little morsel of a woman, in a black alpaca dress, and a world-old black
bonnet, who spared us no detail of the church, and took us last into the
crypt, not long rescued from the invasive iron-worker, but now used as a
mortuary chapel for the poor of the parish, which is still full of the
poor. The chapel was equipped with a large bier and tall candles,
frankly ready for any of the dead who might drop in. The old countries
do not affect to deny death a part of experience, as younger countries
do.

We came out into the imperfect circle before the gateway of the church,
and realized that it was Smithfield, where all those martyrs had
perished by fire that the faith of the world might live free. There can
be no place where the past is more august, more pathetic, more
appealing, and none I suppose, where the activities of the present, in
view of it, are more offensive. It is all undermined with the railways
that bring the day's meat-provision to London for distribution
throughout the city, and the streets that centre upon it swarm with
butchers' wagons laden with every kind and color of carnage, prevalently
the pallor of calves' heads, which seem so to abound in England that it
is wonderful any calves have them on still. The wholesale market covers
I know not what acreage, and if you enter at some central point, you
find yourself amid endless prospectives of sides, flitches, quarters,
and whole carcasses, and fantastic vistas of sausages, blood-puddings,
and the like artistic fashionings of the raw material, so that you come
away wishing to live a vegetarian ever after.

The emotions are not at one's bidding, and if one calls upon them, they
are very apt not to come. I promised myself some very signal ones, of a
certain type, from going to the Sunday market of the Jews in what was
once Petticoat Lane, but now, with the general cleaning up and clearing