 

 and growing more busy every moment. Still it is nothing re- 

 markable ; a wide street, plain brick houses, a smell of gas now 

 and then, and a crowd. I would hardly have known, from any 

 thing to be seen, that I was not entering some large town in our 

 own country, which I had never visited before. Indeed, it's quite 

 like coming down the Bowery. 



People were looking up ; following the direction of their eyes, 

 we saw a balloon ascending. The air was calm, and it rose to a 

 great height greater, says the Times this morning, than any 

 ever reached before. 



A shrill cry in the distance, rising faintly above the rumble of 

 the wheels and hum and patter of the side-walks, grows rapidly 

 more distinct, until we distinguish, sung in a high key, "Strawber- 

 rie Sixpenny-pottle. Who'll buy ? " The first of " London cries." 



We have been walking steadily, in a nearly straight line, for 

 two hours, and now the crowd thickens rapidly until it is for a 

 moment at the fullest Broadway density. There is a long break 

 in the brick-house fronts, and we turn aside out of the crowd and 



