But on the whole, we have fairly made the experiment _in propriâ personâ_; we have weighed well friend Johnson's castellated independence, and _l'ami_ Dubois's social contiguation;--and, rent for rent, we prefer the latter. If we must live with two neighbours within a few feet of us, we would rather have one under us on the ground floor, and one above us on the second, and ourselves in the midst on the first, and all three clubbing together to live in a little palazzo:--we would rather have this, than be crammed in between Mr A and Mr B, each of us in a third or fourth rate kind of house, with poor thin walls, small low rooms, dirty areas, melancholy gardens, shabby-genteel fronts, ugly backs, and little comfort. It may be said, and justly, that the idea of a man living in his own castle is applicable only to that state of society when large towns do not exist, inasmuch as the idea can be nothing more than an idea, and can hardly ever approach to a reality, the moment men begin to congregate themselves together in cities. Doubtless, it is indispensable to all our notions of comfort, and of the due independence of social life--it is, indeed, one of the main elements of the constitution of a family, that a certain degree of isolation should be maintained and respected; but we submit to the candid observer, that the only difference between English cities and continental ones in this respect is, that Englishmen aim at "horizontal" independence, foreigners at "vertical." Englishmen form their line of location every man shoulder to shoulder, or rather, elbows in ribs; foreigners mostly get upon one another's backs and heads, and form a living pyramid like the clown and boys at Astley's. By this arrangement, however, it comes to pass, that for the same number of inhabitants much more ground is occupied by an English than by a continental town; and also, that each single dwelling is of mean, or, at the most, moderate architectural appearance, the great condition of elevation being wanting, and the power of ornamentation being generally kept closely under by the limitation of each individual's pecuniary resources. Practically, we contend, there is quite as much comfort (we think, indeed, in many cases more) in the continental manner of arranging houses as in the English one: while the former allows of and encourages architectural display, and indeed requires a much more solid system of construction; but the latter leads to the running up of cheap, slight, shabby-genteel houses, and represses all attempts at external ornament as superfluous from its expense. Upon this subject, we appeal to the experience of all who have dwelt for any length of time on the Continent, not to those who merely run across the water for six weeks or so, and come back as blind as they went; but rather to those who have given themselves time and opportunity enough for the film of national prejudice to wear away from before their eyes,