Well, go on down this Stangate-street, and when you get to the bottom, you will find, on the left-hand, THE BOWER! And a pretty bower it is, not of leaves and flowers, but of bricks and mortar. It is not
“A bower of roses by Bendermere’s stream,
With the nightingale singing there all the day long;
In the days of my childhood ’twas like a sweet dream,
To sit ’mid the roses and hear the birds’ song.
That bower, and its music, I never forget:
But oft, when alone, at the close of the year,
I think is the nightingale singing there yet,
Are the roses still fresh by the calm Bendermere?”
No, there is none of this sentimental twaddle about the Bower to which we are alluding. There are no roses, and no nightingale; but there are lots of smoking, and plenty of vocalists. We will paraphrase Moore, since we can hardly do less, and we may say, with truth,