Johnson's clerks, for you might have seen him going up the second pair; and if he wasn't going to his bed-room what business had he up-stairs at all? So that, though you have been in the house only five minutes, you know all about it as well as if Mortice the builder had lain the plans on the table before you. Well, Johnson won a picture in the _Art-Union_ some time since, and determined to stick it up in the drawing-room, against the wall fronting the windows; so up came the carpenter; and, as the picture was large, away went a ten-penny nail into the wall; and so it did go in, and not only in, but through the wall, for it was only half a brick thick; and, what with repeated hammerings, the bricks became so loose that the picture could not be safely hung there. So it was ordered to be placed against the wall opposite the fireplace--the wall of the next house in fact--and the same operation was going on, when old Mrs Wheedle, the next door neighbour, sent in her compliments to beg that Mr Johnson would have some regard for her hanging bookshelves, the nails of which had been all loosened by his battering-ram, and the books were threatening to fall on her tableful of china--she called it "cheyney"--below. Again, on the other side lives, or rather lodges, Signor Bramante, the celebrated violoncello, and he practises in what he has made the back drawing-room, equivalent to Johnson's best bed; but, the other day, when Smith came up from Birmingham to see Johnson, he could get no sleep for the first half of the night, Bramante having occasion to practise till nearly one o'clock, for the _Stabat Mater_ of next morning's concert. So much for the substantiality of Johnson's town-house. His rooms, too, to our mind, are of bad proportions, and most inconveniently situated; they are so low that it is impossible to ventilate them properly; he has always a flight or two of stairs to go up when he retires to bed, and his servants might as well live in a treadmill, for the quantity of step-treading that they have to perform. There is no possibility of sitting in any one room out of a draft from either door or window, and there is not a single good cupboard in the whole house. As for ornament, there is none outside save the brass-knocker on the street door, for the windows are plain oblong holes in the walls; and, as for the inside, the only attempts at it are the cheap and meagre stucco patterns of the cornices, and the somewhat tawdry designs of the paper-hangings. He pays seventy pounds a-year rent for it, however, and sets himself down as a lucky man, because with his rates, &c., he comes within the hundred.