which, all through the miry year, are pilloried out of recognition
in Gray’s Inn-lane. Then, shall a squalid little trench, with rank
grass and a pump in it, lying between the coffee-house and Southsquare,
be wholly given up to cats and rats, and not, as now, have
its empire divided between those animals and a few briefless bipeds
– surely called to the Bar by voices of deceiving spirits, seeing
that they are wanted there by no mortal – who glance down, with
eyes better glazed than their casements, from their dreary and
lacklustre rooms. Then shall the way Nor’ Westward, now lying
under a short grim colonnade where in summer-time pounce flies from
law-stationering windows into the eyes of laymen, be choked with
rubbish and happily become impassable. Then shall the gardens
where turf, trees, and gravel wear a legal livery of black, run
rank, and pilgrims go to Gorhambury to see Bacon’s effigy as he
sat, and not come here (which in truth they seldom do) to see where
he walked. Then, in a word, shall the old-established vendor of
periodicals sit alone in his little crib of a shop behind the
Holborn Gate, like that lumbering Marius among the ruins of
Carthage, who has sat heavy on a thousand million of similes.
At one period of my uncommercial career I much frequented another
set of chambers in Gray’s Inn-square. They were what is familiarly
called ‘a top set,’ and all the eatables and drinkables introduced
into them acquired a flavour of Cockloft. I have known an unopened
Strasbourg pate fresh from Fortnum and Mason’s, to draw in this
cockloft tone through its crockery dish, and become penetrated with
cockloft to the core of its inmost truffle in three-quarters of an
hour. This, however, was not the most curious feature of those
chambers; that, consisted in the profound conviction entertained by
my esteemed friend Parkle (their tenant) that they were clean.
Whether it was an inborn hallucination, or whether it was imparted
to him by Mrs. Miggot the laundress, I never could ascertain. But,
I believe he would have gone to the stake upon the question. Now,
they were so dirty that I could take off the distinctest impression
of my figure on any article of furniture by merely lounging upon it
for a few moments; and it used to be a private amusement of mine to
print myself off – if I may use the expression – all over the
rooms. It was the first large circulation I had. At other times I
have accidentally shaken a window curtain while in animated
conversation with Parkle, and struggling insects which were
certainly red, and were certainly not ladybirds, have dropped on
the back of my hand. Yet Parkle lived in that top set years, bound
body and soul to the superstition that they were clean. He used to
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say, when congratulated upon them, ‘Well, they are not like
chambers in one respect, you know; they are clean.’ Concurrently,
he had an idea which he could never explain, that Mrs. Miggot was
in some way connected with the Church. When he was in particularly
good spirits, he used to believe that a deceased uncle of hers had
been a Dean; when he was poorly and low, he believed that her
brother had been a Curate. I and Mrs. Miggot (she was a genteel
woman) were on confidential terms, but I never knew her to commit
herself to any distinct assertion on the subject; she merely
claimed a proprietorship in the Church, by looking when it was
mentioned, as if the reference awakened the slumbering Past, and
were personal. It may have been his amiable confidence in Mrs.
Miggot’s better days that inspired my friend with his delusion
respecting the chambers, but he never wavered in his fidelity to it
for a moment, though he wallowed in dirt seven years.
Two of the windows of these chambers looked down into the garden;
and we have sat up there together many a summer evening, saying how
pleasant it was, and talking of many things. To my intimacy with
that top set, I am indebted for three of my liveliest personal