vy padlock, and to any chance
inquirer after its late residents, the answer returned was, that their
present address was Place Vendome, Paris.

"Tell me your company," said the old adage; but, alas! the maxim had
reference to other habits than our present-day ones. With what company
now does not every man mix? Bishops discuss crime and punishment
with ticket-of-leave men; fashionable exquisites visit the resorts of
thieves; "swell people" go to hear madrigals at Covent Garden; and, as
for the Ring, it is equally the table-land to peer and pickpocket. If,
then, you would hazard a guess as to a man's manners nowadays, ask not
his company, but his whereabouts. Run your eye oyer the addresses of
that twice-remanded insolvent, ranging from Norfolk Street, Strand, to
Berkeley Square, with Boulogne-sur-Mer, St John's Wood, Cadiz, the New
Cut, Bermondsey, and the Edgware Road, in the interval, and say if you
cannot, even out of such slight materials, sketch off his biography.

"The style is the man," says the adage; and we might with as much truth
say, "the street is the man." In his locality is written his ways and
means, his manners, his morals, his griefs, joys, and ambitions. We
live in an age prolific in this lesson. Only cast a glance at the daily
sacrifices of those who, to reside within the periphery of greatness,
submit to a crushing rent and a comfortless abode.

Think of him who, to date his note "------ Street, Berkeley Square,"
denies himself honest indulgence, all because the world has come to
believe that certain spots are the "Regions of the Best," and that they
who live there must needs be that grand English ideal,--respectable.

Dear me, what unheard-of sacrifices does it demand of humble fortunes to
be Respectable! what pinching and starving and saving! what self-denial
and what striving! what cheerless little dinner-parties to other
Respectables! what dyeing of black silks and storing of old ostrich
feathers! And how and wherefore have we wandered off in this digression!
Simply to say that Sir William Heathoote and his ward were living in
a splendid quarter of Paris, and after that rambled into Germany, and
thence to Como and down to Rome, very often delighted with their choice
of residence, enjoying much that was enjoyable, but still--shall we own
it?--never finding the exact place they seemed to want, nor exactly the
people with whom they were willing to live in intimacy. They had been at
Baden in the s