notion of supreme happiness, made answer that
it was to "zit on a ztile and eat pancake edges!"
There is much wealth of covetous imagination in
eating only the crisp "edges" of the Shrove
Tuesday delicacies and throwing the flabby
centres away. Under the influence of metempsychosis
this Alnaschar in a smock-frock, might
have been a Cleopatra, and quaffed a solution
of pearls in toilet-vinegar.

"I've often wished that I had clear"— any one
can quote the rest: the five hundred pounds a
year, the river at the garden's end, the handsome
accommodation for a friend, the friend himself
and the bottle to give him— the ripe old port
with the green seal, laid down, Consule Manlio,
when Sir Claudius Hunter was Lord Mayor. I
have had many ideals of happiness; have
constructed on cobweb foundations many Spanish
castles with " Here the Lares delight to dwell"
sculptured over the barbicans thereof. To wear
a tail-coat, to see one's name in print, to hear a
famous orator, author, artist speak, to eat an ice
in St. Mark's Place, Venice, to possess a library,
a picture by Ostade, to see Taglioni dance: I,
you, and thousands have longed for these things,
and, being gratified in Time's good time, have
begun straightway to long for something else. I
have a fanciful ambition, now. I should like
exceedingly to have a moderate independence, to
have nothing to do, to be perfectly unknown to the
publishers of books, the printers of newspapers,
and those that carry proof sheets to and fro, and
to live in the PRECINCT.

It is the most retired spot, this Precinct, in
London. More retired than Austin Friars, than
America-square, than Great St. Helen's, than
St. Alban's-place, than Whitehall-yard, than the
Albany, than Eel-Pie Island, than Fig-tree-court,
than Paul's-chain, than Drapers' Hall Gardens,
than Exeter-'change, than the Magazine in Hyde
Park, than Bell-square, Finsbury, or than
Well-walk, Hampstead, on a winter Sunday. It is
completely out of the world, although on the
very skirt and verge and hem of the roaring
world of London. It is at least a century and a
half behind the time, notwithstanding the
modern " improvements " that have encroached on
its antiquity, and the modern trades and
avocations that are carried on within its boundaries.
It has its own laws, its own population, its own
amusements. It might be five thousand miles
away from London. It might be Juan Fernandez,
or Norfolk Island, or Key West, or the
Isola Bella, and it is but five minutes' walk
from Temple-bar, to the east, and eight from
Charing-cross, to the west. And its name is
— the Precinct. Concerning its characteristics
I may be explicit, with regard to its exact
locality I must be cautious. All men are not,
at once, to be made free of the Precinct. It has
its mysteries, its pass-words and its counter-signs.
You would not believe me were I to tell
you that it is a province in the kingdom of
Cockaigne and the realms of Prester John; that
there are giants in the Precinct; that the pigs
run about, their backs embrowned into crackling
knives and forks stuck in them, and crying
" Come, eat us!" and that when the sky falls— a
feat it accomplishes sometimes, tumbling straight
on the heads of the Precinctians— larks,
ready-roasted, are to be had for the picking up. Such
statements you would deride as fabulous; but I
may claim more credence when I whisper that
the Precinct is extra-parochial and is royal
property, that it has its own famous and ancient
little church, that it is bounded on the south by
one of the noblest rivers and certainly the dirtiest
river in the world, and on the north by a mile-long
thoroughfare, once dignified as the site of
the palaces of a Duke of Buckingham, and some
earls of Essex, Durham, Salisbury and Arundel,
to say nothing of the Lords of Burleigh over the
way, or the still existent, lion-capped mansion of
the Percys; once enlivened by the presence of
a maypole and an exchange, once a mere bridle
road from the city of London to the village of
Charing; now one of the chief arteries, most
busy and most thronged, of the teeming city. In
this latitude lies the Precinct, and not one man
in five hundred who jostle along the noisy Strand
ever dreams of its existence.

The Precinct has a history, curious, antique,
and picturesque; but to dwell on its records in
detail would not only weary, but necessitate
the mention of sundry well-known names and
events that would at once entirely lay bare that
which, with all my confidences, I wish to
preserve a semi-secret. It is enough to hint that
a king of France was once entertained, most
hospitably for a prisoner of war, in the Precinct;
that here were an ecclesiastical hospital and an
almshouse for aged men; that here were once
a military prison and a manufactory of alum;
and that here the immediate successors of Caxton
and Wynkyn de Worde set up their printing-presses.
The little old church, much modernised
by the munificence of Georgius Ultimus, King,
Defender of the Faith, but in patches of its
exterior walls a fabric of the densest antiquity, I
will call St. Mary-le-Chou. About fifty yards to
the north-east, a precipitous break-neck staircase
of worn stone, called Cabbage-steps, leads into
the Strand above; for the Precinct is built on
an inclined plane, which renders necessary the
application of the skid to the few wheels that
graze its paving-stones. North-west, the Precinct
is entered by a sly little street, running
swiftly down hill, and which I will name
Green-stuff-street. And if you want to get into the
Precinct any other way you must either tumble into
it from a balloon, or have a swim for it from the
Surrey side.

It has been matter of much cogitation to me
to call to mind in what manner I first became
aware of the Precinct. I had certainly been
broken into the ways of the Strand for years,
and had resided in chambers or lodging-houses
in nearly every street on the south side, from
Northumberland to Norfolk-street, ere I
became acquainted with this royal property. I
used to think the short cut from Scotland-yard
to Hungerford-market quaint and curious. I
used to take much pleasure in that beautiful
water-gate at the end of Buckingham-street (by