the Paddington end. It was small, but so
was the rent, sixty pounds a year, and it was
quite large enough for my wife, and me and our
one servant. It had a little garden in front,
between it and the road, with a straight line of
flagstones loading direct from the gate to the
door-steps, and bits of flower-beds (in which
nothing ever grew) intersected by little gravel
paths about a foot wide. This garden was a
source of great delight to my humorous friends.
One of them could be seen carefully putting
one foot before the other, in order that he
might not step off the path, and, after wandering
in and out between the little beds, would
feign excessive fatigue on his arrival at the
house, declaring he had been "lost in the
shrubbery; "another would suggest that we
should have a guide on the spot to show visitors
the nearest way; while a third hoped we intended
giving some out-door fêtes in the summer,
assuring us that the "band of the Life Guards
would look splendid on that," pointing to a bit
of turf about the size of a pocket-handkerchief.
When the street door was opened wide back, it
entirely absorbed the hall, and we could not get
out of the dining-room door; but then we could,
of course, always pass out through the "study,"
a little room like a cistern, which just held my
desk and one chair.

There was a very small yard at the back,
giving on to a set of stables which had their
real entrance in the mews; but we were
compelled to cover all our back windows with
putty imitative of ground glass, on which we
stuck cut-out paper designs of birds and flowers,
as these looked directly on the rooms over the
stables, inhabited by the coachman and his
family; and the sight of a stalwart man at the
opposite window, shaving himself in very dingy
shirt-sleeves within a few feet of your nose, was
not considered genteel by The Family. We were
rather stivy in the up-stairs rooms, owing to low
ceilings, and a diffidence we felt as to opening
the windows, for the New Road is a dusty
thoroughfare, and the immediate vicinity of a
cab-stand, though handy on some occasions, lets
one into rather a larger knowledge of the stock
of expletives with which the English language
abounds, than is good for refined ears. But when
we knew that the coachman was out, we used
to open the back windows and grow very
enthusiastic over "the fresh air from Hampstead
and Highgate," which, nevertheless, always
seemed to me to have a somewhat stabley twang.
One great point with The Family was that there
were no shops near us: that being an acme of
vulgarity which, it appears, no well-regulated
mind can put up with; to be sure, the row
immediately opposite to us was bounded by a
chemist's, but then, you know, a chemist can
scarcely be called a tradesman—at least The
Family thought so—and his coloured bottles
were rather a relief to the eye than otherwise,
giving one, at night, a strange idea of being at
sea in view of land. On the door next to
the chemist's, stood, when we first took
possession of our house in Bass's-buildings, a
brass plate with "Middlemiss, Portrait Artist,"
on it, and by its side a little case containing
miniatures of the officer, the student in cap and
gown, and the divine in white bands, with the
top of the wooden pulpit growing out from
under his arms, which are common to such
professors. It was a thoroughly harmless little
art-studio, and apparently did very little business,
no one ever being seen to enter its portal.
But after a twelvemonth Mr. Middlemiss
died, and we heard through the electric chain
of our common butcher, that his son, a
youth of great spirit, was about to carry on
the business. The butcher was right. The new
proprietor was a youth of great spirit, no half
measures with him; he certainly did not fear his
fate too much, nor were his deserts small
(though in his lamented father's time his dinners
were said to have been restricted), for he set
his fate upon one touch—of paint—to win or
lose it all. He coloured the entire house a
bright vermilion, on which, from attic to base-
ment, the following sentences were displayed in
deep black letters. "The Shop for Portraits!
Stop, Examine, and Judge for Yourselves! 'Sit,
Cousin Percy, sit, good Cousin Hotspur'—
Shakespeare! Photography Defied! Your Likeness
in Oils in Ten Minutes! 'The Counterfeit
Presentment'—Shakespeare. Charge low,
Portraits lasting! Art, not Mechanical Labour!"
Kit-cat portraits of celebrated characters copied
from photographs leered out of every window,
while the drawing-room balcony was given up
to Lord John Russell waving a parchment
truncheon, and Mr. Sturgeon, the popular
preacher, squinting at his upheld forefinger.
The Family were out of town when this horrible
work was undertaken: when they returned, they
declared with one voice that we could live in
Bass's-buildings no longer, and must move at
once.

I was not sorry, though I liked the little
house well enough, but we had been confined
there, in more senses than one, and wanted
more room for our family, now increased by a
baby and a nurse. The nurse was a low-spirited
young person afflicted with what she called "the
creeps," under the influence of which she used
to rock to and fro, and moan dismally and slap
the baby on the back; and it was thought that
change of scene might do her good. I was
glad, too, for another reason. I had recently
obtained occasional employment on a daily
journal, which detained me until late at night
at the newspaper office, and I had frequently to
attend night consultations at the chambers of
leading barristers, to whom I was to act as
junior. Bass's-buildings were a horrible distance
from the newspaper office and the chambers;
and walking home at night had several times
knocked me up. So my wife submitted to The
Family, a proposition that I must remove to
some more convenient position; and The Family,
after a struggle (based, I am inclined to think,
on the reflection that lunch at my expense would
not be so practicable), consented.

The neighbourhood of Russell-square was that