Lights and Shadows of London Life. 263 



appeared to court his ruin. Perhaps it was the most hopeless feature 

 in the case. 



Pursuing- a career of tranquil industry and peaceful privacy, what 

 had become of the thoughtless reveller of former years? Had his 

 very nature changed had his system been physically revolutionized 

 had the fire consumed itself, or did it but smoulder to burn yet the 

 more fiercely for its suppression? Is there indeed such a thing 1 as 

 chance'? or is the horoscope of all defined from the beginning? 



The year drew towards its close, and brought with its approaching 

 conclusion the season of kindly offices and social festivity. The 

 cottage of which thus he had become the chance occupant was an 

 abode of no pretension ; yet as time made him more familiar with its 

 arrangements, he could perceive an evident disparity between the 

 house itself and the character of its domestic equipage. There was 

 an air of elegance and costliness that pervaded all the social economy 

 quite opposed to the homely appearance of the humble tenement. 

 With its inhabitants he had held no intercourse, scarcely indeed had 

 he seen any of them. His apartments were taken for him by the 

 people of the hotel where he had put up on his arrival ; they were 

 in conformity with the description he had given of the residence he 

 required one of entire privacy ; and for the rest, the pecuniary part 

 of it, was transacted through his servant. Still there seemed to be 

 an eye that watched over his comforts, a hand that supplied his wants 

 ere they were expressed, and a taste that regulated and adorned his 

 lowly home, not found by those who are destined to seek their place 

 of rest among strangers. His meals, though simple, were always 

 accompanied by some evidence that it was not the hand of a menial 

 that had prepared or spread them : though it was winter, his break- 

 fast-table was never without a bouquet such as the season afforded ; 

 all by which he was surrounded, whether seen or felt, was testimony 

 of a solicitude and refined attention, that experience had taught him 

 was not characteristic of ordinary practice. 



The new year opened with a bright sunny morning, and, accom- 

 panied by his little terrier, Chalcroft at an early hour set forward on 

 a ramble along that bold line of cliff, that, trending to the southward 

 and eastward, stretches from the centre of Brighton to Beachey-head. 

 This was his favourite walk, and having learnt that the day was to be 

 a scene of a domestic merry-making, he went abroad with the inten- 

 tion of spending it from home, that his presence might not interfere 

 with the social festival. A path of more interest for a mind influenced 

 and occupied as his cannot be imagined, than that which, winding 

 along the snowy, beetling precipices, leads the wanderer over downs 

 of velvet, by the little hamlet of Rottingdean to the small neat sea- 

 port at Newhaven. Though lying within the very circle of courtly 

 splendour and occupancy, the district is wild and desert as the border 

 lands of Cumberland. From Rottingdean to Newhaven, a distance 

 of almost six miles, there is not a habitation of any kind, save the 

 solitary block-house of the coast-guard ; its sole tenant the lonely 

 patrole, who night and day is kept on the active look-out, from the 

 facility which the peculiar nature of the coast and its proximity to 

 the French main offers to the contraband trader. An employment of 



