ach
room full of people, and the landlord will never fear for the safety of
his building.

Now, there are three other sets of apartments in the same house, and
above Dubois, not so lofty as his, but nearly as commodious, and all
with their proportionate degree of elegance and solid comfort. Dubois
has not got a house at Dieppe, it is true; but then, like all Frenchmen,
he is so absorbed in his dear Paris, that he hardly cares to stir out
from it. If ever he does, he runs off to Vichy or Mont Dor for a
fortnight in the _saison des eaux_, and he is contented.

But then, you will say, Dubois lives, after all, in another man's
house--he is only a lodger; whereas Johnson dwells in what the law calls
his "castle." Be it so; for the same money we would rather have the
positive advantages of the one, _en societe_, than the tasteless and
inconvenient isolation of the other.

And, after all, is Johnson more decidedly at home in his own house, than
Dubois is in his "_appartement_?" What does it matter whether you have
people living on each side of you, with their street doors so close to
yours that their wives or their daughters pop up their noses above the
green blinds every time a cab or a jarvey drives up; or whether you have
people who come in at the same gateway with yourself, and go up the same
stairs, it is true, and who live either above or below you, and who can,
if they like, run out on their landings to see who is thumping at your
door panels? Upon our conscience as honest folks, who have lived in half
the capitals of Europe, to say nothing of those of our own islands, we
never found the slightest intrusion on privacy arising from the
collecting of several families in the same house, in Paris, Rome,
Florence, or Vienna. All we know is, and we often think of it agreeably,
that these continental houses seemed to us like so many social colleges,
and that the having a set of rooms with a common staircase, used to put
us in mind of our old Christ Church, and of Garden Court in the Temple.
'Tis true, that in the one set of rooms we had no fellow-inmates except
our dog, and every now and then a joyous set of fellows that would have
made any place tolerable; that in the other there was our old laundress
and bed-maker, and our "boy," and for a short time our "man," and
actually, upon our honour it is true, we did once see a client in them!
whereas, in our continental suites of chambers, we are _en famille_ with
wife, bairns,