that he teaches Syriac, coolly intimates his
desire to be starved to death.

Another turn of the vehicle, and we are in a
leading thoroughfare once more.

How many tradespeople has royalty appointed,
from time to time, and empowered to raise the
national coat-of-arms between their first-floor
windows? And, when raised, do they make
the gooseberries larger, the meat sweeter,
the bread purer? One house of business
that boasts the sign of distinguished patronage
is proud of concealing every sign of its trade. Not
a shred, not a patch, not an atom of anything
shows itself either in the first-floor windows or
any others. There is no name over the doorway
to distinguish the house from a clubhouse,
a public institution, a government office,
a place for weighing money or trying guns, a
Trinity-house (whatever that may be), or even
a family mansion of sober aspect. Looking
more closely at the building, you see the name of
"Benbows" in small letters, and that is all the
vulgar publicity which this distinguished house
requires. It is its pride to be known as
Benbows nothing more. If any dwellers in
England are not acquainted with Benbows, they
argue themselves unknown. I have just heard
that Benbows is an upholsterer. Thank you.

That is a quiet first-floor window, with its
neat, short Venetian blinds (like a window in a
clean Dutch picture), where the bust of Galen
looks down complacently upon a nursemaid
showing, to a sturdy infant, the passing coaches.
Below, there is plenty of brimstone and treacle
to last the child its life, for its father is a
chemist; and, though some people may affect to
call him a poor apothecary (after Shakespeare),
his profits are greater than many surgeons', and
his sitting-rooms have all the prim severity of a
physician's study.

How often have I passed and repassed you,
serenest and stoutest of womankind, to find
you growing more stout and more serene every
time I see you? You have retired from business,
which is very wise; but still you sit over it, which
is wiser still. While the human ants are busy in
your thriving hosier's shop below, while you can
hear the profitable tramp of feet, and even the
chink of money on the counters, you have nothing
to do but to watch the street traffic, and devour the
periodical literature of your country. Of course
you took your late husband's foreman into
partnership, which accounts for the " Co." that is
added to the familiar name, and for the leisure
you are enjoying as the representative of
capital.

Past those dusty ground-glass windows that
hide the stooping law writers; past first-floor
windows full of shirt-collars; past others full of
strange-shaped monsters that are made of india-
rubber, and warranted waterproof; past others
full of gigantic toys that drive young passengers
frantic, and large open-mouthed masks through
which the professional pantomimist must surely
leap, in spite of the whole available body of real
policemen; past the watchmaker's over a pastry-
cook's, where a number of grave-looking men

are looking through the shortest of telescopes,
apparently watching the tart-eaters below; past
what looks like a public picture-gallery, but
which is a fine art sale-room; and past a first-
floor window, standing between two polished
columns of the colour of raspberry jam, high up
above the opposite house-tops.

Down again from this long-legged looking
specimen of the revived Babylonian, or trading
palatial style of architecture, to an accessible
first-floor window of a common barber's shop,
wherein is the living picture of the lathered
lamb awaiting the sacrifice. The operator is
sharpening his razor on a hanging strap that is
near the window, and is telling that old, old
story, of which the weather forms the most
noticeable part.

How often have I seen that young Juliet at
No. 4, and that young Romeo at No. 5, sitting,
back to back, in adjoining houses; each reading
a book, and each unconscious of the other's
presence; both evidently formed for each other,
and yet never destined to come together; each
going down the narrow, separate pathways of
life, that never meet, and yet being only divided
by a two-foot brick wall?

The first-floor windows of my theatre make
me melancholy, because they lie at the back,
and are always filled with wretched fragments
of paper, boards, and scenery, instead of glass.

The first-floor window of my parish church
(the first-floor over the gravestones) never
pleases me on a working-day, because I look
through the dingy glass (we have a horror of
coloured devices at our establishment), and see
a female pew-opener standing in the pulpit,
dusting the featherbed cushions, and a common
charwoman mopping the ten commandments.

The first-floor windows of my workhouse—that
is, the workhouse which I help to support by
paying heavy poor's-rates—always annoy me,
because, at whatever hour of the night or morn-
ing I happen to pass them, they are lighted up
throughout the whole length and breadth of the
building, as if for some great midnight orgie.

IN CHARGE.

SECOND AND LAST FLIGHT.

I HAVE scarcely been more than half an hour
on board the Niger, when my ideas of nautical
life (derived, I am bound to say, from observation
of transpontine dramas, and a diligent perusal of
the works of the late Captain Marryat) receive
a tremendous shock. For I am just beginning
to revel in a new sensation of cleanliness and
the long lost delight of fresh linen, and I have
climbed up on my berth and am looking out
through the round bull's-eye window at the
white-faced houses and snow-covered hills of
Marseilles which are rapidly disappearing, when
a steward, knocking at my door, tells me that
breakfast is served, and that the captain is but
waiting my coming to commence. The captain!
I picture him at once! Five foot four, fifty
years of age, cocked-hat on his head, red face,
black mutton-chop whiskers, hoarse voice,