o
already--while we stand upon the delicacies and ceremonies of
Book-worship?

OUR TERRACE.

London has been often compared to a wilderness--a wilderness of brick,
and so in one sense it is; because you may live in London all the days
of your life if you choose--and, indeed, if you don't choose, if you
happen to be very poor--without exciting observation, or provoking any
further questioning than is comprised in a demand for accurate
guidance from one place to another, a demand which might be made upon
you in an Arabian desert, if there you chanced to meet a stranger. But
London is something else besides a wilderness--indeed it is everything
else. It is a great world, containing a thousand little worlds in its
bosom; and pop yourself down in it in any quarter you will, you are
sure to find yourself in the centre of some peculiar microcosm
distinguished from all others by features more or less characteristic.

One such little world we have lived in for a round number of years;
and as we imagine it presents a picture by no means disagreeable to
look upon, we will introduce the reader, with his permission, into its
very limited circle, and chronicle its history for one day as
faithfully as it is possible for anything to do, short of the
Daguerreotype and the tax-gatherer. Our Terrace, then--for that is our
little world--is situated in one of the northern, southern, eastern,
or western suburbs--we have reasons for not being particular--at the
distance of two miles and three-quarters from the black dome of St
Paul's. It consists of thirty genteel-looking second-rate houses,
standing upon a veritable terrace, at least three feet above the level
of the carriage-way, and having small gardens enclosed in iron
palisades in front of them. The garden gates open upon a pavement of
nine feet in width; the carriage-road is thirty feet across; and on
the opposite side is another but lower terrace, surmounted with
handsome semi-detached villas, with ample flower-gardens both in front
and rear, those in the front being planted, but rather sparingly, with
limes, birches, and a few specimens of the white-ash, which in
summertime overshadow the pavement, and shelter a passing pedestrian
when caught in a shower. At one end of Our Terrace, there is a
respectable butcher's shop, a public-house, and a shop which is
perpetually changing owners, and making desperate attempts to
establish itself as something or other, without any parti