it formed a part, seems never to have been very rigidly executed; and for many a year afterwards the fraternity flourished as sound in health and limb

as ever.

The rapid improvement of the streets was destined, however, soon to prove far more destructive to the craft than commitments; and Messrs. Mac Adam and the paving board were worse enemies than beadles and parish constables. The state of the best streets about a century ago, was much worse than the Pill-lane or Goat-alley of 1843. There were no areas in front of houses as there are now, in all streets consisting of private residences; and the spouts, instead of being carried down to the ground, so as to suffer the water to run off in a quiet stream, projected out either from the roof, or half-way down the wall, so as to pour in torrents over a large space below, after every shower. Sewers there were few or none, and many houses having no reres or places of deposit behind, the inhabitants threw all species of filth into the middle of the street, so that Dublin was as little purified as Edinburgh or Lisbon. As late as the year 1811, there was not one covered sewer in the most popu lous district of the city-the Liberty, south of the Coombe; and it is a very singular circumstance, that when the great sewer through Capel-street was commenced under the powers vested in the paving board, after 1806, that street being then one of the most populous in Dublin, and in which the most thriving shopkeepers of the day lived, the sewer was covered in at the desire of the inhabitants, and left unfinished.* For want of sewers the filth and waters were received in pits, called cess-pools, dug before the doors, and covered in ; and those continued in Sackville-street, and other places, till after the year 1811; and many now remember the horrid sight and smell which periodically offended the inhabitants in this fashionable street, when those stygian pools were opened and emptied.t

To the causes of accumulating filth was to be added the excessive narrowness of the streets. Chancery-lane, once one of the most fashionable streets in the city, and the residence of all the

leading members of the legal profession, who have now migrated to Merrion-square, is hardly the width of a modern stable-lane; and Cutpurserow, the leading thoroughfare from the southern road to the eastern end of the town was, before it was widened in 1810, only fifteen feet broad.

Among the mementos of the former state of the streets of our metropolis, some, not the least curious, are the various acts passed for their improvement, which draw most piteous pictures of their state. From one passed in 1717, it appears to have been a lucrative business to lay dirt in the streets for the purpose of making manure. In such a state of the city shoeblacks must have had a thriving trade. The face of things is now changed: Dublin is one of the cleanest cities in Europe, and a pedestrian may walk from east to west and north to south of it without soiling his foot.

The advance of this improvement in our metropolis was occasionally marked by events which exhibit strange traits. Among others, Gorges Ed. Howard mentions a characteristic anecdote of the mode of carrying the law into effect in the year 1757. After the institution of the wide street commissioners, who were then first appointed for the purpose of opening a passage "from Essex bridge to the royal palace, the castle of Dublin," they proceeded to carry the work into execution; but when the bargains for the houses they had purchased were concluded, the inhabitants refused to give up possession, alleging they had six months to remain; and prepared bills for injunctions against the commissioners. A host of labourers were prepared with ladders and tools in the night before the day on which the injunctions were to be applied for, who proceeded at the first light in the morning to strip the roofs, and in a short time left the houses open to the sky. The terrified inhabitants bolted from their beds into the streets, under the impression that the city was attacked, of which there were some rumours, as it was a time of war. On learning the cause, they changed their

bills of injunction into bills of indictment, but the commissioners proceeded without further impediment.

Another fatal enemy to the craft of shoe-blacks was the increase and cheapness of public vehicles. About fifty years after the introduction of coaches into England, the first hackney-coach stand was established in London. It was formed, A.D. 1634, by an experimenting sea captain, named Bailey, at the May-pole, in the Strand; but the general use of one horse vehicles is of very recent introduction there, dating no farther back than 1820, when the Londoners borrowed their cabs from their Parisian neighbours. The precise date of the introduction of hackney-coaches into Dublin we know not; but the first arrangement for regulating and controlling them was made in 1703, when their number was limited to one hundred and fifty, and each horse employed in drawing them was required to be "in size fourteen hands and a half, according to the standard." The hackney-coaches we borrowed from our English neighbours, as their name imports; but our one-horse vehicles have always been peculiar to ourselves, and were in use long before any thing of a similar kind was introduced in England. The earliest and rudest of these was the " Ringsend cars," so called from their plying prin cipally to that place and Irishtown, then the resort of the beau monde for the benefit of sea-bathing. This car consisted of a seat suspended in a strap of leather, between shafts, and without springs. The noise made by the creaking of the strap which supported the whole weight of the company, particularly distinguished this mode of conveyance. This machine was succeeded by the "noddy," so called from its oscillating motion backwards and forwards. It was a low vehicle, capable of holding two persons, and drawn by one horse. It was covered with a calash open before, but the aperture was usually filled by the "noddy boy," who was generally a large-sized man, and occupied a seat

that protruded back, so that he sat in the lap of his company. The use of the noddy by certain classes grew into a proverb, "Elegance and ease, like a shoe black in a noddy."

