very,
stripped of his finery, and thrown upon the world, like a once-smart
footman when he is no longer sufficiently juvenile for his office,
progressing lower and lower in the scale of four-wheeled degradation,
until at last it comes to--_a stand_!

CHAPTER VIII--DOCTORS' COMMONS

Walking without any definite object through St. Paul's Churchyard, a
little while ago, we happened to turn down a street entitled
'Paul's-chain,' and keeping straight forward for a few hundred yards,
found ourself, as a natural consequence, in Doctors' Commons. Now
Doctors' Commons being familiar by name to everybody, as the place where
they grant marriage-licenses to love-sick couples, and divorces to
unfaithful ones; register the wills of people who have any property to
leave, and punish hasty gentlemen who call ladies by unpleasant names, we
no sooner discovered that we were really within its precincts, than we
felt a laudable desire to become better acquainted therewith; and as the
first object of our curiosity was the Court, whose decrees can even
unloose the bonds of matrimony, we procured a direction to it; and bent
our steps thither without delay.

Crossing a quiet and shady court-yard, paved with stone, and frowned upon
by old red brick houses, on the doors of which were painted the names of
sundry learned civilians, we paused before a small, green-baized,
brass-headed-nailed door, which yielding to our gentle push, at once
admitted us into an old quaint-looking apartment, with sunken windows,
and black carved wainscoting, at the upper end of which, seated on a
raised platform, of semicircular shape, were about a dozen solemn-looking
gentlemen, in crimson gowns and wigs.

At a more elevated desk in the centre, sat a very fat and red-faced
gentleman, in tortoise-shell spectacles, whose dignified appearance
announced the judge; and round a long green-baized table below, something
like a billiard-table without the cushions and pockets, were a number of
very self-important-looking personages, in stiff neckcloths, and black
gowns with white fur collars, whom we at once set down as proctors. At
the lower end of the billiard-table was an individual in an arm-chair,
and a wig, whom we afterwards discovered to be the registrar; and seated
behind a little desk, near the door, were a respectable-looking man in
black, of about twenty-stone weight or thereabouts, and a fat-faced,
smirking, civil-looking body, in a black gown, black ki