In the _Daily Post_ for October 31st, 1728, is an order of the Board of Green Cloth for clearing St James's Park of the shoe-cleaners and other vagrants, and sending them to the House of Correction. This reminds us of what has often excited our surprise, the absence from the streets of London of an humble but very useful class of professionals, who abound in many continental towns, in all French ones of any size. Abundant ingenuity is displayed in London in the discovery and invention of strange and out-of-the-way employments. Men convert themselves into "animated sandwiches" by back and breastplates of board, encase themselves in gigantic bottles to set forth the merits of some famed specific or potent elixir, or walk about with advertisements printed on their coats, peripatetic fly-sheets, extolling the comfort and economy of halfpenny steamers, and of omnibuses at a penny a mile. Some sweep crossings, others hold horses; but none of the vast number of needy _industrials_ who strain their wits to devise new means of obtaining their daily ration and nightly shelter, have as yet taken pattern by the French _décrotteur_ and German _stiefel-wichser_, and provided themselves for stock in trade with a three-legged stool, a brace of brushes, and a bottle of blacking. No one has been at Paris without finding the great convenience of the _ateliers de décrottage_ which abound in the passages and in the more frequented of the streets, where, for three or four _sous_, the lounger who has had boots and trousers bemired by rapid cab or lumbering _diligence_, is brushed and polished with unparalleled rapidity and dexterity. But a very moderate capital is required for the establishment of these temples of cleanliness, and we recommend the subject to the consideration of decayed railway "stags."
"Duke Street Chapel, with a flight of steps leading to the Park, formed originally a wing of the mansion of the notorious Judge Jeffries. The house was built by him, and James the Second, as a mark of especial favour, allowed him to make an entry to the Park by the steps alluded to. The son of Jeffries inhabited it for a short time." It was this son and successor of the infamous Jeffries, who, with a party of rakes and debauchees, mohocks as they were at that time called, insulted the remains of the poet Dryden, and the grief of his widow. They happened to pass through Gerrard Street, Soho, when Dryden's remains were about to be conveyed from his house, No. 43, in that street, to Westminster Abbey. Although it was in the daytime, Jeffries was drunk; he swore that Dryden should not be buried in so shabby a manner, (eighteen mourning coaches waited to form the procession,) and that he would see due honour done to his remains. After frightening Lady Elizabeth, who was ill in bed, into a fainting fit, these aristocratic ruffians stopped the funeral, and sent the body to an undertaker in Cheapside. The bishop waited several hours in Westminster Abbey, and at last went away. When Jeffries became sober, he had forgotten all about the matter, and refused to have any thing to do with the interment. The corpse lay unburied for three weeks. At last the benevolent Dr Garth had it taken to the College of Physicians, got up a subscription for the expenses of the funeral, and followed the body to Westminster Abbey. The poet's son challenged Jeffries, but Jeffries showed the white feather, and, to avoid personal chastisement, kept carefully out of the way for three years, when Charles Dryden was drowned near Windsor.