pain, had been removed--destroyed, and not a brick remained which I could
call a friend, or offer one warm tear, in testimony of old acquaintance.
A noble street, a line of palaces--merchants' palaces--had taken to
itself the room of twenty narrow ways, that, in the good old times, had
met and crossed in close, but questionable, friendship. Bright stone,
that in the sunlight shone brighter than itself, flanked every broad and
stately avenue, denoting wealth and high commercial dignity. Every
venerable association was swept away, and nothing remained of the
long-cherished and always unsightly picture, but the faint shadow in my
own brain--growing fainter now with every moment, and which the
unexpected scene and new excitement were not slow to obliterate
altogether. I breathed more freely as I went my way, and reached my
agent's house at length, lighter of heart than I had been for hours
before. Mr Treherne was a man of business, and a prosperous one too, or
surely he had no right to place before the dozen corpulent gentlemen whom
I met on my arrival--a dinner, towards which the viscera of princes might
have turned without ruffling a fold of their intestinal dignity. I
partook of the feast--that is to say, I sat at the groaning table, and,
like a cautious and dyspeptic man, I eat roast beef--_toujours_ roast
beef, and nothing else--appeased my thirst with grateful claret, and
retired at last to wholesome sleep and quiet dreams. Not so the corpulent
guests. It may be to my dyspeptic habit, which enables me to be virtuous
at a trifling cost, and to nothing loftier, that I am bound to attribute
the feeling with which I invariably sit down to feasting; be this the
fact or not, I confess that a sense of shame, uneasiness, and dislike,
renders an affair of this kind to me the most irksome and unpleasant of
enjoyments. The eagerness of appetite that one can fairly see in the
watery and sensual eyes of men to whom _eating_ has become the aim and
joy of their existence--the absorption of every faculty in the gluttonous
pursuit--the animal indulgence and delight--these are sickening; then the