e Scotch moors. Scarce a man was to be seen in the bow-windows of
the Clubs, or on the solitary Pall Mall pavement. The red jackets had
disappeared from before the Palace-gate: the tradesmen of St. James's
were abroad taking their pleasure: the tailors had grown mustachios and
were gone up the Rhine: the bootmakers were at Ems or Baden, blushing
when they met their customers at those places of recreation, or punting
beside their creditors at the gambling-tables: the clergymen of St.
James's only preached to half a congregation, in which there was not a
single sinner of distinction: the band in Kensington Gardens had shut up
their instruments of brass and trumpets of silver: only two or three old
flies and chaises crawled by the banks of the Serpentine; and Clarence
Bulbul, who was retained in town by his arduous duties as a Treasury
clerk, when he took his afternoon ride in Rotten Row, compared its
loneliness to the vastness of the Arabian desert and himself to a
Bedouin wending his way through that dusty solitude. Warrington stowed
away a quantity of Cavendish tobacco in his carpet-bag, and betook
himself, as his custom was in the vacation, to his brother's house in
Norfolk. Pen was left alone in chambers for a while, for this man of
fashion could not quit the metropolis when he chose always: and was at
present detained by the affairs of his newspaper, the Pall Mall Gazette,
of, which he acted as the editor and charge d'affaires during the
temporary absence of the chief, Captain Shandon, who was with his family
at the salutary watering-place of Boulogne-sur-Mer.

Although, as we have seen, Mr. Pen had pronounced himself for years past
to be a man perfectly blase and wearied of life, yet the truth is that
he was an exceedingly healthy young fellow still: with a fine appetite,
which he satisfied with the greatest relish and satisfaction at least
once a day; and a constant desire for society, which showed him to be
anything but misanthropical. If he could not get a good dinner he sate
down to a bad one with perfect contentment; if he could not procure
the company of witty or great or beautiful persons, he put up with
any society that came to hand; and was perfectly satisfied in a
tavern-parlour or on board a Greenwich steamboat, or in a jaunt to
Hampstead with Mr. Finucane, his colleague at the Pall Mall Gazette;
or in a visit to the summer theatres across the river; or to the Royal
Gardens of Vauxhall, where he was on ter