 If he
could not get a good dinner, he sate down to a bad one with perfect contentment;
if he could not procure the company of witty or great or beautiful persons, he
put up with any society that came to hand; and was perfectly satisfied in a
tavern parlour or on board a Greenwich steamboat, or in a jaunt to Hampstead
with Mr. Finucane, his colleague at the Pall Mall Gazette; or in a visit to the
summer theatres across the river, or to the Royal Gardens of Vauxhall, where he
was on terms of friendship with the great Simpson, and where he shook the
principal comic singer or the lovely equestrian of the arena by the hand. And
while he could watch the grimaces or the graces of these with a satiric humour
that was not deprived of sympathy, he could look on with an eye of kindness at
the lookers-on too - at the roistering youth bent upon enjoyment, and here
taking it; at the honest parents, with their delighted children laughing and
clapping their hands at the show; at the poor outcasts, whose laughter was less
innocent though perhaps louder, and who brought their shame and their youth
here, to dance and be merry till the dawn at least, and to get bread and drown
care. Of this sympathy with all conditions of men Arthur often boasted; he was
pleased to possess it; and said that he hoped thus to the last he should retain
it. As another man has an ardour for art, or music, or natural science, Mr. Pen
said that anthropology was his favourite pursuit, and had his eyes always
eagerly open to its infinite varieties and beauties - contemplating with an
unfailing delight all specimens of it in all places to which he resorted,
whether it was the coquetting of a wrinkled dowager in a ball-room, or a
high-bred young beauty blushing in her prime there; whether it was a hulking
guardsman coaxing a servant-girl in the Park, or innocent little Tommy that was
feeding the ducks whilst the nurse listened. And indeed a man, whose heart is
pretty clean, can indulge in this pursuit with an enjoyment that never ceases,
and is only perhaps the more keen because it is secret, and has a touch of
sadness in it - because he is of his mood and humour lonely, and apart although
not alone.
    Yes, Pen used to brag and talk in his impetuous way to Warrington. »I was in
love so fiercely in my youth that I have burned out that flame for ever, I
think; and if ever I marry, it will be a
