A very fleeting population is that of Catherine-street. These women, commencing their life at eighteen, are few of them supposed to last more than eight years; and if you see them in the day-time, before they are painted and dressed up—with their red eyes and bloated faces, you will think few of them will last even that short time; but they pass on one by one to the spirit land, not as did Antigone, conscious of duty done, though wailing her unwedded state, nor as Jephthah’s high-souled daughter, for whom Hebrew maidens devoutly wept—but with body and soul alike loathsome and steeped in sin. Here in Catherine-street vice is a monster of a hideous mien. The gay women, as they are termed, are worse off than American slaves, and the men at the best are but drunken fools frittering away time and money and health, and rooting out from their hearts all trace of the divine that may be yet lingering there. The West is the more fashionable quarter, and the glory of Catherine-street is fled. Almost every house you come to is a public-house, or something worse. Here there is a free-and-easy after the theatres are over; there a lounge open all night for the entertainment of bullies and prostitutes, and pickpockets and thieves, greenhorns from the country or London-born; here a dancing saloon, which we are told in the advertisement no visitor should leave London without first seeing, and there a coffee-house where, when expelled from gayer places of resort, half intoxicated men and women take an early breakfast. All round you are bitter memories. Every stone you tread is red with blood; you can almost hear the last dying shriek of virtue, before, by means of the tempting purse or the hocussed draught, the poor victim—feebler in her struggles every hour—be lost for ever. Yet the gas burns brightly by night, and there is dancing, and wine, and songs, and in the small hours you may hear a hollow laughter, sadder even than cries and tears. Think what years and years of tedious culture must have elapsed to produce this concentrated essence of vice. How many must have died in the seasoning—how many must have turned back shuddering as they saw the dark ending to their infatuated career—how many weeping parents must have won back to decency and the observance of moral and social law—how many the want of pecuniary means must have compelled into a reluctant abstinence! Such a crop could only be reared in such a Sodom and Gomorrha as ours. That landlord, gloating over his ill-gotten gains, could not have sunk into so fallen a condition rapidly. It has taken years to make him what he is. There is no excuse for him, and he knows it. It is not for the honest refreshment of the weary or the _bonâ fide_ accommodation of the public that his house is open. The real public have been in bed for hours. These men around us are here for immoral purposes. These women are on the same bad errand, and that they may better pursue their vocation, here they come and drink; but he sells his poison, thinking not of the mischief it will do, but of the gain it will bring. Is he not a degraded man, with his double chin, and dirty face, and low forehead? can you see in him one trace of benevolence or humanity? Do you doubt this?—spend your last farthing in his bar, pawn every article of clothing you have, and go with an empty pocket and in rags, and you will soon be ordered to the door. You see he is now turning out that wretched creature. He has allowed her to drink till she has no more money; but she solicited chance customers, and they treated her to gin, and so the landlord let her stop; but now she is so drunk as to interfere with his business, and he turns her houseless and friendless out into the streets. Let us watch her. She is too far gone to have any decency left. Drink and sadness combined have tortured her brain to madness. Her curses fill the air; a crowd collects; the police come up; she is borne on a stretcher to Bow-street, and in the morning is dismissed with a reprimand, or sentenced to a month’s imprisonment, as the sitting magistrate is in a good temper or the reverse. The longer we stop here the more of such scenes shall we see, for with such publicans and sinners Catherine-street abounds. I have known life lost here in these midnight brawls; yet by day it has a dull and decent appearance, and little would the passing stranger guess all its revelations of sorrow and of crime.