I like it much; it is replete with humour, fun,
and drollery; it contributes a handsome revenue to the pocket of his
Grace the Duke of Bedford, besides supplying half the town with cabbages
and melons, (the richest Melon on record came from Covent-Garden, and was
graciously presented to our gracious sovereign.)
The south side appears to be devoted to potatoes, a useful esculent, and
of greater use to the poor than all the melons in christendom. Here
kidneys and champions are to be seen from Scotland, York, and Kent; and
here have I observed the haggard forms of withered women
"In rags and tatters, friendless and forlorn,"
creeping from shop to shop, bargaining for "a good pen'orth of the best
boilers;" and here have I often watched the sturdy Irishman walking with
a regular connoisseur's eye, peeping out _above_ a short pipe, and
_below_ a narrow-brimmed hat,--a perfect, keen, twinkling, connoisseur's
eye, critically examining every basket for the best lot of his _own
peculiar_.
Now let us take a retrospective view of this our noble theme, and our
interest will be the more strengthened thereon. All the world knows that
a convent stood in this neighbourhood, and the present market was the
garden, _unde_ Convent Garden; would that all etymologists were as
distinct. Of course the monastic institution was abolished in the time of
Henry VIII., when he plundered convents and monasteries with as much
_gusto_ as boys abolish wasps-nests. After this it was given to Edmund
Seymour, Duke of Somerset, brother-in-law to Henry VIII.
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