isons we would take our cathedral cities, and place Oxford at the
head, before Worcester, Exeter, and so forth. But we revert to our first
proposition; and were we about to show a foreigner those places
wherewith we could desire him to compare his own distant cities, we
should take him to the three above mentioned. It is in these three
places that the great essentials of use and ornament seem to us to be
the most happily combined; attempts are made at them in other quarters
with various degrees of success, but here their union has been the most
decided. Bear our opinion in mind, gentle reader; and, when next you go
upon your travels, see if what we assert be not correct.

The style of house we most object to is Johnson's--you don't know
Johnson? Why, don't you recollect the little bustling man that used to
live at the yellow house in the City-Road, and that you were sure to
meet every day, about eleven o'clock, in Threadneedle Street, or by the
Bank Buildings? Well, he has been so successful in the drug line that he
has left the City-Road, and has moved into the far west, Paragon Place,
Bryanstone Square; and, not content with this, has taken a house at
Brighton, on the Marine-Parade, for his "Sunday out," as he terms it. He
is a worthy fellow at bottom, but he has no more taste than the pump;
and while he thinks he inhabits the _ne plus ultra_ of all good houses,
lives in reality in ramshackle, rickety, ugly, and inconvenient dens.
The house in Paragon Place is built of brick, like all others; but the
parlour story is stuccoed to look like stone, the original brick tint
being resumed at the levels of the kitchen below and the drawing-room
above. There are two windows to the said drawing-room--one to the
dining-room; and so on in proportion for the four stories of which the
edifice consists: but the back is a curious medley of ins and outs, and
ups and downs; single windows to dark rooms, and a dirty little bit of a
back-yard, with a square plot of mud at the end of it, called "the
garden;" the cook says the "airey" is in front; and Johnson knows that
his wine-cellar is between the dust-bin and the coal-hole under the
street. If you knock at the door you are let in to a passage too wide
for one, but not wide enough for two, and you find at once the whole
penetralia of the habitation lying open to your vision; dining-room door
on right hand, parlour door behind it; kitchen door under the stairs,
and garden door at the end