, were such as civilisation permits; and
though there were no pictures, sundry ornaments here and there made
strong denial of lodging-house affinity. It was at once laboratory,
study, and dwelling-room. Two large cabinets, something the worse for
transportation, alone formed a link between this abode and the old home
at Twybridge. Books were not numerous, and a good microscope seemed to
be the only scientific instrument of much importance. On door-pegs hung
a knapsack, a botanist's vasculum, and a geologist's wallet.

A round table was spread with the materials of supper, and here again
an experienced lodger must have bestowed contemplative scrutiny, for no
hand of common landlady declared itself in the arrangement. The cloth
was spotless, the utensils tasteful and carefully disposed. In a bowl
lay an appetising salad, ready for mingling; a fragment of Camembert
cheese was relieved upon a setting of green leafage; a bottle of ale,
with adjacent corkscrew, stood beside the plate; the very loaf seemed
to come from no ordinary baker's, or was made to look better than its
kin by the fringed white cloth in which it nestled.

The custom of four years had accustomed Peak to take these things as a
matter of course, yet he would readily have admitted that they were
extraordinary enough. Indeed, he even now occasionally contrasted this
state of comfort with the hateful experiences of his first six years in
London. The subject of lodgings was one of those on which (often
intemperate of speech) he spoke least temperately. For six years he had
shifted from quarter to quarter, from house to house, driven away each
time by the hateful contact of vulgarity in every form,--by foulness
and dishonesty, by lying, slandering, quarrelling, by drunkenness, by
brutal vice,--by all abominations that distinguish the lodging-letter
of the metropolis. Obliged to practise extreme economy, he could not
take refuge among self-respecting people, or at all events had no luck
in endeavouring to find such among the poorer working-class. To a man
of Godwin's idiosyncrasy the London poor were of necessity abominable,
and it anguished him to be forced to live among them.

Rescue came at last, and in a very unexpected way. Resident in the more
open part of Bermondsey (winter mornings made a long journey to
Rotherhithe intolerable), he happened to walk one day as far as Peckham
Rye, and was there attracted by the shop window of a herbalist. He
entered to ma