and boardings of our metropolis abound. The poor sick needlewomen,
stitching for two-and-six-pence a-week, indicate in some quarters how
hard is the London struggle for life. But one of the worst sights, I
think, is that of women (a dozen may be seen at a time), all black and
grimy, sifting the cinders and rubbish collected by the dustmen from
various parts, and shot into one enormous heap.

The last dodge exposed for making money is amusing. A writer in the
_Times_ wanted to know how it was we see advertisements in London papers
for a million of postage-stamps. A writer in reply says all the stories
about severe papas, who will not let their daughters marry till they have
papered a room with them, are false. He says if the reader will go to
some of the purlieus of the Borough (leaving his watch and purse at home)
he will very possibly be enlightened. He will be accosted by a
hook-nosed man, who will pull out a greasy pocket-book, and produce some
apparently new postage-stamps, not all joined together, but each one
separate, and will offer them for sale at about 2d. a dozen. If the
enterprising stranger looks very closely, indeed, into these stamps, he
may perhaps detect a slight join in the middle. They are made by taking
the halves which are unobliterated of two old stamps and joining them,
regumming the backs and cleaning the faces. This practice is, it is
said, carried on to a great extent, in the low neighbourhoods of
Ratcliff-highway, and the Borough.

During the year 1858 it appears 10,004 persons died in the public
institutions of London: 5,535 in the workhouses, 57 in the prisons, and
4,412 in hospitals. Of the latter number 317 belong to the Greenwich and
the Chelsea hospitals, 211 to the military and naval hospitals. About
one in six of the inhabitants of the metropolis dies in the public
institutions, nearly one in eleven dies in the workhouses. Only think of
the population of London. In 1857 that was estimated by the
Registrar-General at 2,800,000; since then the population has gone on
steadily increasing, and it may be fairly estimated that the London of
to-day is more than equal to three Londons of 1801. Now, amidst this
teeming population, what thousands of vicious, and rogues, and fools
there must be; what thousands suddenly reduced from affluence to poverty;
what thousands plunged into distress by sickness or the loss of friends,
and parents, and other benefactors; to such what a place of