a further illustration of the subject, it is necessary to inform the reader, that what has hitherto been considered is but a part of that incongruous combination, the contents of a dust-cart—­the very last residuum—­the matter called “brize;” previous to which, by the result of much labour, of picking, raking, sorting, and sifting, a very pretty property is collected by the various shareholders of this joint, stock company, as a recent case that was brought forward at the Bow-street office will suffice to convince us.[3]

Perhaps the reader may have never witnessed the ejection of a dust-cart:  presuming he has not, I will endeavour to give him a general outline of the ceremony; together with all the circumstances attending it, and a sketch of the group and foreground.  Suppose an eminence of about five or six feet already collected, in a circular form; on the heap is a man raking about, and a little child playing with a small brown shaggy mongrel of a dog, with a community of pigs battening on the acclivity; a youth below, with spade and axe, is supplying three women with stuff—­if women they may be called, who, of all the progeny of old Mother Nox, seemed most the resemblances of age, misery, and want; I say seemed, for when one was called—­one of three—­I beheld, as she raised her dilapidated Dunstable, a face, where beams of pensive beauty struggled through dusty darkness, and which mantled to a smile at the sound of notes whistled to the tune of—­“In Bunhill-row there liv’d a Maid”—­indicating the approach of Joe—­for it was his cart:—­the dying cadence now gave way to the gee-up! uttered in deep bass, accompanied with a smart smack of the whip, to urge the horse up the ascent.  Joe was a decent sort of boy enough for his avocation, not to be ranked among those who “troop under the sooty flag of Acheron;” but a clean, square-built fellow, with a broadish face and forehead, blue eyes, nose rather short, expanded, and inclined upwards, and tinted with that imperial hue that indicated his knowledge was not confined to dry measure; this, with a mouth a little elongated, formed a countenance, upon the whole, full of mirth and good-humour.  This piece of device was surmounted by a hat of the usual professional form—­a domed piece of felt, with a most prodigious margin:  he wore a good stout flannel jacket, and waistcoat; his shirt collar fastened by a leaden brooch, in the shape of a heart, deviating from the general costume.  His continuations were of white drill; but, mark the vanity! short enough to display a pair of hoppers, otherwise gaiters, of the same material; these, with a stout pair of ancle-Johns, completed his outward man of an order “simply Doric.”

At Joe’s approach, all was stir and bustle; the pigs, to the third and fourth generation, moved “in perfect phalanx,” not “to the Dorian mood of flutes and soft recorders,” but to their own equally inspiring grunt; varying from the shrill treble to the deep-toned bass.  Jewler, too, ran barking; but with less interested feelings; and his little patron ran to take the whip.