and homely
establishments that connect themselves even with the airiest modes of
human life; while upward from the river, by a long and gentle ascent,
rises the principal street, which is very bright and cheerful in its
physiognomy, and adorned with shop-fronts almost as splendid as those of
London, though on a diminutive scale. There are likewise side-streets
and cross-streets, many of which are bordered with the beautiful
Warwickshire elm, a most unusual kind of adornment for an English town;
and spacious avenues, wide enough to afford room for stately groves,
with foot-paths running beneath the lofty shade, and rooks cawing and
chattering so high In the tree-tops that their voices get musical before
reaching the earth. The houses are mostly built in blocks and ranges, in
which every separate tenement is a repetition of its fellow, though the
architecture of the different ranges is sufficiently various. Some of
them are almost palatial in size and sumptuousness of arrangement. Then,
on the outskirts of the town, there are detached villas, inclosed within
that separate domain of high stone fence and embowered shrubbery which
an Englishman so loves to build and plant around his abode, presenting
to the public only an iron gate, with a gravelled carriage-drive winding
away towards the half-hidden mansion. Whether in street or suburb,
Leamington may fairly be called beautiful, and, at some points,
magnificent; but by-and-by you become doubtfully suspicious of a
somewhat unreal finery: it is pretentious, though not glaringly so; it
has been built, with malice aforethought, as a place of gentility and
enjoyment. Moreover, splendid as the houses look, and comfortable as
they often are, there is a nameless something about them, betokening
that they have not grown out of human hearts, but are the creations of a
skilfully applied human intellect: no man has reared any one of them,
whether stately or humble, to be his life-long residence, wherein to
bring up his children, who are to inherit it as a home. They are nicely
contrived lodging-houses, one and all,--the best as well as the
shabbiest of them,--and therefore inevitably lack some nameless property
that a home should have. This was the case with our own little snuggery
in Lansdowne Circus, as with all the rest: it had not grown out of
anybody's individual need, but was built to let or sell, and was
therefore like a ready-made garment,--a tolerable fit, but only
tolerable.