institutions civil and religious; he thought there was wisdom in them
if there was wisdom in nothing else; he loved the church and he loved
the steeple, and the parson who did the duty and the parson who did
not do the duty; and he loved the clerk and the sexton and the parish
beadle with his broad gold-laced hat, and cane of striking authority;
and he loved the watchmen and their drowsy drawl of "past umph a'
clock;" he loved the charity schools and admired beyond all the
sculpture of Phidias, or the marble miracles of the Parthenon, the two
full-length statues about three feet each in length and two feet six
inches each in breadth, representing a charity boy and a charity girl,
standing over the door of the parish school; he loved the city
companies, their halls, their balls, though he never danced at them,
their dinners, for he never missed them; and above all other
companies he loved the stationers', and its handsome barge, and
its glorious monopoly of almanacks; he loved the Lord Mayor and the
Mansion-house,--it was not quite so black then, as it is now,--and he
loved the great lumbering state coach and the little gingerbread
sheriffs' coaches, and loved the aldermen, and deputies and
common-councilmen and liverymen. Out of London he knew nothing;--he
believed that the Thames ran into the sea, because he had read at
school, that all rivers run into the sea, but what the sea was he did
not know and did not care; he believed that there were regions beyond
Highgate, and that the earth was habitable farther westward than Hyde
Park corner; but he had never explored those remote districts. What
was Hammersmith to him or he to Hammersmith? He knew of nothing,
thought of nothing, and could conceive of nothing more honourable,
more dignified, or more desirable than a good business properly
attended to. He was proud of the close and personal attention that he
paid to his shop,--somewhat censoriously proud; he might be called a
mercantile prude; or shopkeeping pedant; and when a near neighbour who