392 The Golden City. [OCT. 



up stairs in the dark, he, in course of time, succeeded in obtaining a 

 light. In another half-hour, his dinner appeared, consisting of two 

 mutton-chops, embedded in liquiescent grease, which seemed eager to 

 claim kindred with the more perfect character of the tallow of the soli- 

 tary yellow candle. Two enormous potatoes, pleasingly diversified 

 with black spots, and as hard as cannon-balls, completed the course ; 

 and the place of wines, in all their absurd variety, was philosophically 

 supplied by a pint of black liquor, compounded of glue, treacle and 

 wormwood, and denominated porter. 



The second course was brought in with much ceremony by the child 

 before-mentioned, whom, in default of a bell, he was obliged to sum- 

 mon by her name Arrier-Beller. The centre-dish, . side-dishes, and 

 top and bottom dishes were ingeniously contracted into one, bearing a 

 small piece of cheese that a hungry rat would have scorned, beside a 

 lump of butter, to the authorship of which sheep and pigs had a better 

 claim than cows ; and with this the unsophisticated repast concluded. 



All men of business, when left to themselves, fall fast asleep imme- 

 diately after dinner ; and Maurice experienced exhaustion and fatigue 

 enough to induce him to adopt the same course, had his inclinations 

 been his only rule. But it happened that there were lodging over him 

 two little children who screamed incessantly, the one taking turns with 

 the other to sleep ; while, during one half of the day and night, their 

 parents made twice as much noise in attempting to quiet them. Not, 

 indeed, that the infants were always ill or out of temper j but the only 

 method their tender age had of expressing pain or pleasure, was by an 

 exertion of the lungs, which made them black in the face ; and the 

 amusements contrived for them such as rattling the latch of a door, or 

 galloping on a footstool were all of a noisy character. Maurice wished 

 he could explain to them that his head ached, and regretted that 

 the mother, in singing her boy to sleep, thought it necessary, vibrating 

 seconds, to stamp sixty times in a minute on the frail floor ; but he 

 endeavoured to recollect that the path to eminence is generally toilsome, 

 and, as his evils were of his own choosing, pride furnished him with a 

 resolution, which he chose to call patience. 



More than a month passed away in unremitting labour, and Maurice 

 yet saw no prospect of the advancement he anticipated, and had tasted 

 none of the pleasures with which he had always understood London to 

 overflow. His masters were imperious, and reproved him in unmea- 

 sured terms for the mistakes into which he was led by entire ignorance 

 of the system of business ; but the annoyances he experienced from 

 them were infrequent, compared with those he received from his fellow- 

 labourers. In admitting an idea so novel as the possibility of a mere 

 countryman being in any respect superior to denizens of the largest, 

 most smoky, and most conceited capital in the world, he was, as it 

 became him, modest ; and when they ridiculed his dress or his provin- 

 cialisms, he strove to believe their taste excellent, and their language 

 English. 



When Mr. Merivale abolished the vacations of his unfortunate clerks, 

 he deeply regretted that popular opinion compelled him to let them be 

 idle all Sunday ; and had he not, on other grounds, been an infidel, he 

 never could have believed that a deity who knew anything of the world 

 would have been so regardless of the interests of commerce as to make 

 fifty-two days in every year unavailable for the purposes of business. 



