1830.] The Ugly Man. 257 



hope deferred ; he never experienced what it is to open an unpleasant 

 letter, or to wait for an agreeable one that has never been written. He 

 has no letters no correspondents of his own ; he has only to take two- 

 pences, not to pay them. How superior seemed the fortune of the man 

 who had delivered these dispatches (probably a good-looking person), 

 to mine, who had received them 1 The contents of them were nothing 

 to him he looked only at the direction. He dreamed not of the agita- 

 tion which his knock produced ; he presented the letter with a firm 

 hand while mine trembled as it touched the seal. It might bring 

 tidings of the loss of friends or of money; and welcome for him 

 twopence being the boundary of his sympathies, the alpha and omega of 

 his imagination. His bag and mind empty, he had gone home (perhaps 

 in the omnibus) to his wife, whose kind heart and careful fingers were 

 counting the copper for him into shilling piles ! Whilst I but I could 

 not trust myself to look at the picture. I had no wife i I seized the 

 letters and thrust them separately into the flames, to protract my enter- 

 tainment. At last I became impatient, and consigned two or three at a 

 time to destruction. The funeral pyre flourished the coals crackled 

 the blaze ascended. I sate and surveyed it with a smile strengthened 

 by a substratum of malice and revenge. But presently, in the midst of 

 my enjoyment, I perceived that though the flames subsided, a sort of 

 smothered light remained. I turned an inquisitive glance up the 

 chimney it was on fire ! What was my consternation at that moment ! 

 I felt my brain spin round. An unnatural glare was thrown on the 

 walls of the apartment I shuddered at my own shadow. In a few 

 minutes the house was alarmed ; the servants burst into my room, and 

 saw the rug and fender covered with the fragments of my letters. 

 They then rushed up stairs, to the roof of the house, with water; 

 thither, half-distracted, I followed them. The night being cold, my 

 great-coat was brought to me ; and, in my confusion, I thrust it first into 

 a tub of water, aiad then down the chimney 1 After a little time the fire 

 was extinguished, the crowd soon dispersed, the engines reluctantly 

 retreated, and the house was restored to tranquillity. 



In this calm, however, I had no share ; the events of the night had 

 only confirmed my resolution, and I anxiously looked forward to the 

 hour of nine, when my purchase of the preceding evening would 

 arrive. Soothed by this reflection, I retired to bed and to broken 

 slumbers. I beheld nothing but scarlet coats and leather bags a legion 

 of postmen; I was wandering in a hall lined with looking-glass, that 

 reflected my own figure a thousand times over ; I was committed for 

 trial for placing my portrait in the Royal Academy, to the great injury 

 of the nerves of several persons of distinction. When I awoke it was 

 very near nine only a few minutes remained for me. My eyes fell 

 upon the glass, and I gave the last shudder of disgust at the unhappy 

 features that had involved me in ruin. The delay of the cutler rendered 

 me impatient. I wondered what the papers would say the next morn- 

 ing, and whether they would publish woodcuts. Unconsciously I took 

 up the wet sheet before me, to read my final debate. Underneath it 

 lay mysterious providence ! a letter. To seize it, to break it open, to 

 devour it, was the work of an instant: it realized my fondest, my 

 wildest dream. It was dated on the thirteenth; but on Sunday there 

 were no letters, on Monday too many ; the delay was clearly explained 

 it had just been delivered. At the same moment, Letty entered die 



M. M. New Series. VOL. IX. No. 51 . 2 L 



