the English nation, ever so
generously sensitive to the necessities, not to say luxuries, of the
artist, endeavours to express its pride and delight in me. It would be a
very graceful exercise of gratitude for me here to stop and parenthesise
the reader on the subject of all that twelve-pound-ten has been to me,
how it has quite changed the course of my life, given me that
long-desired opportunity of doing my best work in peace, for which so
often I vainly sighed in Fleet Street, and even allowed me an indulgence
in minor luxuries which I could not have dreamed of enjoying before the
days of that twelve-pound-ten. Now not only peace and plenty, but
leisure and luxury are mine. There is nothing goes so far as--Government
money.

Usually on these literally State occasions, I drive up in state, that is
in a hansom. There is only one other day in the year on which I am so
splendid, but that is another beautiful story. It, too, is a day and an
hour too joyous to be approached otherwise than on winged wheels, too
stately to be approached in merely pedestrian fashion. To go on foot to
draw one's pension seems a sort of slight on the great nation that does
one honour, as though a Lord Mayor should make his appearance in the
procession in his office coat.

So I say it is my custom to go gaily, and withal stately, to meet my
twelve-pound-ten in a hansom. For many reasons the occasion always seems
something of an adventure, and I confess I always feel a little excited
about it--indeed, to tell the truth, a little nervous. As I glide along
in my state barge (which seems a much more proper and impressive image
for a hansom than 'gondola,' with its reminiscences of Earl's Court) I
feel like some fragile country flower torn from its roots, and
bewilderingly hurried along upon the turbid, swollen stream of London
life.

The stream glides sweetly with a pleasant trotting tinkle of bells by
the green parkside of Piccadilly, and sweet is it to hear the sirens
singing, and to see them combing their gilded locks, on the yellow sands
of Piccadilly Circus--so called, no doubt, from the number of horses and
the skill of their drivers. Here are the whirling pools of pleasure,
merry wheels of laughing waters, where your hansom glides along with a
golden ease--it is only when you enter the First Cataract of the Strand
that you become aware of the far-distant terrible roar of the Falls!
They are yet nearly two miles away, but already, like Nia