ove! I
honour and reverence him more now he ain't got a shilling in his pocket,
than ever I did when we thought he was a-rolling in money."

My wife made one or two efforts at Samaritan visits in Howland Street,
but was received by Mrs. Clive with such a faint welcome, and by the
Campaigner with so grim a countenance, so many sneers, innuendoes,
insults almost, that Laura's charity was beaten back, and she ceased to
press good offices thus thanklessly received. If Clive came to visit us,
as he very rarely did, after an official question or two regarding the
health of his wife and child, no further mention was made of his family
affairs. His painting, he said, was getting on tolerably well; he had
work, scantily paid it is true, but work sufficient. He was reserved,
uncommunicative, unlike the frank Clive of former times, and oppressed
by his circumstances, as it was easy to see. I did not press the
confidence which he was unwilling to offer, and thought best to respect
his silence. I had a thousand affairs of my own; who has not in London?
If you die to-morrow, your dearest friend will feel for you a hearty
pang of sorrow, and go to his business as usual. I could divine,
but would not care to describe, the life which my poor Clive was now
leading; the vulgar misery, the sordid home, the cheerless toil, and
lack of friendly companionship which darkened his kind soul. I was glad
Clive's father was away. The Colonel wrote to us twice or thrice; could
it be three months ago?--bless me, how time flies! He was happy, he
wrote, with Miss Honeyman, who took the best care of him.

Mention has been made once or twice in the course of this history of the
Grey Friars school,--where the Colonel and Clive and I had been brought
up,--an ancient foundation of the time of James I., still subsisting in
the heart of London city. The death-day of the founder of the place is
still kept solemnly by Cistercians. In their chapel, where assemble
the boys of the school, and the fourscore old men of the Hospital,
the founder's tomb stands, a huge edifice: emblazoned with heraldic
decorations and clumsy carved allegories. There is an old Hall, a
beautiful specimen of the architecture of James's time; an old Hall?
many old halls; old staircases, passages, old chambers decorated with
old portraits, walking in the midst of which we walk as it were in the
early seventeenth century. To others than Cistercians, Grey Friars is a
dreary place possibly. N