the cellars. If he took a dead wall in his walk, it would be alive
with reproaches. If he sought refuge in an omnibus, the panels
thereof would become Belshazzar's palace to him. If he took boat,
in a wild endeavour to escape, he would see the fatal words lurking
under the arches of the bridges over the Thames. If he walked the
streets with downcast eyes, he would recoil from the very stones of
the pavement, made eloquent by lamp-black lithograph. If he drove
or rode, his way would be blocked up by enormous vans, each
proclaiming the same words over and over again from its whole
extent of surface. Until, having gradually grown thinner and
paler, and having at last totally rejected food, he would miserably
perish, and I should be revenged. This conclusion I should, no
doubt, celebrate by laughing a hoarse laugh in three syllables, and
folding my arms tight upon my chest agreeably to most of the
examples of glutted animosity that I have had an opportunity of
observing in connexion with the Drama - which, by-the-by, as
involving a good deal of noise, appears to me to be occasionally
confounded with the Drummer.

The foregoing reflections presented themselves to my mind, the
other day, as I contemplated (being newly come to London from the
East Riding of Yorkshire, on a house-hunting expedition for next
May), an old warehouse which rotting paste and rotting paper had
brought down to the condition of an old cheese. It would have been
impossible to say, on the most conscientious survey, how much of
its front was brick and mortar, and how much decaying and decayed
plaster. It was so thickly encrusted with fragments of bills, that
no ship's keel after a long voyage could be half so foul. All
traces of the broken windows were billed out, the doors were billed
across, the water-spout was billed over. The building was shored