The last improvement was the "jingle," a machine rolling on four wheels, but so put together, that the rattling of the work was heard like the bells of a waggon team. This was finally succeeded by the jauntingcar, which still holds its place, and was, Hibernice, termed a "vis-a-vis," because the company sat back to back.* The addition of covers to the kind of cars called inside cars, is an improvement made within the last few years, giving the vehicle most of the advantages of a coach; since which our national vehicle has completely beaten the English importation out of the field. There is not now a single coach plying for hire on a stand in Dublin. The licensed cars amount to about 1500, being nearly equal to the number of licensed cabs in London—a fact to be accounted for probably by the absence of omnibuses here. Hackneycoaches still exist in London, but are rapidly giving place to their more youthful and active French rivals.

Before the use of one-horse cars became so general and popular, the common vehicle for a single passenger was a sedan. The introduction of sedans into England is due to King Charles I. when a prince, and the Duke of Buckingham, who brought them from Spain.

Though the notion of "degrading Englishmen into beasts of burthen" was at first exceedingly unpopular, the people soon became accustomed to it. In process of time the chair became of almost universal use. In Hogarth's time it was a very general favourite in London, especially among the beau monde. It could not exist, however, in the present crowded state of the giant metropolis, among the thunder of omnibuses, and the clash of cabs ; and such a thing as a sedan chair plying for hire, has for some time been unknown there. Chairs still survive

in our more peaceful city, but are devoted almost solely to the service of old ladies and invalids. The notion of a healthy man traversing our clean and even streets in a sedan, appears nearly as ludicrous as a man in a bonnet and petticoats; and even the fair sex of the present day seem to have resigned these solitary vehicles to the surviving members of the last generation. Far otherwise was it sixty years a20. A chair was then as indispensable to every family of distinction, as a coach; and public chairs, for hire, were more numerous than any other public vesicle. Women always used them in cases where they would now walk; and men in full dress, in the gaudy fashion of that day, were equally unscrupulous as to the charge of effeminacy. In 1771, the number of "hackney-coaches, landaus, chariots, post-chaises, and Berlins," licensed by the governors of the Foundling Hospital, (in whom the jurisdiction was then vested,) to ply in Dublin and the environs, was limited to three hundred, while the number of sedans was four hundred. The author of the Philosophical Survey, writing in 1775, says— "It is deemed a reproach for a gentlewoman to be seen walking in the streets. I was advised by my bankers to lodge in Capel-street, near Essex-bridge, being in less danger of being robbed, two chairmen not being deemed sufficient protection.'

The Irish seem to have preferred walking with a chair. The number of Irish chairmen in London was often remarked. They made a fearful engine of attack in riots, by sawing the poles of their chairs in two, at the thick part in the middle-cach pole thus supplying two terrific bludgeons.

The dangers of the streets alluded to by the writer above quoted, were a fertile subject of complaint in the sister country, as well as here; but the footpads of Dublin robbed in a manner, we believe, peculiar to themselves. The streets were miserably lighted-indeed, in many places hardly lighted at all. So late as 1811, there were only twenty-six small oil lamps to light the immense square of Stephen's-green, which were therefore one hundred and seventy feet from one another. The foodpads congregated in a dark entry, on the shady side of the street, if the

moon shone; if not, the dim and dismal light of the lamps was little obstruction. A cord was provided with a loop at the end of it. The loop was laid on the pavement, and the thieves watched the approach of a passenger. If he put his foot in the loop, it was immediately chucked. The man fell prostrate, and was dragged rapidly up the entry to some cellar or waste yard, where he was robbed, and sometimes murdered. The stun received by the fall usually prevented the victim from ever recognizing the robbers. We knew a gentleman who had been thus robbed; and when he recovered, found himself in an alley at the end of a lane off Bride-street, nearly naked, and severely contused and lacerated by being dragged over the rough pavement.

