24 chapters
4 hour read
Selected Chapters
24 chapters
HERE AND THERE in LONDON.
HERE AND THERE in LONDON.
by J. EWING RITCHIE, author of “ the night-side of london ,” “ the london pulpit ,” etc. “Then I saw in my dream, that, when they were got out of the wilderness, they presently saw a town before them, and the name of that town is Vanity; and at the town there is a fair kept, called Vanity Fair.” Bunyan . london : W. TWEEDIE, 337, STRAND. 1859. london : printer and galpin , belle sauvage printing works , ludgate hill , e.c. to HENRY AYSCOUGH THOMPSON, ESQ. this work , As a trifling Testimonial of
34 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, FROM THE STRANGERS’ GALLERY.
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, FROM THE STRANGERS’ GALLERY.
Not far from Westminster Abbey, as most of our readers know well, stands the gorgeous pile which Mr. Barry has designed, and for which, in a pecuniary sense, a patient public has been rather handsomely bled. Few are there who have looked at that pile from the Bridge—or from the numerous steamers which throng the river—or loitered round it on a summer’s eve, without feeling some little reverence for the spot haunted by noble memories and heroic shades—where to this day congregate the talent, the
21 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
A NIGHT WITH THE LORDS.
A NIGHT WITH THE LORDS.
Amongst the sights of London surely may be reckoned the Chamber of Peers—fallen from its high estate, but still existing as a potent institution in this self-governing country and democratic age. Of course it is usual to sneer at the peers—we all do so; and yet we would move heaven and earth to be seen walking arm in arm with a peer, no matter how old or vicious he be, on the sunny side of Pall Mall. We all say the peers must give way to the Commons; and yet we all know that half the latter ar
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE REPORTERS’ GALLERY.
THE REPORTERS’ GALLERY.
If it has ever been your lot, most magnanimous sir, to be in the neighbourhood of Westminster Hall about four any afternoon while Parliament is sitting, you must have observed more than one individual, with cheeks evidently “sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,” rushing into the door which leads to the Strangers’ Gallery in the House of Commons. If, however, you look well, you will see that the parties referred to, instead of going the whole length of the passage, as you are compelled t
20 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE LOBBY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS DURING THE SESSION.
THE LOBBY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS DURING THE SESSION.
England, Ireland, Scotland, and our forty colonies are ruled, not from Downing-street, not from Privy Councils at Buckingham Palace, nor by the Times newspaper, as some pretend, nor even by the stump orator, but by the Lobby of the House of Commons. This I know, that if I were a member of the United Kingdom Alliance, and wished to root up the liquor traffic in England—that if I were a Scotchman, and endeavoured to confirm and extend the provisions of the Forbes Mackenzie Act—that even were I of
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT.
OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT.
Where’s Eliza? Who was the man in the iron mask? Who was Junius? Whose were the bones discovered last year in a carpet-bag under Waterloo-bridge? You cannot tell. Neither can I tell you who is our London Correspondent. Yet he exists. I find traces of him in the most Bœotian districts of England. “Caledonia, stern and wild, Fit nurse for a poetic child,” knows him. In “Tara’s halls” he has superseded the harp, and is a presence and a power. Before newspapers were, when Addison was writin
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
A SUNDAY AT THE OBELISK.
A SUNDAY AT THE OBELISK.
The ancient Athenians were a restless, inquisitive people. At the Areopagus it was that Paul preached of an unknown God. Their popular assemblies met on the Pynx. There mob orators decreed the ostracism of Aristides the Just, and the death of Socrates the Good. In the metropolis we have no Pynx where our demoi are wont to assemble, but we have several spots that serve for popular gatherings on the Sunday—our working-man’s holiday. One of these is the Obelisk at the Surrey end of the Blackfr
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
EXETER HALL.
EXETER HALL.
Lord Macaulay has made all the world familiar with the bray of Exeter Hall. Exeter Hall, when it does bray, does so to some purpose. It is in vain fighting Exeter Hall. It is the parliament of the middle classes. It has an influence for good or bad no legislator can overlook—to which often the assembly in St. Stephen’s is compelled to bow. I have seen a Prince Consort presiding at a public meeting in Exeter Hall; on its platform I have heard our greatest orators and statesmen declaim. In E
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE DERBY.
