IN one of the many courts on the north side of Fleet Street, might be seen, somewhere about the year 1820, the last of the ancient shoe-blacks. One would think that he deemed himself dedicated to his profession by Nature, for he was a Negro. At the earliest dawn he crept forth from his neighbouring lodging, and planted his tripod on the quiet pavement, where he patiently stood till noon was past. He was a short, large-headed, son of Africa, subject, as it would appear, to considerable variations of spirits, alternating between depression and excitement, as the gains of the day presented to him the chance of having a few pence to recreate himself, beyond what he should carry home to his wife and children. For he had a wife and children, this last representative of a falling trade; and two or three little woolly-headed décrotteurs nestled around him when he was idle, or assisted in taking off the roughest of the dirt when he had more than one client.

He watched, with a melancholy eye, the gradual improvement of the streets; for during some twenty or thirty years he had beheld all the world combining to ruin him. He saw the foot-pavements widening; the large flag-stones carefully laid down; the loose and broken piece, which discharged a slushy shower on the unwary foot, instantly removed he saw the kennels diligently cleansed, and the drains widened: he saw experiment upon experiment made in the repair of the carriage-way, and the holes which were to him as the old familiar faces' which he loved, filled up with a haste that appeared quite unnecessary, not insulting. One solitary country shopkeeper, who had come to London once a year during a long life, clung to our sable friend; for he was the only one of the fraternity that he could find remaining, in his walk from Charing Cross to Cheapside. The summer's morning when that good man planted his foot on the three-legged stool, and desired him carefully to turn back his brown gaiters, and asked him how trade went with him, and shook his head when he learned that it was very bad, and they both agreed that new-fangled ways were the ruin of the country —that was a joyful occasion to him, for he felt that he was not quite deserted. He did not continue long to struggle with the capricious world :

'One morn we miss'd him on th' accustomed stand.'

He retired into the workhouse; and his boys, having a keener eye than their father to the wants of the community, took up the trade which he most hated, and applied themselves to the diligent removal of the mud in an earlier stage of its accumulation-they swept crossings, instead of cleaning shoes.

The last of the ancient Shoe-blacks belongs to history. He was one of the living monuments of old London; he was a link between three or four generations. The stand which he purchased in Bolt Court (in the wonderful resemblance of external appearance between all these FleetStreet courts, we cannot be sure that it was Bolt Court)

had been handed down from one successor to another, with as absolute a line of customers as Child's Banking-house. He belonged to a trade which has its literary memorials. In 1754, the polite Chesterfield, and the witty Walpole, felt it no degradation to the work over which they presided that it should be jocose about his fraternity, and hold that his profession was more dignified than that of the author:

'Far be it from me, or any of my brother authors, to intend lowering the dignity of the gentlemen trading in black ball, by naming them with ourselves: we are extremely sensible of the great distance there is between us: and it is with envy that we look up to the occupation of shoe-cleaning, while we lament the severity of our fortune, in being sentenced to the drudgery of a less respectable employment. But while we are unhappily excluded from the stool and brush, it is surely a very hard case that the contempt of the world should pursue us, only because we are unfortunate.'*

Gay makes the black youth'-his mythological descent from the goddess of mud, and his importance in a muddy city-the subject of the longest episode in his amusing Trivia. The shoe-boy's mother thus addresses him :

Go thrive at some frequented corner stand ;
This brush I give thee, grasp it in thy hand;
Temper the foot within this vase of oil,
And let the little tripod aid thy toil;
On this methinks I see the walking crew,
At thy request, support the miry shoe;

The foot grows black that was with dirt embrown'd,
And in thy pocket gingling halfpence sound.

The goddess plunges swift beneath the flood,

And dashes all around her showers of mud:

The youth straight chose his post; the labour ply'd
Where branching streets from Charing Cross divide;
His treble voice resounds along the Mews,

And Whitehall echoes-" Clean your Honour's shoes!" "

But the shoe-blacks have revived. What was an absolute necessity in the old times is now a luxury. On a fine day

*The World, No. 57.

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the traveller, who has walked through miry ways to his railroad-station, arrives in London, and sees the boots of those who are fresh from their suburban villas brighter by contrast. He no longer is propitiated by Clean your honour's shoes,' but he hears 'Clean your boots.' Practical benevolence has found out its ragged boys; has clothed them in a decent scarlet livery; and established them in public thoroughfares, with the foot-rest and the brush. And, indeed, the vast accumulation of public vehicles has

made the shoe-black sometimes as necessary to the passenger who has hurried across the busy road, careless of mud so that he save his limbs, as the old neglect. The great thoroughfares cannot now be. adequately swept; and even a sunny day has its dirt, through the indefatigable water-cart. The black youth' again thrives.

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He who would see London well must be a pedestrian. Gay who has left us the most exact as well as the most lively picture of the external London of a hundred and

I

twenty years ago, is enthusiastic in his preference for walking:

'Let others in the jolting coach confide,

Or in the leaky boat the Thames divide,

Or, box'd within the chair, contemn the street,
And trust their safety to another's feet:

Still let me walk.'

But what a walk has he described!

He sets out—as what

sensible man would not?—with his feet protected with firm, well-hammer'd soles;' but if the shoe be too big,

Each stone will wrench th' unwary step aside.'

This, we see, is a London without trottoirs. The middle of a paved street was generally occupied with the channel; and the sides of the carriage-way were full of absolute holes, where the rickety coach was often stuck as in a quagmire. Some of the leading streets, even to the time of George II., were almost as impassable as the avenues of a new American town. The only road to the Houses of Parliament before 1750 was through King Street and Union Street, 'which were in so miserable a state, that fagots were thrown into the ruts on the days on which the King went to Parliament, to render the passage of the statecoach more easy.'* The present Saint Margaret's Street was formed out of a thoroughfare known as Saint Margaret's Lane, which was so narrow that 'pales were obliged to be placed, four feet high, between the foot-path and the coach-road, to preserve the passengers from injury, and from being covered with the mud which was splashed on all sides in abundance.'† The pales here preserved the passengers more effectually than the posts of other thoroughfares. These posts, in the principal avenues, constituted the only distinction between the foot-way and carriageway; for the space within the posts was as uneven as the space without. This inner space was sometimes so narrow, that only one person could pass at a time; and hence those contests for the wall that filled the streets with the vocife† Id. p. 262.

* Smith's Westminster, p. 261.