The most revolting spectacle to any one of sensibility which usually
presents itself about this hour, is the painful progress of the jaded,
foundered, and terrified droves of cattle that one necessarily must
see not unfrequently struggling on to the appointed slaughter-house,
perhaps after three days during which they have been running

"Their course of suffering in the public way."

On such occasions we have often wished ourselves "far from the sight of
city, spire, or sound of minster clock." One feels most for the sheep
and lambs, when the softened fancy recurs to the streams and hedgerows,
and pleasant pastures, from whence the woolly exiles have been ejected;
and yet the emotion of pity isnot wholly unaccompanied by admiration at
the sagacity of the canine disciplinarians that bay them remorselessly
forward, and sternly refuse the stragglers permission to make a
reconnoissance on the road. They are highly respectable members of
society these same sheep-dogs, and we wish we could say as much for "the
curs of low degree," that just at the same hour begin to prowl up and
down St. Giles's, and to and fro in it, seeking what they may devour,
with the fear of the Alderman of Cripplegate Within before their eyes.
The feline kind, however, have reason to think themselves in more danger
at the first round of the watering cart, for we have often rescued an
unsuspicious tortoise-shell from the felonious designs of a skin-dealer,
who was about to lay violent hands on unoffending puss, while she was
watching the process of making bread through the crevices of a Scotch
grating.[6]

[6] They say that no town in Europe is without a Scotchman for an
inhabitant. This trade in London is generally professed by North
Britons, and it is always a cause of alarm to a stranger if he