Now take that picture--compare it with the state of your present domicile--and tell us whether, in effect, the fortalice is not an Eden? What kind of existence do you lead in that Heriot Row house, for which, last year, when shares were up, you were ass enough to pay some two or three thousand pounds? You cannot go into your room after breakfast to write an article for Blackwood, or to draw a condescendence, without hearing every five minutes the dissonance of that ceaseless bell. Not unearned are poor Grizzy's eleemosynary Christmas shoes, for fully one-half of the day is that most weary wight occupied in flitting from the regions beneath to answer the summons which _may_ bring an invitation or a fee, but which, in nine cases out of ten, is the announcement of a gaping creditor. First, in comes a document wafered, according to that beastly practice, which, for the credit of Tyre and Sidon, we hope is a modern invention. _That_, of course, goes into the waste basket without more remark than a passing objurgation. Then follow the prospectuses of three insurance companies, you being nearly ruined already with the amount which you are compelled to pay annually, in virtue of your marriage contract, to the Scottish Widows' Fund. Next appears a long slip, purporting to be the intimation of a police assessment. You swear savagely, having ascertained the fact, by dint of a spirited correspondence in the newspapers, that the available force of that esteemed body in the metropolis of Scotland is not much over a dozen, and having accurate personal corroboration of the statistics by walking the other day into an unmolested bicker, from which you emerged with a broken hat, and a head phrenologised by a blacking bottle. Before you have recovered from this, you receive another missive with a charge for cleaning the streets--an operation which you know, to your cost, has been performed throughout the last thaw exclusively by the petticoats of the females; and upon the back of this appear mulctures touching gas and water. A huge oblong missive, the envelope whereof bears on a corner the letters O. H. M. S., and which is sealed with a most imposing and royal escutcheon, deludes you for a moment into the belief that Lord John Russell has at last exhibited a gleam of common-sense, and has recommended you to her Majesty either for a commissionership or for a reasonable place on the pension list, in consequence of your balaamite contributions to the unsaleable Edinburgh Review. You open it, and behold, it contains nothing but a warning that you have not paid the last quarter of your compounded and thrice confounded income-tax! A gentleman next requests the honour of a moment's interview. In the hope that he may prove a Writer to the Signet, you weakly yield; and incontinently an individual with a strong Israelitish countenance, a fetid breath, and an odour of stale tobacco floating around his person, solicits the honour of your custom for a packet of