e Irish
papers, and such papers as the _Liverpool Albion_, _Cambridge
Independent_, and a few others I could name, evidently have for London
Correspondents literary men of superior position and respectability.

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 Blackfriars-road. The district I allude to is what is called a low
neighbourhood. If I am to believe a popular poet, it was there that the
Ratcatcher's daughter lived; and I should imagine, from the seedy,
poverty-struck appearance of the place, that her papa's avocation was not
so highly remunerative as some other professions, or he would have
pitched his tent, _alias_ become a ten-pound householder, in a more
fashionable quarter.

May I attempt a description of the neighbourhood? Circumstances
compelled me to be there one Sunday, just as Sabbath bells were ringing
for divine service, and the streets were crowded with hungering
worshippers. Newman Hall's place of worship was full, as was St. John's
Episcopal Chapel, and there was between them a Methodist Assembly, which
was by no means scanty; yet all round me there were crowds to whom Sunday
was no Sunday in a religious sense, to whom it was a mere day of animal
rest, who were yet pale and heavy with the previous night's gin and beer.
What were they about? Well, from the Surrey Theatre, all placarded with
yellow bills of "The Wife's Revenge," to the Elephant and Castle, there
was a busy traffic going on, far busier, I should imagine, than on any
other morning of the week. Happily the public-houses were shut up, but
as I passed the coffee-houses were full of working-men reading
newspapers, and an easy shaving shop (I write so from the placard on the
door, not from actual experience) seemed doing a tremendous trade. Such
shops as were open, and they were numerous, were very full, and opposite
such as were shut up, what rows of barrows and costermongers' carts there
were, with all the luxuries of the season, such as Spanish onions,
ca