attics,--in which case you can only catch a peep of that leaden canopy
which infatuated Londoners call the sky,--but must be a window
perpendicular, and not half blocked up by the parapets of that fosse
called the gutter; and, lastly, the sight must be so humored that you
cannot catch a glimpse of the pavements: if you once see the world
beneath, the whole charm of that world above is destroyed. Taking it
for granted that you have secured these requisites, open your window,
lean your chin on both hands, the elbows propped commodiously on the
sill, and contemplate the extraordinary scene which spreads before you.
You find it difficult to believe life can be so tranquil on high, while
it is so noisy and turbulent below. What astonishing stillness! Eliot
Warburton (seductive enchanter!) recommends you to sail down the Nile if
you want to lull the vexed spirit. It is easier and cheaper to hire an
attic in Holborn! You don't have the crocodiles, but you have animals
no less hallowed in Egypt,--the cats! And how harmoniously the tranquil
creatures blend with the prospect; how noiselessly they glide along at
the distance, pause, peer about, and disappear! It is only from the
attic that you can appreciate the picturesque which belongs to our
domesticated tiger-kin! The goat should be seen on the Alps, and the
cat on the house-top.

By degrees the curious eye takes the scenery in detail; and first, what
fantastic variety in the heights and shapes of the chimney-pots! Some
all level in a row, uniform and respectable, but quite uninteresting;
others, again, rising out of all proportion, and imperatively tasking
the reason to conjecture why they are so aspiring. Reason answers that
it is but a homely expedient to give freer vent to the smoke; wherewith
Imagination steps in, and represents to you all the fretting and fuming
and worry and care which the owners of that chimney, now the tallest of
all, endured before, by building it higher, they got rid of the vapors.