 of Nature, which
reveals to the possessor the hidden spirits of beauty round about him! spirits
which the strongest and most gifted masters compel into painting or song. To
others it is granted but to have fleeting glimpses of that fair Art world, and
tempted by ambition, or barred by faint-heartedness, or driven by necessity, to
turn away thence to the vulgar life-track, and the light of common day.
    The reader who has passed through Walpole Street scores of times knows the
discomfortable architecture of all, save the great houses built in Queen Anne's
and George the First's time; and while some of the neighbouring streets - to
wit, Great Craggs Street, Bolingbroke Street, and others - contain mansions
fairly coped with stone, with little obelisks before the doors, and great
extinguishers wherein the torches of the nobility's running footmen were put out
a hundred and thirty or forty years ago - houses which still remain abodes of
the quality, and where you shall see a hundred carriages gather of a public
night - Walpole Street has quite faded away into lodgings, private hotels,
doctors' houses, and the like; nor is No. 23 (Ridley's) by any means the best
house in the street. The parlour, furnished and tenanted by Miss Cann, as has
been described; the first floor, -- Bagshot, Esq., M.P.; the second floor,
Honeyman: what remains but the garrets, and the ample staircase and the
kitchens? and the family being all put to bed, how can you imagine there is room
for any more inhabitants?
    And yet there is one lodger more, and one who, like almost all the other
personages mentioned up to the present time (and some of whom you have no idea
yet), will play a definite part in the ensuing history. At night, when Honeyman
comes in, he finds on the hall table three wax bedroom candles - his own,
Bagshot's, and another. As for Miss Cann, she is locked into the parlour in bed
long ago, her stout little walking-shoes being on the mat at the door. At 12
o'clock at noon, sometimes at 1, nay at 2 and 3 - long after Bagshot has gone to
his committees, and little Cann to her pupils - a voice issues from the very
topmost floor, from a room where there is no bell; a voice of thunder calling
out, »Slavey! Julia! Julia, my love! Mrs. Ridley!« And this summons not being
obeyed, it
