re punishment
against those who broke the church windows or defaced the precinct, and
offering rewards for the apprehension of those who had done the like
already. It was fair-day in Great Missenden. There were three stalls set
up _sub jove_, for the sale of pastry and cheap toys; and a great number
of holiday children thronged about the stalls, and noisily invaded every
corner of the straggling village. They came round me by coveys, blowing
simultaneously upon penny trumpets as though they imagined I should fall
to pieces like the battlements of Jericho. I noticed one among them who
could make a wheel of himself like a London boy, and seemingly enjoyed a
grave pre-eminence upon the strength of the accomplishment. By and by,
however, the trumpets began to weary me, and I went indoors, leaving the
fair, I fancy at its height.

Night had fallen before I ventured forth again. It was pitch dark in the
village street, and the darkness seemed only the greater for a light
here and there in an uncurtained window or from an open door. Into one
such window I was rude enough to peep, and saw within a charming _genre_
picture. In a room, all white wainscot and crimson wall-paper, a perfect
gem of colour after the black, empty darkness in which I had been
groping, a pretty girl was telling a story, as well as I could make out,
to an attentive child upon her knee, while an old woman sat placidly
dozing over the fire. You may be sure I was not behindhand with a story
for myself--a good old story after the manner of G.P.R. James and the
village melodramas, with a wicked squire, and poachers, and an
attorney, and a virtuous young man with a genius for mechanics, who
should love, and protect, and ultimately marry the girl in the crimson
room. Baudelaire has a few dainty sentences on the fancies that we are
inspired with when we look through a window into other people's lives;
and I think Dickens has somewhat enlarged on the same text. The subject,
at least, is one that I am seldom weary of entertaining. I remember,
night after night, at Brussels, watching a good family sup together,
make merry, and retire to rest; and night after night I waited to see
the candles lit, and the salad made, and the last salutations dutifully
exchanged, without any abatement of interest. Night after night I found
the scene rivet my attention and keep me awake in bed with all manner of
quaint imaginations. Much of the pleasure of the "Arabian Nights" hinges
u