on the roof; the foul insects, that wove webs
inside; the gaunt rats, that held unholy
gambols in the kitchen; the weed-grown
courtyard, window-sills, and door-steps; the
damp feculence, dust, dirt, rust, about all or
everything; the one sunbeam, coming through
a grimed window, and illuminating a bloody
hand. There had been a murder done there,
and the house was haunted. I can well
believe it. I, too, saw, once upon a time, a
mansion, where a foul and wicked murder
had been done. I saw labourers searching
the muddy moat for the weapons of the
assassins; I was taken to see the corridor
where the deed had been done; and I
followed the footsteps of the murderer through
mud and slush, snow and straw, from the
mansion to the farm he lived at. I never
read poor Hood's plaintive poem without
thinking that Stanfield Hall—shut up,
untenanted, moat-dried—would be a very
counterpart, now, of the house he shadowed
forth.

Not, however, to forget Houses to Let.
Shall I take the Bachelor's Residence? An
invisible hand points to Highgate—an inward
feeling suggests Mitcham. I go for Cricklewood:
Kilburn is too near, and Edgeware too
far; but Cricklewood holds a juste milieu
between them. I can see the Bachelor's
Residence—a pert, smart, snug, little habitation,
standing alone, mostly; for your bachelor is
incorrigible (steady or fast) with regard to
musical instruments. Your fast Bachelor
will manage the Redowa on the cornet-à-
piston; and your steady one, set "Ah! non
giunge," to hard labour on the flute—but will
practise; and—should their bachelors' quarters
happen to be supported, right and left, by
family residences—the inhabitants of Acacia
Terrace or Plantain Grove are apt to become
remarkably disagreeable in their reclamations
to the bachelor himself. The bachelor is a
bank-clerk, very likely, or a stockbroker, not
over-plethoric just yet with profits; or a
young fellow with a small independence.
He has a front garden and a back garden;
both, ten to one, provided with a trim little
summer-house, where he is very fond of
sitting on fine afternoons with his friends, clad
in bachelor-like deshabille, consuming the
grateful beer of Bass, and gently whiffing the
cutty-pipe of Milo, or the meerschaum. He
has flowers, but has a faint idea that the
tobacco-smoke does not do them any good.
He has a housekeeper—generally middle-aged,
and frequently deaf—many friends, more
pipes, and frequently an anomalous kind of
little vehicle, drawn by an eccentric pony,
and which he calls his "trap." Sunday is his
great day. All his fly-rods, fishing-tackle,
gardening implements, guns, rabbit-hutches,
and pipe-racks, are overhauled on that day;
grave judgments are passed on the dogs and
horses of his friends; and an impervious
cloud of Bird's-eye or Oronooko hangs about
the little summer-houses. But the bachelor
marries; goes a little too fast, perhaps, or
dies (for, alas! even bachelors must die);
and so his Bachelor's Residence is To Let.

The Desirable Residence. I have the secret
of that "House to Let," I will be bound.
A lodging-house! What could there be more
desirable, in the way of a residence, than
that, I should like to know? Twelve-roomed
house, in Manchester Street, Manchester
Square. Blue damask curtains in the first-
floor windows; red ditto in the parlour
windows; a never-disappearing placard, of
Apartments Furnished (for, however full the
lodging-house may be, it always seems to
have a marvellous capacity for holding more);
and area railings, frequently enlivened and
ornamented by the three-quarter portrait of
a pretty servant maid. Whenever you see
the butcher, or the baker, or the grocer's
man, at the door of the Desirable Residence,
you will be sure, if you watch, to see him
produce a red account-book; for people who
keep lodging-houses invariably run bills with
tradesmen, probably to give an air of veracity
and colourable truth to their persevering
assertion, that they have a little bill to pay
to-morrow. If the lady who keeps the
Desirable Residence is married, you will
not be very far out, if you assert that her
husband has something to do with the Docks,
or that he is a barrister's clerk, in good
practice. You can't be wrong, if you set him
down as an indifferently-dressed man, with
an umbrella, who, whenever he speaks to you,
calls you "Sir." If your landlady should
happen to be a widow, take my word for it,
that "she was not always in these circumstances;"
that her late husband's executors
have used her shamefully; and that she has
a pretty daughter or niece.

Unless I am very far out in my theory, the
"Substantial Residence" is a lodging-house too,
and the "Genteel Residence" not very far from
it. Cecil Street, Strand, for the former, and
Camberwell for the latter, would not be very
wide of the mark. Cecil Street is full of
substantial houses, in which lodgers, sometimes
not quite so substantial as the houses,
continually dwell. The prices of provisions
are high in Cecil Street, and the quantity of
nourishment they afford far from considerable.
Penny loaves are twopence each, and you
can't get more than one dinner off a leg of
mutton. The profits arising from the avocations
of the landladies of substantial residences
must be so large, that I wonder that they
ever come to be advertised as "to let" at all.
Perhaps it is that they make their fortunes,
and migrate to the "elegant residence," or the
"distinguished residence."

I wonder whether I am wrong in placing
the locale of these two last species of "Houses
to Let," in Belgravia and Tyburnia? They
may, after all, be wasting their elegance
and their distinction in Golden Square, Ely
Place, or Kennington Oval. Yet I am
always coming across, and reading with great