gratified or in any way roused, by the accuracy
of my recollection, but said, Yes, summut out of
the common—he didn't remember how many it
was (as if half a dozen babes either way made
no difference)—had happened to a Mrs. What's-
her-name, as once lodged there—but he didn't
call it to mind, particular. Nettled by this
phlegmatic conduct, I informed him that I had
left the town when I was a child. He slowly
returned, quite unsoftened and not without a
sarcastic kind of complacency, Had I? Ah!
And did I find it had got on tolerable well with-
out me? Such is the difference (I thought,
when I had left him a few hundred yards behind,
and was by so much in a better temper) between
going away from a place and remaining in it.
had no right, I reflected, to be angry with the
greengrocer for his want of interest. I was
nothing to him: whereas he was the town, the
cathedral, the bridge, the river, my childhood,
and a large slice of my life, to me.

Of course the town had shrunk fearfully, since
I was a child there. I had entertained the
impression that the High-street was at least as
wide as Regent-street, London, or the Italian
Boulevard at Paris. I found it little better than
a lane. There was a public clock in it, which I
had supposed to be the finest clock in the world;
whereas it now turned out to be as inexpressive,
moon-faced, and weak a clock as ever I saw. It
belonged to a Town Hall, where I had seen an
Indian (who I now suppose wasn't an Indian)
swallow a sword (which I now suppose he
didn't). This edifice had appeared to me in
those days so glorious a structure, that I had set
it up in my mind as the model on which the
Genie of the Lamp built the palace for Aladdin.
A mean little brick heap, like a demented
chapel, with a few yawning persons in leather
gaiters, and in the last extremity for something
to do, lounging at the door with their hands in
their pockets, and calling themselves a Corn
Exchange!

The Theatre was in existence, I found, on
asking the fishmonger, who had a compact show
of stock in his window, consisting of a sole and
a quart of shrimps—and I resolved to comfort
my mind by going to look at it. Richard the
Third, in a very uncomfortable cloak, had first
appeared to me there, and had made my heart
leap with terror by backing up against the stage-
box in which I was posted, while struggling for
life against the virtuous Richmond. It was
within those walls that I had learnt, as from
a page of English history, how that wicked
King slept in war-time on a sofa much too
short for him, and how fearfully his conscience
troubled his boots. There, too, had I first seen
the funny countryman, but countryman of noble
principles in a flowered waistcoat, crunch up his
little hat and throw it on the ground, and pull
off his coat, saying "Dom thee, squire, coom on
with thy fistes then!" At which the lovely young
woman who kept company with him (and who
went out gleaning, in a narrow white muslin
apron with five beautiful bars of five different
coloured ribbons across it) was so frightened for
his sake, that she fainted away. Many
wondrous secrets of Nature had I come to the
knowledge of in that sanctuary: of which not the least
terrific were, that the witches in Macbeth bore
an awful resemblance to the Thanes and other
proper inhabitants of Scotland; and that the good
King Duncan couldn't rest in his grave, but was
constantly coming out of it, and calling himself
somebody else. To the Theatre, therefore, I
repaired for consolation. But I found very
little, for it was in a bad and a declining way.
A dealer in wine and bottled beer had already
squeezed his trade into the box-office, and the
theatrical money was taken—when it came—in
a kind of meat-safe in the passage. The dealer
in wine and bottled beer must have insinuated
himself under the stage too; for he announced
that he had various descriptions of alcoholic drinks
"in the wood," and there was no possible stowage
for the wood anywhere else. Evidently, he was
by degrees eating the establishment away to the
core, and would soon have sole possession of it.
It was To Let, and hopelessly so, for its old
purposes; and there had been no entertainment
within its walls for a long time, except a Panorama;
and even that had been announced as
"pleasingly instructive," and I knew too well
the fatal meaning and the leaden import of those
terrible expressions. No, there was no comfort
in the Theatre. It was mysteriously gone, like
my own youth. Unlike my own youth, it might
be coming back some day; but there was little
promise of it.

As the town was placarded with references to
the Dullborough Mechanics' Institution, I
thought I would go and look at that establishment
next. There had been no such thing in the
town, in my young day, and it occurred to me that
its extreme prosperity might have brought adversity
upon the Drama. I found the Institution with
some difficulty, and should scarcely have known
that I had found it if I had judged from its
external appearance only; but this was attributable
to its never having been finished, and having no
front: consequently, it led a modest and retired
existence up a stable-yard. It was (as I learnt, on
inquiry) a most flourishing Institution, and of
the highest benefit to the town: two triumphs
which I was glad to understand were not at all
impaired by the seeming drawbacks that no
mechanics belonged to it, and that it was steeped
in debt to the chimney-pots. It had a large
room, which was approached by an infirm step-
ladder: the builder having declined to construct
the intended staircase, without a present
payment in cash, which Dullborough (though so
profoundly appreciative of the Institution)
seemed unaccountably bashful about subscribing.
The large room had cost—or would, when
paid for—five hundred pounds; and it had
more mortar in it and more echoes, than one
might have expected to get for the money. It
was fitted up with a platform, and the usual
lecturing tools, including a large black board
of a menacing appearance. On referring to
lists of the courses of lectures that had been
given in this thriving Hall, I fancied I detected a