some grim apparition, rushes each day and
night with mysterious and ghost-like punctuality; holding its swift and
headlong course in all weathers, and seeming to bid defiance to the very
elements themselves.

The reality is rather different, but by no means to be despised
notwithstanding. There, at the very core of London, in the heart of its
business and animation, in the midst of a whirl of noise and motion:
stemming as it were the giant currents of life that flow ceaselessly on
from different quarters, and meet beneath its walls: stands Newgate; and
in that crowded street on which it frowns so darkly--within a few feet
of the squalid tottering houses--upon the very spot on which the vendors
of soup and fish and damaged fruit are now plying their trades--scores
of human beings, amidst a roar of sounds to which even the tumult of a
great city is as nothing, four, six, or eight strong men at a time, have
been hurried violently and swiftly from the world, when the scene has
been rendered frightful with excess of human life; when curious eyes
have glared from casement and house-top, and wall and pillar; and
when, in the mass of white and upturned faces, the dying wretch, in his
all-comprehensive look of agony, has met not one--not one--that bore the
impress of pity or compassion.

Near to the jail, and by consequence near to Smithfield also, and
the Compter, and the bustle and noise of the city; and just on that
particular part of Snow Hill where omnibus horses going eastward
seriously think of falling down on purpose, and where horses in hackney
cabriolets going westward not unfrequently fall by accident, is
the coach-yard of the Saracen's Head Inn; its portal guarded by two
Saracens' heads and shoulders, which it was once the pride and glory of
the choice spirits of this metropolis to pull down at night, but which
have for some time remained in undisturbed tranquillity; possibly
because this species of humour is now confined to St James's parish,
where door knockers are preferred as being more portable, and bell-wires
esteemed as convenient toothpicks. Whether this be the reason or not,
there they are, frowning upon you from each side of the gateway. The inn
itself garnished with another Saracen's Head, frowns upon you from the
top of the yard; while from the door of the hind boot of all the red
coaches that are standing therein, there glares a small Saracen's Head,
with a twin expression to the large Saracens' Heads