ious, in
a noisy churchyard, and had no hope of rest for centuries to come.

Then, the crowds for ever passing and repassing on the bridges (on
those which are free of toil at last), where many stop on fine evenings
looking listlessly down upon the water with some vague idea that by and
by it runs between green banks which grow wider and wider until at last
it joins the broad vast sea--where some halt to rest from heavy loads
and think as they look over the parapet that to smoke and lounge away
one's life, and lie sleeping in the sun upon a hot tarpaulin, in a
dull, slow, sluggish barge, must be happiness unalloyed--and where
some, and a very different class, pause with heaver loads than they,
remembering to have heard or read in old time that drowning was not a
hard death, but of all means of suicide the easiest and best.

Covent Garden Market at sunrise too, in the spring or summer, when the
fragrance of sweet flowers is in the air, over-powering even the
unwholesome streams of last night's debauchery, and driving the dusky
thrust, whose cage has hung outside a garret window all night long,
half mad with joy! Poor bird! the only neighbouring thing at all akin
to the other little captives, some of whom, shrinking from the hot
hands of drunken purchasers, lie drooping on the path already, while
others, soddened by close contact, await the time when they shall be
watered and freshened up to please more sober company, and make old
clerks who pass them on their road to business, wonder what has filled
their breasts with visions of the country.

But my present purpose is not to expatiate upon my walks. The story I
am about to relate, and to which I shall recur at intervals, arose out
of one of these rambles; and thus I have been led to speak of them by
way of preface.

One night I had roamed into the City, and was walking slowly on in my
usual way, musing upon a great many things, when I was arrested by an
inquiry, the purport of which did not reach me, but which seemed to be
addressed to myself, and was preferred in a soft sweet voice that
struck me very pleasantly. I turned hastily round and found at my elbow
a pretty little girl, who begged to be directed to a certain street at
a considerable distance, and indeed in quite another quarter of the
town.

It is a very long way from here,' said I, 'my child.'

'I know that, sir,' she replied timidly. 'I am afraid it is a very long
way, for I came from there to-night.'