Shifts For A Living In Europe

In a late number of Chambcrs' Journul h an article entilled "Life in the Sewers of London" - those immense subterrnnean currents in the construction of which a sunkert capital of a million and a half or two millions sterling is invested - remarks that under ground as they are, theyform the dark walk of wretched man and women, who, witli torch in hand, to preserve them from the attacksof numerous and ferocious rats, wade, somctimes almost up to the middle, through the strearn of foul water, in search of stray articlos that may have been thrown down the sinks of houses or dropped through the loop-holes in the street. They will at times travel two or three miles in this way - by the light of their torches, aided occasionally by a gleam of sunshinc from the grating by the way side - far under the busy thoroughfaresof Cornhill,Cheapside, the Strand and üolborn, very seldom able to walk upright in the confined and dangerous vault, and often obüged to crawl on all fours like the rats which are their grcatest enemies. The anieles they mostly find are pot?. toes and turnips, or bones washod down the sinks by carcless scullery maids; pence ahdhalf-pehcë and silver coins; occasionally a silver spoonur lom, uie loss 01 wnicii ma y nave causod considerable distress and ill-will in some house above; and not unfrequently more valuable articles, which thieves, for fear of detection, have tlirown down when they havg been hard pressed by the officers of justice. It mig.ht be tho't that a life amid the vilest filth, and amid so much danger and unpleasantnessof every kind, would allure but few; but the hope of the great prizes sometimes discovered in this miserable way, deprives it of its terrors, and all the principal sewers that branch into the Thames have their regular frequenters.