prosperous density, a full-fed material insular world, a world of
hideous florid plate and ponderous order and thin conversation.
There wasn't a word said about Byron, or even about a minor bard
then much in view. Nothing would have induced me to look at
Brooksmith in the course of the repast, and I felt sure that not
even my overturning the wine would have induced him to meet my eye.
We were in intellectual sympathy--we felt, as regards each other, a
degree of social responsibility. In short we had been in Arcadia
together, and we had both come to THIS! No wonder we were ashamed
to be confronted. When he had helped on my overcoat, as I was
going away, we parted, for the first time since the earliest days
of Mansfield Street, in silence. I thought he looked lean and
wasted, and I guessed that his new place wasn't more "human" than
his previous one. There was plenty of beef and beer, but there was
no reciprocity. The question for him to have asked before
accepting the position wouldn't have been "How many footmen are
kept?" but "How much imagination?"

The next time I went to the house--I confess it wasn't very soon--I
encountered his successor, a personage who evidently enjoyed the
good fortune of never having quitted his natural level. Could any
be higher? he seemed to ask--over the heads of three footmen and
even of some visitors. He made me feel as if Brooksmith were dead;
but I didn't dare to inquire--I couldn't have borne his "I haven't
the least idea, sir." I despatched a note to the address that
worthy had given me after Mr. Offord's death, but I received no
answer. Six months later however I was favoured with a visit from
an elderly dreary dingy person who introduced herself to me as Mr.
Brooksmith's aunt and from whom I learned that he was out of place
and out of health and had allowed her to come and say to me that if