n four and five in the afternoon, when they
give orders--all live in Golden Square, or within a street of it.
Two or three violins and a wind instrument from the opera band
reside within its precincts. Its boarding-houses are musical, and
the notes of pianos and harps float in the evening-time round the
head of the mournful statue, the guardian genius of a little
wilderness of shrubs, in the centre of the Square.... Street bands
are on their mettle in Golden Square; and itinerant glee-singers
quaver involuntarily as they raise their voices within its
boundaries....

"Some London houses have a melancholy little plot of ground behind
them, usually fenced in by four white-washed walls, and frowned
upon by stacks of chimneys, in which there withers on from year to
year a crippled tree, that makes a show of putting forth a few
leaves late in Autumn, when other trees shed theirs, and drooping
in the effort, lingers on all crackled and smoke-dried till the
following season, when it repeats the same process; and perhaps, if
the weather be particularly genial, even tempts some rheumatic
sparrow to chirp in its branches."

In the next chapter there is a description of the house of a humble
votary of the arts.

"A miniature painter lived there, for there was a large gilt frame
screwed upon the street-door, in which were displayed, upon a black
velvet ground, two portraits of naval dress, coats with faces
looking out of them, and telescopes attached; one of a young
gentleman in a very vermilion uniform flourishing a sabre; and one
of a literary character with a high forehead, a pen and ink, six
books, and a curtain. There was, moreover, a touching
representation of a young lady reading a manuscript in an
unfathomable forest, and a charming whole length of a large-headed
little boy, sitting on a stool with his legs foreshortened to the
size of salt-spoons. Besides these works of art, there were a great
many heads of old ladies and gentlemen smirking at each other out
of blue and brown skies, and an elegantly written card of terms
with an embossed border."

When Mr. Crummles, the stage-manager, urges his old pony along the road,
the following conversation takes place:--

"'He's a good pony at bottom,' said Mr. Crummles, turning to
Nicholas. He might have been a