to the palace hard by, surrounded by lawns and gardens, pineries,
graperies, aviaries, luxuries of all kinds. This paradise, five miles
from the Standard at Cornhill, was separated from the outer world by a
thick hedge of tall trees, and an ivy-covered porter's-gate, through
which they who travelled to London on the top of the Clapham coach could
only get a glimpse of the bliss within. It was a serious paradise. As you
entered at the gate, gravity fell on you; and decorum wrapped you in a
garment of starch. The butcher-boy who galloped his horse and cart madly
about the adjoining lanes and common, whistled wild melodies (caught up
in abominable playhouse galleries), and joked with a hundred cook-maids,
on passing that lodge fell into an undertaker's pace, and delivered his
joints and sweetbreads silently at the servants' entrance. The rooks in
the elms cawed sermons at morning and evening; the peacocks walked
demurely on the terraces; the guinea-fowls looked more Quaker-like than
those savoury birds usually do. The lodge-keeper was serious, and a clerk
at a neighbouring chapel. The pastors who entered at the gate, and
greeted his comely wife and children, fed the little lambkins with
tracts. The head-gardener was a Scotch Calvinist, after the strictest
order, only occupying himself with the melons and pines provisionally,
and until the end of the world, which event, he could prove by infallible
calculations, was to come off in two or three years at farthest.
Wherefore, he asked, should the butler brew strong ale to be drunken
three years hence; or the housekeeper (a follower of Joanna Southcote)
make provisions of fine linen and lay up stores of jams? On a Sunday
(which good old Saxon word was scarcely known at the Hermitage) the
household marched away in separate couples or groups to at least half a
dozen of religious edifices, each to sit under his or her favourite
minister, the only man who went to church being Thomas Newcome,
accompanied by Tommy his little son, and Sarah his nurse, who was, I
believe, also his aunt, or at least his mother's first cousin. Tommy was