ony of his seventh day with the monotony of his six days, think
what a weary life he led, and make the best of it--or the worst,
according to the probabilities.

At such a happy time, so propitious to the interests of religion and
morality, Mr Arthur Clennam, newly arrived from Marseilles by way of
Dover, and by Dover coach the Blue-eyed Maid, sat in the window of a
coffee-house on Ludgate Hill. Ten thousand responsible houses surrounded
him, frowning as heavily on the streets they composed, as if they were
every one inhabited by the ten young men of the Calender's story, who
blackened their faces and bemoaned their miseries every night. Fifty
thousand lairs surrounded him where people lived so unwholesomely that
fair water put into their crowded rooms on Saturday night, would be
corrupt on Sunday morning; albeit my lord, their county member, was
amazed that they failed to sleep in company with their butcher's meat.
Miles of close wells and pits of houses, where the inhabitants gasped
for air, stretched far away towards every point of the compass. Through
the heart of the town a deadly sewer ebbed and flowed, in the place of
a fine fresh river. What secular want could the million or so of
human beings whose daily labour, six days in the week, lay among these
Arcadian objects, from the sweet sameness of which they had no escape
between the cradle and the grave--what secular want could they possibly
have upon their seventh day? Clearly they could want nothing but a
stringent policeman.

Mr Arthur Clennam sat in the window of the coffee-house on Ludgate Hill,
counting one of the neighbouring bells, making sentences and burdens of
songs out of it in spite of himself, and wondering how many sick
people it might be the death of in the course of the year. As the hour
approached, its changes of measure made it more and more exasperating.
At the quarter, it went off into a condition of deadly-lively
importunity, urging the populace in a voluble manner to Come to church,
Come to church, Come to church! At the ten minutes, it became aware
that the congregation would be scanty, and slowly hammered out in low
spirits, They WON'T come, they WON'T come, they WON'T come! At the five
minutes, it abandoned hope, and shook every house in the neighbourhood
for three hundred seconds, with one dismal swing per second, as a groan
of despair.

'Thank Heaven!' said Clennam, when the hour struck, and the bell
stopped.

But its sound had rev