g
of his heart into labour too submissive to be anxious, and rest too
sweet to be wanton. What thought can enough comprehend the contrast
between such life, and that in streets where summer and winter are only
alternations of heat and cold; where snow never fell white, nor sunshine
clear; where the ground is only a pavement, and the sky no more than the
glass roof of an arcade; where the utmost power of a storm is to choke
the gutters, and the finest magic of spring, to change mud into dust:
where--chief and most fatal difference in state, there is no interest of
occupation for any of the inhabitants but the routine of counter or desk
within doors, and the effort to pass each other without collision
outside; so that from morning to evening the only possible variation of
the monotony of the hours, and lightening of the penalty of existence,
must be some kind of mischief, limited, unless by more than ordinary
godsend of fatality, to the fall of a horse, or the slitting of a
pocket.

I said that under these laws of inanition, the craving of the human
heart for some kind of excitement could be supplied from _one_ source
only. It might have been thought by any other than a sternly tentative
philosopher, that the denial of their natural food to human feelings
would have provoked a reactionary desire for it; and that the dreariness
of the street would have been gilded by dreams of pastoral felicity.
Experience has shown the fact to be otherwise; the thoroughly trained
Londoner can enjoy no other excitement than that to which he has been
accustomed, but asks for _that_ in continually more ardent or more
virulent concentration; and the ultimate power of fiction to entertain
him is by varying to his fancy the modes, and defining for his dulness
the horrors, of Death. In the single novel of _Bleak House_ there are
nine deaths (or left for death's, in the drop scene) carefully wrought
out or led up to, either by way of pleasing surprise, as the baby's at
the brickmaker's, or finished in their threatenings and sufferings, with
as much enjoyment as can be contrived in the anticipation, and as much
pathology as can be concentrated in the description. Under the following
varieties of method:--

One by assassination Mr. Tulkinghorn.
One by starvation, with phthisis Joe.
One by chagrin Richard.
One by spontaneous combustion Mr. Krook.
One by sorrow