glide out of their graves of nights, and whisper, "We are dead now,
but we WERE once; and we made you happy, and we come now to mock
you:--despair, O lover, despair, and die"?--O cruel pangs!--dismal
nights!--Now a sly demon creeps under your nightcap, and drops into
your ear those soft hope-breathing sweet words, uttered on the
well-remembered evening: there, in the drawer of your dressing-table
(along with the razors, and Macassar oil), lies the dead flower that
Lady Amelia Wilhelmina wore in her bosom on the night of a certain
ball--the corpse of a glorious hope that seemed once as if it would live
for ever, so strong was it, so full of joy and sunshine: there, in
your writing-desk, among a crowd of unpaid bills, is the dirty scrap of
paper, thimble-sealed, which came in company with a pair of muffetees of
her knitting (she was a butcher's daughter, and did all she could, poor
thing!), begging "you would ware them at collidge, and think of her
who"--married a public-house three weeks afterwards, and cares for you
no more now than she does for the pot-boy. But why multiply instances,
or seek to depict the agony of poor mean-spirited John Hayes? No mistake
can be greater than that of fancying such great emotions of love are
only felt by virtuous or exalted men: depend upon it, Love, like Death,
plays havoc among the pauperum tabernas, and sports with rich and poor,
wicked and virtuous, alike. I have often fancied, for instance, on
seeing the haggard pale young old-clothesman, who wakes the echoes of
our street with his nasal cry of "Clo'!"--I have often, I said, fancied
that, besides the load of exuvial coats and breeches under which
he staggers, there is another weight on him--an atrior cura at his
tail--and while his unshorn lips and nose together are performing that
mocking, boisterous, Jack-indifferent cry of "Clo', clo'!" who knows
what woeful utterances are crying from the heart within? There he is,
chaffering with the footman at No. 7 about an old dressing-gown: you
think his whole soul is bent only on the contest about the garment.
Psha! there is, perhaps, some faithless girl in Holywell Street who
fills up his heart; and that desultory Jew-boy is a peripatetic hell!
Take another instance:--take the man in the beef-shop in Saint Martin's
Court. There he is, to all appearances quite calm: before the same round
of beef--from morning till sundown--for hundreds of years very likely.
Perhaps when the shutters are clos