THE DERBY.
Is there a finer sight in creation than a horse? I don’t speak of the wild horse of the prairie, as seen at Astley’s—nor of the wearied animal by means of which the enterprising greengrocer transports his wares from Covent-Garden to the Edgware-road—nor of the useful but commonplace looking cob on which Jones trusts himself timidly as he ventures on a constitutional ride, while his groom, much better mounted, follows scornfully behind—nor of the broken-down, broken-knee’d, spavined, blind roare
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
VAUXHALL GARDENS.
VAUXHALL GARDENS.
Vauxhall is alive. At one time it was thought dead, and people affirmed the fact to be an evidence of the improved state of the metropolis. (Moralists are too prone to be thankful for small mercies.) Had the fact been so, the inference was a fallacy; but we need not trouble ourselves about that, as the fact is otherwise. It is a mistake to suppose that progress is made only in one direction. Vauxhall is associated with the fast life of centuries. It was born in the general and fearful prof
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE PENNY GAFF.
THE PENNY GAFF.
Do my readers know Shoreditch? I do not mean the Eastern Counties Railway Station, but the regions dark and dolorous lying beyond. In an old map of London, by my side, dated 1560, I see it marked as a street with but one row of houses on each side, and the five windmills in Finsbury Fields not far off. Here stood the Curtain Theatre. In Stowe’s time there were in Shoreditch “two publique houses for the acting and shewe of comedies, tragedies, and histories for recreation.” Here, according t
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
RAG FAIR.
RAG FAIR.
People often ask, how do the poor live in London. This a question I don’t intend answering on the present occasion. But if you ask how they clothe themselves, my answer is, at Rag Fair. Do my readers remember Dickens’s sketch of Field-lane? In “Oliver Twist,” he writes, “Near to the spot at which Snow-hill and Holborn meet there opens, on the right hand as you come out of the city, a dark and dismal alley, leading to Saffron-hill. In its filthy shops are exposed for sale huge bunches of poc
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE COMMERCIAL ROAD and the coal-whippers.
THE COMMERCIAL ROAD and the coal-whippers.
The Commercial Road, abutting on the Docks and Whitechapel, is the residence of the London coal whippers—a race of men singularly unfortunate—the complete slaves of the publicans of that quarter, and deserving universal sympathy. I have been down in their wretched homes; I have seen father, mother, children all sleeping, eating, living in one small apartment, ill-ventilated, inconvenient, and unhealthy; and I believe no class of labourers in this great metropolis, where so many thousands are il
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE STOCK EXCHANGE.
THE STOCK EXCHANGE.
This country, said the late Mr. Rothschild, is, in general, the bank of the whole world. That distinguished capitalist never said a truer thing. If Russia wants a railway, or Turkey an army, if Ohio would borrow cash, or Timbuctoo build a railway, they all come to London. The English stockholder is the richest and softest animal under the sun—as repudiated foreign stocks and exploded joint-stock projects at home have too frequently illustrated. When the unfortunate stockholder has in this wa
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE LONDON HOSPITAL.
THE LONDON HOSPITAL.
I am walking along the streets, and in doing so pass a scaffolding where some new buildings are being erected. Suddenly I hear a shriek, and see a small crowd collected. A beery Milesian, ascending a ladder with a hod of mortar, slips and falls on the pavement below. He is a stranger in London, has no friends, no money, scarcely any acquaintance. “What’s his name?” we ask. “He ain’t got no name,” says one of his mates; “we calls him Carroty Bill.” What’s to be done? Why, take him to the h
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
PORTLAND PLACE.
PORTLAND PLACE.
The worst effects of drunkenness are, perhaps, after all, its indirect ones. It is a sad sight to see man stricken down in his prime, and woman in her beauty; to see individuals’ hopes and prospects blighted; to see in that carcase staggering by the utter wreck and ruin of an immortal soul. But this is but a small portion of the damage done to humanity by the ravages of intemperance. Look at our great social evil. I need not name it. No one who walks the streets of London by night requires
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
MARK-LANE.
