and orderly part of the
population have not yet awakened to the labours of the day, and the
stillness of death is over the streets; its very hue seems to be imparted
to them, cold and lifeless as they look in the grey, sombre light of
daybreak. The coach-stands in the larger thoroughfares are deserted: the
night-houses are closed; and the chosen promenades of profligate misery
are empty.

An occasional policeman may alone be seen at the street corners,
listlessly gazing on the deserted prospect before him; and now and then a
rakish-looking cat runs stealthily across the road and descends his own
area with as much caution and slyness--bounding first on the water-butt,
then on the dust-hole, and then alighting on the flag-stones--as if he
were conscious that his character depended on his gallantry of the
preceding night escaping public observation. A partially opened
bedroom-window here and there, bespeaks the heat of the weather, and the
uneasy slumbers of its occupant; and the dim scanty flicker of the
rushlight, through the window-blind, denotes the chamber of watching or
sickness. With these few exceptions, the streets present no signs of
life, nor the houses of habitation.

An hour wears away; the spires of the churches and roofs of the principal
buildings are faintly tinged with the light of the rising sun; and the
streets, by almost imperceptible degrees, begin to resume their bustle
and animation. Market-carts roll slowly along: the sleepy waggoner
impatiently urging on his tired horses, or vainly endeavouring to awaken
the boy, who, luxuriously stretched on the top of the fruit-baskets,
forgets, in happy oblivion, his long-cherished curiosity to behold the
wonders of London.

Rough, sleepy-looking animals of strange appearance, something between
ostlers and hackney-coachmen, begin to take down the shutters of early
public-houses; and little deal tables, with the ordinary preparations for
a street breakfast, make their appearance at the customary stations.
Numbers of men and women (principally the latter), carrying upon their
heads heavy baskets of fruit, toil down the park side of Piccadilly, on
their way to Covent-garden, and, following each other in rapid
succession, form a long straggling line from thence to the turn of the
road at Knightsbridge.

Here and there, a bricklayer's labourer, with the day's dinner tied up in
a handkerchief, walks briskly to his work, and occasionally a little knot
of three