THIRTY YEARS SINCE:
OR,
THE RUINED FAMILY.
CHAPTER I.
Most cities are hateful; and, without any disposition to "babble about green fields," it must be owned that each is more or less detestable. Nevertheless, among them all, there is none to be compared, as a whole, to London--none which comprehends within itself, from various causes, so much of the sublime in every sort. Whether we consider its giant immensity of expanse--the wonderful intricacy of its internal structure--the miraculous harmony of its discrepant parts--the grand amalgamation of its different orders, classes, states, pursuits, professions--the mighty aggregate of hopes, wishes, endeavors, joys, successes, fears, pangs, disappointments, crimes, and punishments, that it contains--its relative influence on the world at large--or the vehement pulse with which that "mighty heart" sends the flood of circulation through this beautiful land--we shall find that that most wonderful microcosm well deserves the epithet _sublime_.
To view it rightly--if we wish to view it with the eye of a philosopher--we should choose, perhaps, the hour which is chosen by the most magnificent and extraordinary of modern poets, and gaze upon it when the sun is just beginning to pour his first red beams through the dim and loaded air, when that vast desert of brick and mortar, that interminable wilderness of spires and chimneys, looks more wide and endless, and solemn, than when the eye is distracted by myriads of mites that creep about it in the risen day.
It may be asked, perhaps, who is there that ever saw it at that hour, except the red-armed housemaid washing the morning step, and letting in the industrious thief, to steal the greatcoats from the hall; or the dull muffin-man, who goes tinkling his early bell through the misty streets of the wintry morning? Granted, that neither of these--nor the sellers of early purl--nor the venders of saloop and cocoa--nor Covent Garden market-women--nor the late returners from the _finish_--nor he who starts up from the doorway, where he has passed the wretched night, to recommence the day's career of crime, and danger, and sorrow--can look upon the vast hive in which they dwell with over-refined feelings; and, perhaps, to them may come home unhappy Shelley's forcible line--
"Hell is a city very much like London!"
The valetudinarian, too, who wakes with nervous punctuality to swallow down the morning draught, prescribed by courtly Henry's bitter-covering skill, may curse the cats that, perched upon the tiles, salute their lady-loves with most discordant cries, and keep him from repose; and with all the virulence of Despréaux, may exclaim upon the many hateful sounds of a town morning. But, besides all these, there are sometimes persons who, rising five hours before their usual time, come forth in all the freshness of the early day, stimulated by the vast effort that roused them from their beds, proud of a successful endeavor to get up, and excited by the novelty of the circumstance and the scene, and who rush on, admiring all the beauties as they go to take their places in the gay stage-coach.
Fully double the extent of ancient Athens, in its days of greatest splendor--at least, if the calculation of Aristides be correct--London lies in circuit more than one day's journey, and many a day's journey may be taken in the interior, without ever threading the same streets. It would not matter much, therefore, in what corner of the town was placed the coach-office whence, at an early hour of every lawful day, set forth a smart-looking vehicle, drawn by four fiery bays, for a distant town in ----shire; but nevertheless, as it may be a satisfaction to the reader's mind, it is but fair to state, that the aforesaid four-inside light coach took its departure daily from that wild scene of bustle and confusion, which, within the last century or two, has usurped the site of what a modern writer of ancient romance terms "the sweet little village of Charing," and which is now popularly called the Golden Cross, Charing Cross.
As the things that were, are now no more, and even three short years have made sad havoc amidst the brick antiquities of dear Pall Mall, it may not be amiss more particularly to commemorate the appearance--at the time our tale commences--of that agglomeration of street-corners, Charing Cross, from which--on account, I suppose, of its beautiful vagueness--all rogues and insolvent debtors were wont to date their letters. But this commemoration had best be given in describing the effect of the whole upon a young and unsophisticated mind.
From a place that they call a hotel, in Piccadilly--think of a man taking up his abode at a hotel in Piccadilly!--but he knew no better--from a hotel, in Piccadilly, at about half-past five o'clock, on the morning of the last day of August, one thousand eight hundred and something, set out a hackney coach, containing within its sphere of rotten wood, and rusty leather, a small portmanteau on the front seat, and the portmanteau's master on the other. He was a well-made youth, of about five-and-twenty years of age, with firm, graceful, and yet powerful limbs, and a fresh, clear complexion--not villainous red and white, but one general tone of florid health. His eye was blue and bright, and the clustering curls of fair hair--as pure Saxon as Sharon Turner's last new book--might have looked somewhat girlish, had it not been for the manly features and the free, dauntless look that they overshadowed. At the same time, be it remarked that there was something of melancholy, if not of gloom, in his aspect; but that did not prevent him--after the chambermaid had been satisfied, and the waiter had been paid, and boots had had his fees, and the porter had claimed more than his due, and, in short, all the exactions of an inn had been played off upon him in succession--that did not prevent him, when fairly rolling away toward the top of the Haymarket, from gazing out upon the scene around him with a sufficient degree of open-eyed curiosity to make the waterman stick his tongue into his cheek and mentally denominate him "_a raw_."