a curse seemed to settle upon whatever I then undertook. Such
was my frame of mind on reaching London: in fact it never varied. One
canopy of murky clouds (a copy of that dun atmosphere which settles so
often upon London) brooded for ever upon my spirits, which were in one
uniformly low key of cheerless despondency; and, on this particular
morning, my depression had been deeper than usual, from the effects of a
long, continuous journey of 300 miles, and of exhaustion from want of
sleep. I had reached London, about six o'clock in the morning, by one of
the northern mails; and, resigning myself as usual in such cases, to the
chance destination of the coach, after delivering our bags in Lombard
Street, I was driven down to a great city hotel. Here there were hot
baths; and, somewhat restored by this luxurious refreshment, about eight
o'clock I was seated at a breakfast table; upon which, in a few minutes,
as an appendage not less essential than the tea-service, one of the
waiters laid that morning's _Times_, just reeking from the press. The
_Times_, by the way, is notoriously the leading journal of Europe
anywhere; but, in London, and more peculiarly in the city quarter of
London, it enjoys a pre-eminence scarcely understood elsewhere. Here it
is not _a_ morning paper, but _the_ morning paper: no other is known, no
other is cited as authority in matters of fact. Strolling with my eye
indolently over the vast Babylonian confusion of the enormous columns,
naturally as one of the _corps litteraire_, I found my attention drawn
to those regions of the paper which announced forthcoming publications.
Amongst them was a notice of a satirical journal, very low priced, and
already advanced to its third or fourth number. My heart palpitated a
little on seeing myself announced as the principal theme for the malice
of the current number. The reader must not suppose that I was left in
any doubt as to the quality of the notice with which I had been
honoured; and that, by possibility, I was solacing my vanity with some
anticipation of honeyed compliments. That, I can assure him, was made
altogether impossible, by the kind of language which flourished in the
very foreground of the _programme_, and even of the running title. The
exposure and _depluming_ (to borrow a good word from the fine old
rhetorician, Fuller,) of the leading 'humbugs' of the age--_that_ was
announced as the regular business of the journal: and the only question
which rem