or other, not at all worldly that we knew of:
and when it was a wonderful accident that
the end of that interesting story in the
Sentimental Journey, commencing with the
windy night, and the notary, and the Pont
Neuf, and the hat blown off, was not to be
found iu our Edition though we looked for
it a thousand times.

We have never grown out of the real
original roaring giants. We have seen
modern giants, for various considerations
ranging from a penny to half-a-crown; but,
they have only had a head a-piece, and have
been merely large men, and not always that.
We have never outgrown the putting to
ourselves of this supposititious case; Whether, if
we, with a large company of brothers and
sisters, had been put in his (by which we
mean, of course, in Jack's) trying situation,
we should have had at once the courage and
the presence of mind to take the golden
crowns (which it seems they always wore as
night-caps) off the heads of the giant's children
as they lay a-bed, and put them on our
family; thus causing our treacherous host to
batter his own offspring, and spare us. We
have never outgrown a want of confidence in
ourselves, in this particular.

There are real people and places that we
have never outgrown, though they
themselves may have passed away long since:
which we always regard with the eye and
mind of childhood. We miss a tea-tray shop,
for many years at the corner of Bedford
Street and King Street, Covent Garden, London,
where there was a tea-tray in the window
representing, with an exquisite Art that we
have not outgrown either, the departure from
home for school, at breakfast time, of two
boys—one boy used to it; the other, not.
There was a charming mother in a bygone
fashion, evidently much affected though
trying to hide it; and a little sister, bearing,
as we remember, a basket of fruit for the
consolation of the unused brother; what
time the used one, receiving advice we opine
from his grandmother, drew on his glove in
a manner we once considered unfeeling, but
which we were afterwards inclined to hope
might be only his brag. There were some
corded boxes, and faithful servants; and there
was a breakfast-table, with accessories (an
urn and plate of toast particularly) our
admiration of which, as perfect illusions, we
never have outgrown and never shall outgrow.

We never have outgrown the whole region
of Covent Garden. We preserve it as a fine,
dissipated, insoluble mystery. We believe
that the gentleman mentioned in Colman's
Broad Grins still lives in King Street. We
have a general idea that the passages at the
Old Hummums lead to groves of gorgeous
bed-rooms, eating out the whole of the adjacent
houses: where Chamberlains who have
never been in bed themselves for fifty years,
show any country gentleman who rings at
the bell, at any hour of the night, to luxurious
repose in palatial apartments fitted up after
the Eastern manner. (We have slept there in
our time, but that makes no difference.) There
is a fine secresy and mystery about the
Piazza;—how you get up to those rooms above
it, and what reckless deeds are done there.
(We know some of those apartments very
well, but that does not signify in the least.)
We have not outgrown the two great
Theatres. Ghosts of great names are always
getting up the most extraordinary pantomimes
in them, with scenery and machinery
on a tremendous scale. We have no doubt
that the critics sit in the pit of both houses,
every night. Even as we write in our
common-place office, we behold from the window,
four young ladies with peculiarly limp
bonnets, and of a yellow or drab style of
beauty, making for the stage-door of the
Lyceum Theatre, in the dirty little fog-choked
street over the way. Grown up wisdom
whispers that these are beautiful fairies by
night, and that they will find Fairy Land
dirty even to their splashed skirts, and rather
cold and dull (notwithstanding its mixed gas
and daylight), this easterly morning. But, we
don't believe it.

There was a poor demented woman who
used to roam about the City, dressed all in
black with cheeks staringly painted, and
thence popularly known as Rouge et Noire;
whom we have never outgrown by the height
of a grain of mustard seed. The story went
that her only brother, a Bank-clerk, was left
for death for forgery; and that she, broken-
hearted creature, lost her wits on the morning
of his execution, and ever afterwards, while
her confused dream of life lasted, flitted thus
among the busy money-changers. A story, alas!
all likely enough; but, likely or unlikely, true
or untrue, never to take other shape in our
mind. Evermore she wanders, as to our
stopped growth, among the crowd, and takes
her daily loaf out of the shop-window of the
same charitable baker, and betweenwhiles
sits in the old Bank office awaiting her
brother. " Is he come yet? " Not yet, poor soul.
"I will go walk for an hour and come back."
It is then she passes our boyish figure in the
street, with that strange air of vanity upon
her, in which the comfortable self-sustainment
of sane vanity (God help us all!) is wanting,
and with her wildly-seeking, never resting,
eyes. So she returns to his old Bank office,
asking " Is he come yet ? " Not yet, poor
soul! So she goes home, leaving word that
indeed she wonders he has been away from
her so long, and that he must come to her
however late at night he may arrive. He
will come to thee, O stricken sister, with
thy best friend—foe to the prosperous and
happy—not to such as thou!

Another very different person who stopped
our growth, we associate with Berners Street,
Oxford Street; whether she was constantly
on parade in that street only, or was ever to