According to Mr. Knight's account, the last London shoe-black might have been seen in 1820, in a court at the north of Fleet-street. We believe the last "regular shoe-black" in Dublin had his stand at the corner of Essexstreet and Crampton court, and disappeared at a much earlier period, more than thirty years ago. The original craftsmen, such as we have described them, were for a short time succeeded by peripatetic practitioners, who used the modern blacking that requires friction. The use of the new material, however, required too much delay and trouble, and the improvement never throve.

SLANG SONGS.

AMONG the popular favourites of the last century, now almost entirely exploded, were slang songs. As compositions, their merits were of various degrees-but the taste of the times has so entirely changed, that their literary merits would now gain them little attention. Their value chiefly consists in being genuine pictures of uncouth scenes, not to be met with elsewhere.

The favourite subjects of these compositions were life in a jail and the proceedings of an execution. The interior and discipline of a prison of this date presented a frightful contrast to the same things at the present day. The office of a jailer was regarded as a place of profit, of which a trade might as fairly be driven, as in the

keeping of an inn; and so as the prisoners were kept safe, and the jailer's fees paid, the entire object of such institutions was supposed to be answered with a total disregard to the improvement or correction of the unfortunate inmates. One striking instance of this is the custom introduced in the time of Henry the Eighth, and which continued to a comparatively recent date, of licensing poor prisoners to beg for their fees. When an unfortunate captive was discharged, for want of prosecution, or acquittal, the jailer, nevertheless, would not let him out, till his fees were paid-and if he was unable to pay them from his own means, he was allowed a certain time to beg in the neighbourhood of the jail to procure them.

But the most shocking exhibition of the utter laxity of all discipline, and want of decency, was exhibited in the manner in which condemned capital convicts were allowed to pass their last hours.

When so many petty offences were punishable capitally, and commitment on suspicion was so often but the stepping-stone to the gallows-it was natural that, to the unfortunate felons themselves, an execution should be stripped of all the salutary terrors, in which alone the utility of capital punishment consists, and should be by them regarded as an ordinary misfortune in their course of life. The numerous instances recorded of utter levity and recklessness, exhibited by convicts on the very verge of eternity, clearly show this to have been so, not merely in Ireland, but in the sister kingdom. The practice of prisoners selling their bodies to surgeons, to be dissected after their execution, was common, we believe, to both countries, and the anecdote of the felon who took the money, and then told the surgeon, laughing, that "it was a bite, for he was to be hung in chains"--we believe we can hardly claim as Irish wit. But there was one trait, evincing a similar careless indifference which was peculiarly Irish. The coffins of condemned malefactors were usually sent to them, that the sight might suggest the immediate prospect of death, and excite corres

ponding feelings of solemn reflection and preparation for the awful event. From motives of humanity, the friends of the condemned were also allowed free intercourse with him during the brief space preceding his execution. The result was, that the coffin was converted to a use widely different from that intended. It was employed as a card-table, and the condemned wretch spent his last night in this world gambling on it.

A man named Lambert was an outcast of a respectable family, and was known thus to have spent his last precious moments; and it was on him the celebrated song of "The night before Larry was stretched," is supposed to have been written. He was a cripple, paralytic on one side, but of irreclaimable habits. He was at once ferocious and cowardly, and was reported to have always counselled murdering those whom he had robbed. When

on his way to execution, he shrieked and clung with his legs to whatever was near him, and was dragged with revolting violence, by the cord about his neck, to the drop from which he fell and while passing into eternity, he vomited up the effects of his intemperate excess a few hours before.

The celebrated song composed on him has acquired a lasting fame, not only as a picture of manners, but of phraseology now passed away; and its authorship is a subject of as much controversy as the letters of Junius. Report has conferred the reputation of it on Burrows, Curran, Lysaght, and others, who have never asserted their claims. We will mention one more claimant, whose pretensions are equal to those of any other. There was, at that time, a man named Maher, in Waterford, who kept a cloth shop on the market cross; he had a distorted ancle, and was known by the soubriquet of "Hurlfoot Bill." He was "a fellow of infinite humour," and his compositions on various local and temporary subjects were in the mouths of all his acquaintance. There was then a literary society established in Waterford, of which we have given some account in a former number of our ma

VOL. XXII.-No. 132.

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