division and subdivision of the body social,
have their several characteristic doors. As
in the curious old toy-clocks made at Nuremburg,
the apostles came out at one door; an
angel at another; the cock that, crowing,
confounded Peter, at another; while Judas
Iscariot had a peculiar low-browed door to
himself, from which he popped when the
hour struck; so now-a-days, in our clock of
life, every grade has its special doors of
ingress and egress. Royalty rattles through
the big door of Buckingham Palace; while
Lieut.-Colonel Phipps modestly slips in by
the side-postern, hard by the guard-house,
and the grooms and scullions, the footmen
and turnspits, the cooks and bottle-washers,
modester still, steal round the corner into
Pimlico, and are admitted by a back door
opposite the Gun tavern. So the Duke of
Mesopotamia's guests to ball or supper are
ushered up the lofty flight of steps, and in at
the great hall-door; while Molly the house-
maid's friend creeps down the area steps, and
taps at the door opposite the coal-cellar. So
the theatre has its doors- box, pit, and
gallery- with one private, sacred portal for
the Queen Bee when she condescends to
patronise the drama; a door leading into a
narrow, inconvenient, little passage generally,
with a flight of stairs seemingly designed for
the express purpose of breaking the neck of
the stage-manager, who walks in crab-like
fashion, before Majesty, backwards, in an
absurd court-suit, and holding two lighted
tapers in battered old stage candlesticks, hot
drops of wax from which fall in a bounteous
shower upon his black silk smalls. Just
contrast this multitude of doors with the
simple arrangements of the Roman amphitheatres.
Apertures there were in plenty to
allow the audience departure, but they were
common to all; and the patrician and his
client, the plebeian and the freedman,
struggled out of the Coliseum by the same
vomitories. There was but one special door
in the whole circus; and that was one
entrance through which was envied by
nobody, for it was of iron, and barred, and on
the inside thereof was a den where the lions
that ate the gladiators lay.

The church has many doors. One for the
worshippers who are lessees of pews, or are
willing to pay one shilling a-head for doctrine;
one leading to the ricketty gallery where the
charity children sit; one which the parson
and clerk more especially affect, for it leads
to the vestry; and one- a dark, dank,
frowning door- in a sort of shed in the
churchyard; this last is the door of which
the sexton has the key- the door of the bare
room with the whitewashed walls, the brick
floor, and the tressels standing in the midst
- the door of the house of death.

Then there is the great door of justice in
the hall where that glorious commodity is so
liberally dispensed to all who seek it; though,
to be sure, the dispensation is not in bright,
sterling, current coin, but is ordinarily given
in kind: horsehair, sheepskin, pounce (some
while called devil's dust) words, stale jokes,
wigs, and lies being (per force) taken in lieu
of cash- as poisonous, sloe-juice port wine
and worthless pictures are from a Jew bill-discounter.
This is the great door that must
never be closed against suitors; and never is
closed- oh, dear no!- any more than the
front door of the mansion inhabited by my
friend Mr. Webspinner the Spider, who
keeps open house continually, and hospitable
creature!- defies malevolence to prove that
he ever closed his door against a fly. Justice
has more doors. There is the private door
leading to the judges' robing-room; the door
for the criminals, and the door for the
magistrate in the police-court. There is the
great spiked door through which the committed
for trial enter into Newgate; and
there is the small, black, iron-gnarled door
above the level of the street the debtors'
door, where the last debt is to be paid, and
whence come in the raw morning the clergy-man
reading of the resurrection and the life,
and after him the pallid man with his arms
tied with ropes, who is to be hanged by the
neck until he be dead. After this, there is
but one more door that will concern him
the door that must concern us all some day
the door covered with cloth, neatly panelled
with tin-tacks or gilt nails, according to our
condition; with an engraved plate, moreover,
bearing our name and age: the door that
opens not with a handle, or closes with a
lock, or has hinges, but is unpretendingly
fastened to its house by screws the door
that has no knocker, for the sleeper behind it
must be wakened with a trumpet, and not a
rat-tat.

Bid me discourse (but you won't, I am
afraid), and I could be eloquent upon the
doors of prisons. How many times have I
stopped in the thronged, muddy Old Bailey
(it is muddy even on the sunniest, dustiest of
August days) and gazed long and wistfully,
albeit the quarter chimes of St. Sepulchre
(they seem to succeed each other more rapidly
than any other chimes) bade me move on, at
the dreadful doors of Newgate. Ugh! the
great door. I remember as a boy wondering
if any famous criminal Turpin, Duval or
Sheppard had ever worn the ponderous
irons suspended in grisly festoons over the
gateway: likewise, if the statues in the
niches flanking it were effigies of men and
women that had been hanged. To this day,
I cannot make up my mind as to whether
those festooned fetters are real or sham
whether they ever encircled human ancles or
not. I am afraid, in any case, that they have
more of reality in them than the famous
highwaymen whom I once supposed them to
have held in durance. The laced coats,
the plumed hats, silver-hilted swords, blood-horses,
under-ground stables, Pollies and
Lucies, titles of captain, and connections