several clean, still
streets, that had rather the appearance of streets in a very quiet
country town than of abodes in the greatest city in the world, and
in the vicinity of palaces and parliaments. Rarely was a shop to be
remarked among the neat little tenements, many of them built of curious
old brick, and all of them raised without any regard to symmetry or
proportion. Not the sound of a single wheel was heard; sometimes not a
single individual was visible or stirring. Making a circuitous
course through this tranquil and orderly district, they at last found
themselves in an open place in the centre of which rose a church of
vast proportions, and built of hewn stone in that stately, not to say
ponderous, style which Vanburgh introduced. The area round it, which was
sufficiently ample, was formed by buildings, generally of a very mean
character: the long back premises of a carpenter, the straggling yard
of a hackney-man: sometimes a small, narrow isolated private residence,
like a waterspout in which a rat might reside: sometimes a group of
houses of more pretension. In the extreme corner of this area, which
was dignified by the name of Smith's Square, instead of taking a more
appropriate title from the church of St John which it encircled, was a
large old house, that had been masked at the beginning of the century
with a modern front of pale-coloured bricks, but which still stood in
its courtyard surrounded by its iron railings, withdrawn as it were from
the vulgar gaze like an individual who had known higher fortunes, and
blending with his humility something of the reserve which is prompted by
the memory of vanished greatness.

"This is my home," said Sybil. "It is a still place and suits us well."

Near the house was a narrow passage which was a thoroughfare into the
most populous quarter of the neighbourhood. As Egremont was opening the
gate of the courtyard, Gerard ascended the steps of this passage and
approached them.

Book 4 Chapter 7

When Gerard and Morley quitted the Albany after their visit to Egremont,
they separated, and Stephen, whom we will accompany, proceeded in the
direction of the Temple, in the vicinity of which he himself lodged, and
where he was about to visit a brother journalist, who occupied chambers
in that famous inn of court. As he passed under Temple Bar his eye
caught a portly gentleman stepping out of a public cab with a bundle of
papers in his hand, and immediately disappe