drink in a crimson velvet temple at his back,
and a waistcoat of tumblers on; boys, dogs,
more soldiers, horse-riders strolling to the
Circus in amazing shirts of private life, and
yellow kid gloves; family groups; pickers-
up of refuse, with baskets at their backs
and hooked rods in their hands to fill them
with; more neat young women, more soldiers.
The gas begins to spring up in the street;
and my brisk waiter lighting our gas,
enshrines me, like an idol, in a sparkling temple.
A. family group come in: father and mother
and little child. Two short-throated old
ladies come in, who will pocket their spare
sugar, and out of whom I foresee that the
establishment will get as little profit as
possible. Workman in his common frock comes
in; orders his small bottle of beer, and lights
his pipe. We are all amused, sitting seeing
the traffic in the street, and the traffic in the
street is in its turn amused by seeing us. It
is surely better for me, and for the family
group, and for the two old ladies, and for
the workman, to have thus much of community
with the city life of all degrees, than to
be getting bilious in hideous black-holes, and
turning cross and suspicious in solitary places!
I may never say a word to any of these
people in my life, nor they to me; but, we are
all interchanging enjoyment frankly and
openly—not fencing ourselves off and boxing
ourselves up. We are forming a habit of
mutual consideration and allowance; and
this institution of the café (for all my
entertainment and pleasure in which, I pay ten-
pence), is a part of the civilised system that
requires the giant to fall into his own place
in a crowd, and will not allow him to take
the dwarf's; and which renders the commonest
person as certain of retaining his or
her commonest seat in any public assembly,
as the marquis is of holding his stall at
the Opera through the evening.

There were many things among the Mooninians
that might be changed for the better,
and there were many things that they might
learn from us. They could teach us, for all
that, how to make and keep a Park—which
we have been accustomed to think ourselves
rather learned in—and how to trim up our
ornamental streets, a dozen times a-day, with
scrubbing-brushes, and sponges, and soap, and
chloride of lime. As to the question of sweetness
within doors, I would rather not have
put my own residence, even under the
perpetual influence of peat charcoal, in competition
with the cheapest model lodging-house
in England. And one strange sight, which I
have contemplated many a time during the
last dozen years, I think is not so well
arranged in the Mooninian capital as in
London, even though our coroners hold their
dread courts at the little public-houses—a
custom which I am of course prepared to hear
is, and which I know beforehand must be, one
of the Bulwarks of the British Constitution.

I am thinking of the Mooninian Morgue
where the bodies of all persons discovered
dead, with no clue to their identity upon
them, are placed, to be seen by all who
chose to go and look at them. All the world
knows this custom, and perhaps all the
world knows that the bodies lie on inclined
planes within a great glass window, as though
Holbein should represent Death, in his grim
Dance, keeping a shop, and displaying his
goods like a Regent Street or Boulevard
linen-draper. But, all the world may not
have had the means of remarking perhaps, as
I by chance have had from time to time,
some of the accidental peculiarities of the
place. The keeper seems to be fond of birds.
In fair weather, there is always a cage
outside his little window, and a something
singing within it as such a something sang,
thousands of ages ago, before ever a man
died on this earth. The spot is sunny in the
forenoon, and, there being a little open space
there, and a market for fruit and vegetables
close at hand, and a way to the Great Cathedral
past the door, is a reasonably good
spot for mountebanks. Accordingly, I have
often found Paillasse there, balancing a knife
or a straw upon his nose, with such intentness
that he has almost backed himself in at
the doorway. The learned owls have elicited
great mirth there, within my hearing, and
once the performing dog who had a wait in
his part, came and peeped in, with a red jacket
on, while I was alone in the contemplation of
five bodies, one with a bullet through the
temple. It happened, on another occasion,
that a handsome youth lay in front in the
centre of the window, and that a press of
people behind me rendered it a difficult and
slow process to get out. As I gave place to
the man at my right shoulder, he slipped into
the position I had occupied, with his attention
so concentrated on the dead figure that he
seemed unaware of the change of place. I
never saw a plainer expression than that
upon his features, or one that struck more
enduringly into my remembrance. He was
an evil-looking fellow of two or three
and twenty, and had his left hand at the
draggled ends of his cravat, which he had
put to his mouth, and his right hand feeling
in his breast. His head was a little on one
side; his eyes were intently fixed upon the
figure. " Now, if I were to give that pretty
young fellow, my rival, a stroke with a
hatchet on the back of the head, or were to
tumble him over into the river by night, he
would look pretty much like that, I am
thinking!" He could not have said it more
plainly;—I have always an idea that he went
away and did it.

It is wonderful to see the people at this
place. Cheery married women, basket in
hand, strolling in, on their way to or from the
buying of the day's dinner; children in arms
with little pointing fingers; young girls;
prowling boys; comrades in working,
soldiering, or what not. Ninety-nine times in a