drank many's the pint of beer with me in his
young days:

"There is but litel Latin in my mawe,"

said he, quoting from Chaw-somebody,—and
so says honest Ben. Well, sir, as we were
coming to the Cottages, I saw a number of
people going up and down stairs in them, for
His Royal Highness (or His R. H.'s architect)
has turned the stairs out of window, you
must know, and yet they're not turned out
of house. When I saw that, I could almost
have made a riddle if any one had been nigh
to put it into words for me. Well, there
were a number of people going up and down
stairs, and there was a great crowd in the road;
and right on the other side there was the
thing called the Crystal Palace, which is very
much frequented, owing to the disgusting
manner in which it's talked about by every
man's newspaper. I scorn newspapers. Is it
or is it not true that the editor of a great
sporting paper printed his determination to
leave off counting knocks, and pay no more
attention to the ring, because he couldn't
send reporters to be blackguarded? If any
editor said so, he wants his nose punched; the
newspapers are all behind the age, and the
whole age is behind ME. As for "Household
Words," it's ignorantly conducted by a fellow
whom I've challenged in his own pages, and
who hasn't the pluck to fight me. I despise
the press. Now, when I saw the people
going up and down stairs outside the houses
and yet inside,—for the stairs, you must know,
are outside the walls, and yet under the roof,
in a recess or bay;—when I saw how numerous
the people were, and how popular the Cottages
appeared to be, I turned to Moll; says I, my
Tartar, I've an allegory in my head. You've
a bull-head, says she, but it won't hold an
allegory. Moll, says I, you mean a crocodile;
I mean an allegory of the Nile. Says she, that
is a crocodile. Says I, it isn't. It is this;—
When the Nile overflows, the trees that grow
nearest the river's edge get the most water.
So they thrive enormously. But, when the
flood goes down, they die off at the roots,
because they have been over-pampered, so that
they can't live upon short commons; while
trees farther off that have been dosed more
moderately, are the better for it. Behold,
Molly, the crystal surface of a Nile, the
inundation of the people coming from it
spreads over this block of Cottages. It's
very fine, my Tartar, very fine to-day—but
wait a bit. Yes, Molly says, it's very fine,
indeed, Ben: but we 'd best go in at once; I
shouldn't wonder if it turned to rain this
evening.

So in we went. There was a policeman
behind a palisade, which was a bitter mockery
of the poor fellow, who must stand all day
long behind the railing, as if he was going
down into the area, and have never an area
to go to all the while. I thought the poor
chap was a modern Tantalus, and knew what
sort of region I was getting into as I passed
him, showing my ticket, with my collar up,
and my Tartar's basket under her shawl.
So we went in, under the recess, and
turned to a door at the foot of the stairs,
which led into one of the four family
mansions. That door was locked; so I turned
sharp round on Tantalus. Move on, says
he; the four sets of rooms are all precisely
on the same plan. What, says I, all
exhibited with the doors locked, for to be peeped
at through a keyhole? But I saw the door
was open opposite, so we went in. First
we squeezed among some old gents in a
little lobby four or five feet square, into a
room that is the model living-room, a little
bit larger than fourteen feet by ten. There
were a lot of people in it, and a table, and a
few chairs of stained deal, and a dresser under
the window; that is, a dresser by day, and
folds up over the window as a shutter at
night; so that it's indifferent whether you
say that a model cottager is forced to make
pies on the window shutter, or to barricade
his window with a dresser—both statements
are true, more's the pity. Pretty
architecture, stairs and all considered. On the
dresser now there are clay pies laid out, in
the shape of hollow bricks, and we are told
that these cottages are altogether built of
such bricks, in which the more there is of the
hollow, and the less there is of the brick, the
better the speculation answers. What I say
is, that's your model philanthropy; the more
a man has in him of hollowness, and the less
he has of the brick, the better speculation he
will make of it. One side of these bricks is
glazed and coloured, or painted to pattern,
like the surface of a wash-hand basin—of such
glazed bricks the walls in this model living-
room are built; the floor is lava, or cement;
the ceiling cemented, slightly arched, with
two or three slender iron beams running
across; for in these cottages there is no wood
used, nor anything combustible, except in
doors, shelves, furniture, and such like.
There's some kind of model grate, of course,
and a slate mantel-piece, and simple
cornicing of glazed brick, and a rod for picture-
hanging over the mantel-pieces, and a
cupboard, and a run of shelf, considerably above
the reach of children; model children not
being exempt from a propensity to taste the
"rat poison," or break the mugs. There are
ventilators and so on, of course; that's an old
trick. All wood-work is of stained deal,
which I don't mind saying I prefer to paint
myself; it looks well, and wears well, for
there's nothing to peel off; I 'd introduce it
in my own properties, but all my cottages
are old, and all the wood-work in them has
been pretty considerably stained these fifty
years past; so I've nothing more to do. If
Prince Albert were a practical man, he would
know well enough that when a landlord finds
the wood, the tenant does not lose much time
in staining it.