rvings
of hideous faces, unknown birds, beasts, and fishes; and fruits and
flowers which it would perplex a naturalist to classify. There are also,
in Aldersgate Street, certain remains of what were once spacious and
lordly family mansions, but which have in latter days been subdivided
into several tenements. Here may often be found the family of a petty
tradesman, with its trumpery furniture, burrowing among the relics of
antiquated finery, in great, rambling, time-stained apartments, with
fretted ceilings, gilded cornices, and enormous marble fireplaces. The
lanes and courts also contain many smaller houses, not on so grand a
scale, but, like your small ancient gentry, sturdily maintaining their
claims to equal antiquity. These have their gable ends to the street;
great bow-windows, with diamond panes set in lead, grotesque carvings,
and low arched door-ways.

In this most venerable and sheltered little nest have I passed several
quiet years of existence, comfortably lodged in the second floor of
one of the smallest but oldest edifices. My sitting-room is an old
wainscoted chamber, with small panels, and set off with a miscellaneous
array of furniture. I have a particular respect for three or four
high-backed claw-footed chairs, covered with tarnished brocade, which
bear the marks of having seen better days, and have doubtless figured
in some of the old palaces of Little Britain. They seem to me to
keep together, and to look down with sovereign contempt upon their
leathern-bottomed neighbors: as I have seen decayed gentry carry a
high head among the plebeian society with which they were reduced
to associate. The whole front of my sitting-room is taken up with a
bow-window, on the panes of which are recorded the names of previous
occupants for many generations, mingled with scraps of very indifferent
gentlemanlike poetry, written in characters which I can scarcely
decipher, and which extol the charms of many a beauty of Little Britain
who has long, long since bloomed, faded, and passed away. As I am an
idle personage, with no apparent occupation, and pay my bill regularly
every week, I am looked upon as the only independent gentleman of
the neighborhood; and, being curious to learn the internal state of a
community so apparently shut up within itself, I have managed to work my
way into all the concerns and secrets of the place.

Little Britain may truly be called the heart's core of the city; the
stronghold of true J