the new Embankment, are all so close that they seem part and parcel of
the King's Road. The great Hospital is within five minutes' walk, and
sometimes the honest veterans themselves may be seen wandering in the
road. The air is heavy with associations and memories. You can
actually smell the fragrance of the new-made Chelsea buns, fresh from
the oven, just as you would a hundred years ago. You may sit with
dainty damsels, all hoops and furbelows, eating custards at the
Bun-house; you may wander among the rare plants of the Botanic
Gardens. The old great houses rise, shadowy and magnificent, above the
modern terraces; Don Saltero's Coffee-House yet opens its hospitable
doors; Sir Thomas More meditates again on Cheyne Walk; at dead of
night the ghosts of ancient minuet tunes may be heard from the Rotunda
of Ranelagh Gardens, though the new barracks stand upon its site; and
along the modern streets you may fancy that if you saw the ladies with
their hoop petticoats, and the gentlemen with their wigs and their
three-cornered hats and swords, you would not be in the least
astonished.

Emblem's is one of two or three shops which stand together, but it
differs from its neighbors in many important particulars. For it has
no plate-glass, as the others have; nor does it stand like them with
open doors; nor does it flare away gas at night; nor is it bright with
gilding and fresh paint; nor does it seek to attract notice by posters
and bills. On the contrary, it retains the old, small, and
unpretending panes of glass which it has always had; in the evening it
is dimly lighted, and it closes early; its door is always shut, and
although the name over the shop is dingy, one feels that a coat of
paint, while it would certainly freshen up the place, would take
something from its character. For a second-hand bookseller who
respects himself must present an exterior which has something of faded