inarily cheered and comforted. We could see by his face that
affairs were going on well at the studio. He showed us the rooms which
Rosey and the boy were to occupy. He prattled to our children and their
mother, who was never tired of hearing him, about his grandson. He
filled up the future nursery with a hundred little knick-knacks of his
own contriving; and with wonderful cheap bargains, which he bought in
his walks about Tottenham Court Road. He pasted a most elaborate book of
prints and sketches for Boy. It was astonishing what notice Boy already
took of pictures. He would have all the genius of his father. Would he
had had a better grandfather than the foolish old man who had ruined all
belonging to him!

However much they like each other, men in the London world see their
friends but seldom. The place is so vast that even next door is distant;
the calls of business, society, pleasure, so multifarious that mere
friendship can get or give but an occasional shake of the hand in the
hurried moments of passage. Men must live their lives; and are perforce
selfish, but not unfriendly. At a great need you know where to look for
your friend, and he that he is secure of you. So I went very little to
Howland Street, where Clive now lived; very seldom to Lamb Court, where
my dear old friend Warrington still sate in his old chambers, though our
meetings were none the less cordial when they occurred, and our trust in
one another always the same. Some folks say the world is heartless: he
who says so either prates commonplaces (the most likely and charitable
suggestion), or is heartless himself, or is most singular and
unfortunate in having made no friends. Many such a reasonable mortal
cannot have: our nature, I think, not sufficing for that sort of
polygamy. How many persons would you have to deplore your death; or
whose death would you wish to deplore? Could our hearts let in such a
harem of dear friendships, the mere changes and recurrences of grief and
mourning would be intolerable, and tax our lives beyond their value. In
a word, we carry our own burthen in the world; push and struggle along
on our own affairs; are pinched by our own shoes--though Heaven forbid
we should not stop and forget ourselves sometimes, when a friend cries
out in his distress, or we can help a poor stricken wanderer in his way.
As for good women--these, my worthy reader, are different from us--the
nature of these is to love, and to do kind offices, a