In those small hours when there was no
movement in the streets, it afforded matter for
reflection to take Newgate in the way, and,
touching its rough stone, to think of the
prisoners in their sleep, and then to glance in
at the lodge over the spiked wicket and see the
fire and light of the watching turnkeys, on the
white wall. Not an inappropriate time either to
linger by that wicked little Debtor's Door—shutting
tighter than any other door one ever saw
—which has been Death's Door to so many. In
the days of the uttering of forged one-pound notes
by people tempted up from the country, how
many hundreds of wretched creatures of both
sexes—many quite innocent—swung out of a
pitiless and inconsistent world, with the tower
of yonder Christian church of Saint Sepulchre
monstrously before their eyes! Is there any
haunting of the Bank Parlour by the remorseful
souls of old directors, in the nights of these
later days, I wonder, or is it as quiet as this
degenerate Aceldama of an Old Bailey?

To walk on to the Bank, lamenting the good
old times and bemoaning the present evil
period, would be an easy next step, so I would
take it, and would make my houseless circuit of
the Bank, and give a thought to the treasure
within; likewise to the guard of soldiers passing
the night there, and nodding over the fire.
Next, I went to Billingsgate, in some hope
of market-people, but, it proving as yet too
early, crossed London-bridge and got down by
the water-side on the Surrey shore among the
buildings of the great brewery. There was plenty
going on at the brewery; and the reek, and the
smell of grains, and the rattling of the plump
dray horses at their mangers, were capital
company. Quite refreshed by having mingled with
this good society, I made a new start with a
new heart, setting the old King's Bench prison
before me for my next object, and resolving,
when I should come to the wall, to think of
poor Horace Kinch, and the Dry Rot in men.

A very curious disease the Dry Rot in men,
and difficult to detect the beginning of. It had
carried Horace Kinch inside the wall of the
old King's Bench prison, and it had carried him
out with his feet foremost. He was a likely
man to look at, in the prime of life, well to do,
as clever as he needed to be, and popular among
many friends. He was suitably married, and
had healthy and pretty children. But, like
some fair-looking houses or fair-looking ships,
he took the Dry Rot. The first strong external
revelation of the Dry Rot in men, is a tendency
to lurk and lounge; to be at street-corners without
intelligible reason; to be going anywhere
when met; to be about many places rather than
at any; to do nothing tangible, but to have an
intention of performing a variety of intangible
duties to-morrow or the day after. When this
manifestation of the disease is observed, the
observer will usually connect it with a vague
impression once formed or received, that the
patient was living a little too hard. He will
scarcely have had leisure to turn it over in his
mind and form the terrible suspicion "Dry
Rot," when he will notice a change for the
worse in the patient's appearance: a certain
slovenliness and deterioration, which is not
poverty, nor dirt, nor intoxication, nor ill-health,
but simply Dry Rot. To this, succeeds a smell
as of strong waters, in the morning; to that, a
looseness respecting money; to that, a stronger
smell as of strong waters, at all times; to that,
a looseness respecting everything; to that, a
trembling of the limbs, somnolency, misery, and
crumbling to pieces. As it is in wood, so it is
in men. Dry Rot advances at a compound
usury quite incalculable. A plank is found
infected with it, and the whole structure is
devoted. Thus it had been with the unhappy
Horace Kinch, lately buried by a small subscription.
Those who knew him had not nigh done
saying, " So well off, so comfortably established,
with such hope before him—and yet, it is feared,
with a slight touch of Dry Rot!" when lo! the
man was all Dry Rot and dust.

From the dead wall associated on those houseless
nights with this too common story, I chose
next to wander by Bethlehem Hospital; partly
because it lay on my road round to Westminster;
partly, because I had a night-fancy in my
head which could be best pursued within sight
of its walls and dome. And the fancy was this:
Are not the sane and the insane equal at night
as the sane lie a dreaming? Are not all of us
outside this hospital, who dream, more or less in
the condition of those inside it, every night of our
lives? Are we not nightly persuaded, as they
daily are, that we associate preposterously with
kings and queens, emperors and empresses, and
notabilities of all sorts? Do we not nightly
jumble events  and personages and times and
places, as these do daily? Are we not sometimes
troubled by our own sleeping inconsistencies,
and do we not vexedly try to account
for them or excuse them, just as these do
sometimes in respect of their waking
delusions? Said an afflicted man to me, when I
was last in a hospital like this, " Sir, I can
frequently fly." I was half ashamed to reflect
that so could I—by night. Said a woman to me
on the same occasion, " Queen Victoria frequently
comes to dine with me, and her Majesty
and I dine off peaches and maccaroni in our
night-gowns, and his Royal Highness the Prince
Consort does us the honour to make a third on
horseback in a Field-Marshal's uniform." Could
I refrain from reddening with consciousness
when I remembered the amazing royal parties I
myself had given (at night), the unaccountable
viands I had put on table, and my extraordinary
manner of conducting myself on those
distinguished occasions?  I wonder that the great
master who knew everything, when he called
Sleep the death of each day's life, did not call
Dreams the insanity of each day's sanity.

By this time I had left the Hospital behind
me, and was again setting towards the river;
and in a short breathing space I was on
Westminster-bridge, regaling my houseless eyes with
the external walls of the British Parliament—
the perfection of a stupendous institution, I