delineation of Hamlet. A few doors beyond is
the cheerful Naseby Arms. Look down its
yard! What a vista of buff-coated farmers,
clotted with scarlet-coated huntsmen; of
hacks, thorough-breds, and sibilating ostlers!
What ringing of bells as you look in at the
door; what hams, turkeys, and pheasants,
suspended in the passage; what cherry-
ribboned chambermaids tripping down the stairs!
I grieve to pass by the gay toy-shop, but having
spent my money, I had better pass and
not look, than look and not enter. I shall
turn down a narrow street by that gloomy
corner-shop, above which the name Nettleship,
and the titles of the goods which he
vends, are scarcely legible for age. That is
the shop of our head grocer and wine
merchant.  No muscatels, currants, or drums of
figs tempt you in his windows. A solitary
cone of sugar in blue paper or the figure of
a mandarin peers over his wire blinds. Yet
there alone can you obtain from dark hollows
under counters, or from lamp-lit vaults, your
cayenne, conserves of quince, preserved
ginger, Midland Hunt sauce, travelled madeira,
and tawny port. White in the High Street,
Tibbetts in the Market-place, and other novi
homines, may resort to placards and display,
but Nettleship knows better what becomes
his dignity and that of Pollux Lane. For in
that lane dwell the vicar, the banker, the
principal attorney, the head surgeon, and,
above all, Mrs. Colonel Massingham, whom
the Talbots from the Grange used regularly
to visit, and at whose door Lady Naseby's
carriage has been known to stand thrice in
a twelvemonth. And in Pollux Lane—I hope
I write it with humble thankfulness rather
than with elation—was situated our house.

We liked it all the better for that prosaic
outside which it wore as a mask to its
romance. On one side of the hall you entered
a large oak-panelled room, with a high
carved mantel-piece, and an ample hearth—
the spot on which young Captain Farr, mad
with jealous rage, fell slain by his own hand,
at the feet of Alice Joddrell, a coquette who
rejoiced in powder and patches. Her father,
Sir Richard Joddrell, Knight, was mayor of
Winborough in Queen Anne's time. Often
at twilight, in that panelled room, have I
fancied shapes issuing from the distant
corner, and flitting over the faint gold bar
which the oil lamp in the street cast upon the
shadowed floor, until Miss Joddreli's pliant
form seemed again to fill the arm-chair—her
careless head averted from the tall dark
figure that bowed moodily over the mantel-
piece. On the other side of the hall ran one
of the quaintest and snuggest of rooms—my
father's library. To leave the panelled room
with its dying embers on a winter's night,
and then to enter the warm, bright little
library, was very much like closing a volume
of Mrs. Radcliffe and taking up Charles
Lamb.

There was just space in this room for our
family circle and a privileged friend,
generally Roxby the artist. His enthusiastic
temperament, his sparkling but restless eye,
and his fixed belief that some great potentate
or peer would one day discover and proclaim
his genius, made him quite a figure of
romance in an every-day group. We were
all to have whatever our hearts could wish
for when Roxby became acknowledged as a
heroic painter—a personage whose influence
he considered fully equal to that of a prime
minister or a commander-in-chief. Our drawing-
room was up-stairs to the rear of the
house. It commanded the garden with its
pleasant grass-plot and sun-dial, its curving
paths, well-arranged flower-beds, and a
secluded arcade of limes which belted the
grounds and conducted by a flight of steps
to a somewhat narrow terrace upon the
river.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

THE river was, in my juvenile days, the scene
of a celebrated contest between our port and
that of H—— with which we had communication
by steam. As this contest not only
showed the public spirit of our town, but
exerted in its results an important influence
on our private fortunes, I will relate it in
detail.

A couple of steamers, established by our
chief capitalists, had plied for years between
the two ports. The British Empire and the
Albion were not, I confess, of those colossal
dimensions which their names suggested. The
Ant, the Bee, and other members of the penny
fleet on the Thames were Leviathans
compared with our packets. The latter, however,
sufficed for the thirty or forty passengers who
were accustomed to use them. Both vessels
as they approached the sea—the Albion in
particular—went through a series of gambols
scarcely consistent with their nominal supremacy
over that element, and not absolutely
conducive to the comfort of the travellers. No
one, however, thought of upbraiding the
steam-boats with these results. They were
held to be inevitable, to have their source in
the fixed economy of things, and to form, in
fact, the only conditions upon which the voyage
to H——- ever was or ever could be possible.
Judge then of the wonder and indignation
which filled our town when certain speculators
at H——- resolved to start rival packets
between the two ports.

As we returned no member to parliament,
and lacked therefore the natural vent for our
antagonism, you may suppose that we did not
lose the opportunity which now offered for
developing that marked principle in human
nature. Our vicar—who risked his neck
twice a week with the hounds—launched a
memorable philippic from the pulpit against
the gamblers in human life who undertook
the passage to H——- at the rate of eight
miles an hour. The new company was every-
where denounced for its avarice and impiety,