wholly in his art, nor will his art have such a hold on him as when he was too poor to transfer its meanest drudgery to others—­too humble to despise aught that had to do with the object of his glory and his pride, with that on which all his projects of ambition or pleasure were founded.  “Entire affection scorneth nicer hands.”  When the professor is above this mechanical part of his business, it may have become a stalking-horse to other worldly schemes, but is no longer his hobby-horse and the delight of his inmost thoughts—­

  “His shame in crowds, his solitary pride!”

I used sometimes to hurry through this part of my occupation, while the Letter-Bell (which was my dinner-bell) summoned me to the fraternal board, where youth and hope

  “Made good digestion wait on appetite
  And health on both”—­

or oftener I put it off till after dinner, that I might loiter longer and with more luxurious indolence over it, and connect it with the thoughts of my next day’s labours.

The dustman’s-bell, with its heavy, monotonous noise, and the brisk, lively tinkle of the muffin-bell, have something in them, but not much.  They will bear dilating upon with the utmost license of inventive prose.  All things are not alike conductors to the imagination.  A learned Scotch professor found fault with an ingenious friend and arch-critic for cultivating a rookery on his grounds:  the professor declared “he would as soon think of encouraging a froggery.”  This was barbarous as it was senseless.  Strange that a country that has produced the Scotch Novels and Gertrude of Wyoming should want sentiment!

The postman’s double-knock at the door the next morning is “more germain to the matter.”  How that knock often goes to the heart!  We distinguish to a nicety the arrival of the Two-penny or the General Post.  The summons of the latter is louder and heavier, as bringing news from a greater distance, and as, the longer it has been delayed, fraught with a deeper interest.  We catch the sound of what is to be paid—­eightpence, ninepence, a shilling—­and our hopes generally rise with the postage.  How we are provoked at the delay in getting change—­at the servant who does not hear the door!  Then if the postman passes, and we do not hear the expected knock, what a pang is there!  It is like the silence of death—­of hope!  We think he does it on purpose, and enjoys all the misery of our suspense.  I have sometimes walked out to see the Mail-Coach pass, by which I had sent a letter, or to meet it when I expected one.  I never see a Mail-Coach, for this reason, but I look at it as the bearer of glad tidings—­the messenger of fate.  I have reason to say so.—­The finest sight in the metropolis is that of the Mail-Coaches setting off from Piccadilly.  The horses paw the ground, and are impatient to be gone, as if conscious of the precious burden they convey.  There is a peculiar secresy and despatch, significant and full