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.
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