lecture to young folks at the British Institution. But when this
diversion was proposed to our young friend Bob, he said,
"Lecture? No, thank you. Not as I knows on," and made sarcastic
signals on his nose. Perhaps he is of Dr Johnson's opinion about
lectures: "Lectures, sir! what man would go to hear that
imperfectly at a lecture, which he can read at leisure in a
book?" I never went, of my own choice, to a lecture; that I can
vow. As for sermons, they are different; I delight in them, and
they cannot, of course, be too long.

Well, we partook of yet other Christmas delights besides
pantomime, pudding, and pie. One glorious, one delightful, one
most unlucky and pleasant day, we drove in a brougham, with a
famous horse, which carried us more quickly and briskly than any
of your vulgar railways, over Battersea Bridge, on which the
horse's hoofs rung as if it had been iron; through suburban
villages, plum-caked with snow; under a leaden sky, in which the
sun hung like a red-hot warming-pan; by pond after pond, where
not only men and boys, but scores after scores of women and
girls, were sliding, and roaring, and clapping their lean old
sides with laughter, as they tumbled down, and their hobnailed
shoes flew up in the air; the air frosty with a lilac haze,
through which villas, and commons, and churches, and plantations
glimmered. We drive up the hill, Bob and I; we make the last
two miles in eleven minutes; we pass that poor, armless man who
sits there in the cold, following you with his eyes. I don't
give anything, and Bob looks disappointed. We are set down
neatly at the gate, and a horse-holder opens the brougham door.
I don't give anything; again disappointment on Bob's part. I
pay a shilling apiece, and we enter into the glorious building,