straightway saluted by a joyous dance of those monads called
vulgarly "smuts." You feel manly indignation at the brute of a
bridegroom who rushes out from the door, with the smuts dancing after
him, and swears, "Smoked out again! By the Arch-smoker himself, I'll
go and dine at the club!" All this might well have been, till the
chimney-pot was raised a few feet nearer heaven; and now perhaps
that long-suffering family owns the happiest home in the Row. Such
contrivances to get rid of the smoke! It is not every one who merely
heightens his chimney; others clap on the hollow tormentor all sorts of
odd head-gear and cowls. Here, patent contrivances act the purpose of
weather-cocks, swaying to and fro with the wind; there, others stand as
fixed as if, by a sic jubeo, they had settled the business.

But of all those houses that in the street one passes by, unsuspicious
of what's the matter within, there is not one in a hundred but what
there has been the devil to do to cure the chimneys of smoking! At that
reflection Philosophy dismisses the subject, and decides that, whether
one lives in a but or a palace, the first thing to do is to look to the
hearth and get rid of the vapors.

New beauties demand us. What endless undulations in the various
declivities and ascents,--here a slant, there a zigzag! With what
majestic disdain yon roof rises up to the left! Doubtless a palace of
Genii, or Gin (which last is the proper Arabic word for those builders
of halls out of nothing, employed by Aladdin). Seeing only the roof
of that palace boldly breaking the sky-line, how serene your
contemplations! Perhaps a star twinkles over it, and you muse on soft
eyes far away; while below at the threshold--No, phantoms! we see you
not from our attic. Note, yonder, that precipitous fall,--how ragged and
jagged the roof-scene descends in a gorge! He who would travel on foot
through the pass of that defile, of which we see but the picturesque
summits, stops his nose, averts his eyes, guards his pockets, and
hurries along through the squalor of the grim London lazzaroni. But
seen above, what a noble break in the sky-line! It would be sacrilege
to exchange that fine gorge for a dead flat of dull rooftops. Look here,
how delightful! that desolate house with no roof at all,--gutted and
skinned by the last London fire! You can see the poor green-and-white
paper still clinging to the walls, and the chasm that once was a
cupboard, and the shadows gatheri