of bricks offers every element of felicity for a
whole town-load of small families. I can
fancy the lilac and geranium and mignonette,
smelling sweetly in the little front gardens;
lusty cabbages and bold-faced cauliflowers
in the back ditto; jocund young butchers
pulling their fast-trotting ponies short up
opposite the street doors; insinuating bakers,
whispering flowery nothings to rosy cooks at
the area railings; smiling tax collectors,
with fat little red books, knocking at all
the doors and never having to knock twice;
pleasant caps and ribbons enshrining pretty
matron's faces at the first-floor windows;
virtuous tenants, with salaries varying from
one hundred to two hundred and fifty pounds
a year, working very hard all day in London,
then hastening by the rail to their
well-beloved Brick-Edens at Dumbledowndeary;
the pavement checquered with parasols,
chubby legs, go-carts, and little dogs; little
masters and misses, preternaturally inducted
into the mysteries of Bradshaw and railway
time-bills, and knowing to a second what
time papa's train is due; a pleasant odour of
baby, and flowers, and home, and dinner ready
precisely at half-past five o'clock. I can fancy
all these things, I say; but——

But! ah, fatal word! ah, woeful pivot on
which all things human turn! Nobody lives
alas, in these pretty little houses; there is no
population for these cleanly, fresh-coloured,
airy little streets and terraces. The surveyor's
ban, the anathema maranatha of the house-
agent is upon them all. "These Houses are
to be Let or Sold;" and nobody comes to hire
or to purchase them. The cosy little windows
are besmeared with the dread announcement
in whitewash; rude bills to the same effect
are posted on the street doors; tall posts with
placards, like gibbets, rear their ugly heads
where rose-trees and laburnum ought to grow.
Dumbledowndeary is a Town to Let.

No butchers pull up their fast-trotting
ponies, no bakers whisper flowery nothings;
for there are no joints to be ordered, and no
loaves to be delivered. Spikes are useless to
the posts, for there are no boys to "over" them.
The foot-pavement is a work of supererogation,
for there are no passengers to tread
it; the tramps and agricultural labourers
preferring to walk in the road. There are
no nursemaids, and no babies to nurse;
no youthful students of railway time-bills:
for there is no papa's train due.
Dumbledowndeary is another name for desolation.
The spider has not woven her web, nor does
the owl shriek through these deserted halls,
as the Eastern poet informs us they were
in the habit of doing, abroad; but there is
desolation, notwithstanding. Next to a house
long inhabited and then deserted; a house
never tenanted, almost new, yet old in soli-
tude, is the most melancholy house I know.
The mortar scarcely dried, the paper on the
walls yet fresh, the fire-places unconscious of
fire, the chimneys innocent of smoke, the
staircases untrodden by domesticated feet, the
bed-rooms unslept in, the dining-rooms
undined in, the doors into which no bride has
entered, out of which no coffin has passed:
the house unsanctified by the smiles and tears,
the pickles and preserves, the sweets and sours,
that go to make up the leaven of humanity.
And yet to be let or sold, year after year,
with nobody to bid! Such is Dumbledowndeary.
Unless somebody comes to take it, it
will fall to ruin through sheer desuetude.
An uncut cheese will grow musty; the dress
too long secluded in a drawer will become
motheaten. The whitewash must be effaced
from its window-panes, the bills torn down,
the ugly gibbets levelled. Even a succession
of bad tenants, running away on the eve of
quarter-day without paying their rent, and
carrying off the lead piping and brass
door-handles with them, would be better than,
none. They would be something in the way
of a house-warming. They would oil the
hinges of the area-gates, and refresh the
knockers and bells. They would brush up
the front gardens (even though the flowers
were never paid for), and take from them the
doleful aspect they have now— an aspect
generally resembling a portion of a
stonemason's yard run to seed in a pigless pigstye,
littered with fragments of scaffold-poles, chips
of dried mortar, broken brickbats, clay pipes
of by-gone bricklayers, strands of decayed
ropes, and the ghost of a trowel.

The truth is, that the good people of
Dumbledowndeary have, in the articles of
bricks, houses, and tenants to inhabit them,
occupied themselves rather too much with the
question of supply, without quite enough
regarding the question of demand. Seduced by
the mammoth London up the line, and the
smaller, but still vigorous leviathan in minia-
ture, Gravesend, down the line; dazzled by
Greenwich, getting bigger and bigger every
day; forgetful of the ominous example of that
city of unfulfilled promises, Herne Bay; they
have dabbled in houses as stock-jobbers dabble
in shares. They have projected streets with
people to inhabit them, as, during the railway
mania, lines were projected to carry
passengers where there were no passengers to
be carried, and to traffic where there was
no commerce. They would have a metropolis
when, as yet, their ancient village had no
suburbs. They would build their Home in
half a day. They have laid out their capital
in bricks, and seem to draw but sorry interest
(to say nothing of a bonus) therefrom. There
is not a door-knocker in this wo-begone little
town to let, but what seems to me muffled
in bank-notes. The deserted parlours are
papered with transfer tickets. The
stair-carpets (where there are any) should be of
Exchequer Bills. The whole town seems to
me one grim brick mausoleum of dead capital
—a tomb erected to the sinking funds of
Dumbledowndeary.

If the Dumbledowndereans had looked