MARK-LANE.
On a Monday morning, especially on the Eastern Counties lines, the trains running into town have an unusually large number of passengers. They consist generally of the jolly-looking fellows who, at the time of the cattle show, take the town by storm, and fill every omnibus and cab, and dining room, and place of public amusement, and then as suddenly retire as if they were a Tartar horde, dashing into some rich and luxurious capital, then vanishing with their booty, none know whither. However,
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
PREACHING AT ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL.
PREACHING AT ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL.
In that celebrated chapter in which Gibbon explains the rise and progress on natural grounds of the Christian religion, it has always seemed to us that he has not done justice to the immense influence which the institution of the pulpit must originally have possessed. Had he gone no further than the pages of his New Testament, the distinguished historian would have found many an instance of oratorical success. He would have read how Herod quailed before the rude orator who in the desert drew m
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
AN OMNIBUS YARD.
AN OMNIBUS YARD.
In one of the remotest of the Fejee Islands some Wesleyan missionaries, in the year 1851, landed a pair of horses. We read general excitement prevailed at the towns near, and a great muster gathered on the beach at the day of landing. It was long before the native mind got reconciled to the phenomenon. The people, we are told, were terrified if approached by a horse. They would jump into the river, run up cocoa-nut and other trees, and climb houses for safety while the animal passed their pl
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE NEW CATTLE MARKET.
THE NEW CATTLE MARKET.
The London public are not of the opinion of Shelley, that flesh of bullocks and sheep, when properly cooked, is the true cause of original sin, and that to regain the innocence of the Garden of Eden we have but to have recourse solely to a vegetarian diet. This doctrine has never been a popular one, and from the earliest time the contrary has found favour in the eyes of men. With what gusto does Homer describe the banquets before the walls of Troy, when heroes were the guests, and where divine
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE GOVERNMENT OFFICE
THE GOVERNMENT OFFICE
Is in the Strand—or in Westminster—and the contrast between its silence and stillness and the bustle of the streets is something wonderful. You feel as you enter as if you were in a charmed land. With Tennyson’s lotus-eaters you exclaim, “There is no joy but calm. Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?” Charles Lamb’s description of the South Sea House might have been penned for a Government Office. The place seems to belong not to the living present. The windows, double gl
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
PATERNOSTER ROW.
PATERNOSTER ROW.
The “swinish multitude,” as a term of reproach, in these days of ours is gradually becoming less and less in vogue. There were times when gentlemen were not ashamed to use it—when the people, degraded and oppressed, demoralised by the vices of their superiors, were scorned for the degradation which had been forced on them against their will. Not voluntarily did the people give up its inherent rights and its divine power. The struggle was long and severe before the man relinquished his birthri
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE LONDON PULPIT,
THE LONDON PULPIT,
by JAMES EWING RITCHIE. Contents: The Religious Denominations of London—Sketches of the Rev. J. M. Bellew—Dale—Liddell—Maurice—Melville—Villiers—Baldwin Brown—Binney—Dr. Campbell—Lynch—Morris—Martin—Brock—Howard Hinton—Sheridan Knowles—Baptist Noel—Spurgeon—Dr. Cumming—Dr. James Hamilton—W. Forster—H. Ierson—Cardinal Wiseman—Miall—Dr. Wolf, &c. &c. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. “The subject is an interesting one, and it is treated with very considerable ability. Mr. Ritchie has the val
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE NIGHT-SIDE OF LONDON.
THE NIGHT-SIDE OF LONDON.
by J. EWING RITCHIE. Contents: Seeing a Man hanged—Catherine-street—The Bal Masqué—Up the Haymarket—Ratcliffe Highway—Judge and Jury Clubs—The Cave of Harmony—Discussion Clubs—Cider Cellars—Leicester-square—Boxing Night—Caldwell’s—Cremorne—The Costermongers’ Free-and-Easy, &c. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. “We would wish for this little volume an attentive perusal on the part of all to whom inclination or duty, or both, give an interest in the moral, the social, and the religious condition of t
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter