were also at this time given to your Eye-witness
by his two entertainers; he remembers the fact
that they were communicated, that they were
interesting, that they were invaluable— but they
are obliterated. The number partially remains,
but whether they are millions or thousands is
the circumstance which is obliterated. The
miasma of the East Vault is a terrible and
dangerous thing, let the reader beware of it. It
is pregnant with vertigo, confusion, blankness,
and— in short with obliteration.

The obliterated creature found himself turning
up again in the spice department, among
bales of cinnamon, and arsenals of nutmegs.
The reader will not expect anything on such
a subject as spice. What does he care for
spice? Your Eye-witness might enlighten him
with a great deal of information upon this matter,
but to what purpose? There was indeed an
anecdote related in connexion with certain
bales of cinnamon which were packed in some
peculiar manner which your E.-W. does not
remember, and which were so packed for some
particular purpose which has escaped him and
with a view to re-exportation to some part of
the globe the name of which he is unable to
recal. Your servant merely recollects that it
was a very amusing story, and that it was told
him by an elderly gentleman named Brackenbury
or Watts, it is immaterial which but it
was one of the two. He recollects all this, but
owing to the effects of the atmosphere in the
East Vault he remembers nothing more.

And what right has the world to expect more?
Are we, the slaves of the Lamp, to be always
working and never enjoying ourselves? Are
we, I say— I mean the Eye-witness says, for am
I not writing in the third person, and I wish I
wasn't— are we to be for ever slaving and
toiling? . . .

Have not all our great men been at times
ready to relax over their wine? was not Sherrydan
fond of a glass? and because thou art
virtuous, are there to be no more cakes and
ale? . . .

And if your Eye-witness chooses for once in a
way . . . it's a poor heart that never rejoices—
and what's that? The printer's boy in the
passage, is it? Well give him that then and tell
him, tell them tell them to mind how they
print it and to be partic . . . careful what
they are about and to abstain from fermented
liquors . . . and in short there's an end of it—
and it's time to go to bed.

Such is the first report sent in by our
Eyewitness. We print it without comment, feeling
that the severest censure upon the report
as it ought not to be, is furnished by the report
as it ought to be, which we here subjoin.

Ever ready to take a hint, your servant acted
on a hint from a friend, and appointed a day for
the purpose of repairing to the London Docks,
and started for the City on a vinous mission, and
with a vague idea pervading his system that he
was going to do something remotely connected
in some mysterious manner with the Budget and
the Treaty of Commerce. Your Eye-witness
began by exploring the private cellarage of Messrs.
Beeswing and Crust, the gentlemen by favour of
whom his tasting order was provided. To one
unaccustomed to such matters, the underground
resources possessed by this firm, on their own
premises, were sufficiently surprising, and your
servant found himself so much interested in the
remains of an old convent wall belonging once
to the church hard by, and also possibly in a
very curious sherry to which his attention was
especially solicited, that he experienced a
considerable difficulty in persuading himself to leave
this pleasant retreat when the moment came for
proceeding to the docks. The convent wall just
spoken of, now forms an integral portion of
Messrs. Beeswing's wine-cellar, and, used as a
prop or lean-to for pipes of tawny port to lean
their drowsy heads against, is a very remarkable
and interesting relic.

Before him who enters the London Docks with
credentials from the firm of Beeswing and Crust,
the doors of the great vaults fly open, and the
servants of the Dock Company do obeisance.
To him the gates of the great cellars are thrown
wide, and as, when he has descended the requisite
number of steps, these gates close behind
him again, he feels that a Silenus-like smile is
creeping over his countenance, and that his good
principles are suddenly being shaken to their
very centre. It is an atmosphere of conviviality.
The huge professional wine-glasses, solid in the
stem, vast in the bowl, but slightly contracted at
the mouth, as if to keep in the liquor which
unsteady hands might otherwise spill; the smell
of acres of sawdust well saturated with wine
itself; the aspect of the vault, with its vistas of
casks extending in the darkness further than the
eye can reach, and its festoons of fungoid
cobweb hanging from the roof like a soft and
comfortable form of stalactite; the very attendant
arming himself briskly with a gimlet and adze,
a bundle of spigots, and a bunch of wine-glasses,
held downward like a peal of bells; the long
flat stick, with the tin oil-lamp at the end of it,
which is handed to you, and which itself has
a convivial and unprincipled look, the tin of
which it is made being full of bulges like a hat
which has been in a row; all these things
seem in so many words to say, "You are
come down here to be jolly, you have shut
out the world, my boy, and all your cares
along with it, and though these last are
extremely affable and will kick their heels
outside as long as you like to keep them, rather
than not be there to greet you at your exit,
you may yet give them the slip now for an
hour or two, and have a frisk for once in spite of
them."

As you advance and plunge deeper into the
bowels of the earth, you are struck witli what
at this time of year you were not at all prepared
for— the warmth. Shivering in the north wind
outside, which crept in under his great-coat
and nestled among his ribs, your Eye-witness
had anticipated with shudders a chill reception