plete, for three
shillings. It will go well in our book-case beside our Guiccioli
Recollections. For myself I have a dear little "Grammont" with notes,
a fine edition of Bandello's "Novelle," and a weird paper-covered copy
of "Joseph Andrews," designed, presumably, to corrupt the youthful
errantry of Swansea, and secreted by the vendor of Welsh devotional
literature at the very bottom of the tuppenny box. In spite of
Borrow's enthusiasm for Ab Gwilym, I have no craving for Welsh
Theology, mostly by Jones and Williams, which is to be had by the
cubic ton. No one buys it, I fear. The little lass who sold me the
Fielding and the "Novelle" looked pale and hungry behind the stacks of
books, and I am shamed, speaking merely as a thorough-paced buyer of
second-hand books, that I paid more for the latter than she would have
asked. But the blue-grey eyes, the nervous poise of the head, the
pride in the sensitive nostrils, reminded me of someone.... A horrible
life for a young girl, my friend, a horrible life.

I took my treasures along the brilliantly lighted streets. I walked on
air, happy with a mysterious happiness. I looked at myself as I passed
a shop mirror, and saw a face with a cold, cynical expression, the
soul intrenched behind inscrutable, searching eyes. "You do not look
happy," I said to myself as I passed on, and I smiled. I thought again
of those gaudily dressed sailors; I thought of their inane felicity,
and smiled again. "_De chacun selon que son habillete, a chacun selon
que ses besoins_," I muttered as I turned into an iridescent
music-hall.

And now I reached the summit of experience. All the morning I was
toiling in the engine-room as we ploughed across the Channel, past
Lundy, and up to the Mumbles Head. I had played my part in that
strange comedy of "paying off." I had toiled again in the afternoon
in a dry-docked steamer, making all safe after shutting down. I had
scoured the shelves of a tiny shop for books. And now I sat in the
fauteuils of a modern music-hall, beholding the amazing drama of "The
Road to Ruin."

Verily, as Sainte-Beuve says, "_Au theatre on exagere toujours._" Not
that I would accuse the constructors of the piece of any lack of
skill. Indeed, Scribe himself never displayed more consummate
stage-craft or a greater sense of "situation," than they. As one gazes
upon the spectacle of the impossible undergraduate's downfall, he
loses all confidence in the impossibility; he believes that