ropped about here and there among the gashed ground: the
lane itself, now entirely grassless, is a deep-rutted, heavy-hillocked
cart-road, diverging gatelessly into various brickfields or pieces of
waste; and bordered on each side by heaps of--Hades only knows
what!--mixed dust of every unclean thing that can crumble in drought,
and mildew of every unclean thing that can rot or rust in damp: ashes
and rags, beer-bottles and old shoes, battered pans, smashed crockery,
shreds of nameless clothes, door-sweepings, floor-sweepings, kitchen
garbage, back-garden sewage, old iron, rotten timber jagged with
out-torn nails, cigar-ends, pipe-bowls, cinders, bones, and ordure,
indescribable; and, variously kneaded into, sticking to, or fluttering
foully here and there over all these,--remnants broadcast, of every
manner of newspaper, advertisement or big-lettered bill, festering and
flaunting out their last publicity in the pits of stinking dust and
mortal slime.

3. The lane ends now where its prettiest windings once began; being cut
off by a cross-road leading out of Dulwich to a minor railway station:
and on the other side of this road, what was of old the daintiest
intricacy of its solitude is changed into a straight, and evenly
macadamized carriage drive between new houses of extreme respectability,
with good attached gardens and offices--most of these tenements being
larger--all more pretentious, and many, I imagine, held at greatly
higher rent than my father's, tenanted for twenty years at Herne Hill.
And it became matter of curious meditation to me what must here become
of children resembling my poor little dreamy quondam self in temper, and
thus brought up at the same distance from London, and in the same or
better circumstances of worldly fortune; but with only Croxsted Lane in
its present condition for their country walk. The trimly kept road
before their doors, such as one used to see in the fashionable suburbs
of Cheltenham or Leamington, presents nothing to their study but gravel,
and gas-lamp posts; the modern addition of a vermilion letter-pillar
contributing indeed to the splendor, but scarcely to the interest of the
scene; and a child of any sense or fancy would hastily contrive escape
from such a barren desert of politeness, and betake itself to
investigation, such as might be feasible, of the natural history of
Croxsted Lane.

4. But, for its sense or fancy, what food, or stimulus, can it find, in
that foul ca