CHAPTER XVII.

MEANWHILE the outer world went on, with its rapidly-succeeding series of trivial circumstances magnified into importance, and mighty events disregarded as of little weight-with its jarring politics and speculative projects-with its loans of many millions, and its petty-larceny prosecutions-with its debts and its duels-its cant and its quackery-its peers making laws for the poor, and its poor threatening to make laws for the peers. Fashion held out her hand to Literature, whose delicate nerves trembled at the violence of the grasp, and Power spread the protection of his branches over Talent, which withered in the ungenial atmosphere of its deadly shade. Covent-garden supplied its green peas at a guinea a pint—and the newspaper writers their lucubrations at a penny a line, Young men lost hundreds without a thought at play-while their careful governors were economizing in the shillings

and pence. Subscribers were viewing plans for the national monument to "the great unknown," and Irish members making appeals to the passions of "the great unwashed." All this, and much more, was going on in London and the world around; and lost in the vortex of gaiety and business, study and dissipation, people had little time or thought to occupy themselves with the microcosm of Lord Clanelly's ménage. It will hereafter remain to be seen whether or no our weeping star, our Pleiad of pity's tale, shone out again joyously in heaven, or whether the rainy night continued still to dim her radiant car in its progress to its home in the west. At present we must do as others do, and dash into the whirlpool of events.

The winter was far advanced: the starving Spitalfields weavers had long since sent round their annual advertisement to the dentists, offering their teeth at a discount, as having no longer any use for them. The Christmas bills had long since awakened many an improvident housekeeper to his periodical consciousness of having a large family, and a small income. It was that time of year, most disagreeable of all in London, when it is sure to rain slightly about three or four times a day, and if you walk out in a gleam of sunshine, you are certain to get the drippings of some spout between your neck and your

neckcloth-when the pavement is so greasy, that attempting to mount Ludgate-hill is a labour emblematic of that of Sysiphus, and each step seems to slide back again as far as it has advanced. It was just such a day as we are describing, late in winter and near the opening of the session and the opera, that our two friends, Lord Arthur Mullingham and George Grainger, were seen about three o'clock in the afternoon emerging from the Travellers', and turning the corner with the intention of perpetrating a lounge in Regent-street before dinner. "What an

ugly object that great monument to the Duke of York presents at the end of so fine a perspective!" remarked Mullingham; "it is as if it were intended as a parody on the pillar in the Place Vendome. Napoleon himself used to say it was but a short step from the sublime to the ridiculous;' and truly I find this erection as absurd as the other in Paris is grand and beautiful.”

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Every body knows Lady Broadwell's joke about its being intended as a husband to the

Thames tunnel," replied Grainger; " but truly I

think if the money, which has been wasted on the one, had been applied to the completion of the other, we should have had a much finer national work to be proud of. Do you remember how all foreigners on the continent used to enquire about

the Tunnel, which really creates a much greater interest abroad, than it does among ourselves?"

"The same mesquin sort of taste," resumed Mullingham, "seems destined to pervade all our public works in London. Where are our parallels to the Bourse of Paris, or to the Madeleine, or to the Arc de l'Etoile-or still more, to the Tuilleries and the Louvre? If we build any thing nationally fine, it is sure to be out of the way, like the new Post-office, or the result of necessity, like the new Houses of Parliament, which are to be built only because the old ones happened to be burnt down."

"The Chamber of Deputies in Paris is certainly an imposing object," replied Grainger; "but one thing, perhaps, to be observed in the effect of buildings, is the fact that the natural white or grey hue of stone or marble has a much better appearance than the dingy, smutty tint, which all public works in London acquire in a short time from the operation of the coal-fires. The beauty of the Grecian temples themselves is perhaps partly to be traced to the colour of their materials: St. Paul's, on the contrary, is like a dirty beauty, and would look a hundred and fifty times better for taking a bath, or if we could set two or three thousand men to work, with buckets of water and scrubbing brushes, to wash its face."

Apropòs to coal-smoke," interrupted Grainger, "let me go into Howell and James's to get a pair of gloves; one pair of Madame Roux's best kid, in Paris, used to last me as long as three pair in London, so great is the effect of this gasy, sooty atmosphere, which the good Londoners breathe almost without being aware of it."

The two friends entered the shop, and, whilst Grainger was fitting his gloves, a cab drove up to the door, and the following conference took place between the gentleman who descended from the vehicle, and the gentleman behind the counter:

you please? any article

"Your pleasure, Sir, if I can serve you with to-day?"

"I want a great many articles, I assure you— you will send them to my lodgings-but I hear you are the most infernal duns in London. Upon my honour and credit I am told so-is it true?"

"No, Sir-I hope not, Sir-I don't think that we have the honour of your name in our book?” (rather interrogatively.)

“ No, upon my honour and credit you never had me down for five shillings; but Lord Peregrine Pomfret, and Sir Temple Crucifix, and Sir Connaught Close, all complain terribly of being badgered by your bills."

"If you are acquainted with all these gentlemen,