The habits of this amiable family were to the full as unassuming as their manners. They dined at one o’clock, with the exception of Sundays, when the discussion of roast, or boiled, was, for fashion’s sake, adjourned to five; took tea at six; supped at nine; and retired to rest at ten. The Sabbath, however, was a day not less of fashion than of luxury. The young folks--Thomas, especially, who was growing, and wanted nourishment--were then indulged with two glasses of port wine after dinner; and, at tea-time, were made happy in the privilege of a “blow out” with one or more friendly neighbours. Once every year they went half-price to the Christmas pantomimes, a memorable epoch, which never failed to deprive them of sleep, and disorganize their nervous system for at least a fortnight beforehand. Such were the habits of the Spimkins’ family, a family rich, respectable, and orderly, until the March of Mind, which our modern philosophers are striving so hard to expedite, reduced them from wealth to poverty; and, from having been the pride, compelled them to become the pity of Crutched-Friars. Every one must remember the strange, bewildering enthusiasm excited by Sir Walter Scott’s first appearance as a novelist. All the world was Scott-struck. His songs were set to music; fair hands painted fire-screens from his incidents; playwrights dramatized his heroes; and even the great Mr. Alderman Dobbs himself was so enraptured with his descriptions of Highland scenery, that he actually took an inside place in the Inverness mail, in order, as he shrewdly remarked, “to judge for himself with his own eyes”--a feat which he would infallibly have accomplished, but for two reasons; first, that the coach passed the most picturesque part of the Highlands in the night-time; secondly that the worthy alderman himself fell fast asleep during the best part of his journey. He returned home, however, as might have been expected, in ecstacies. Among the number of those who caught this poetic influenza in its most alarming form, were the two Misses Spinks, daughters of Mr. Common-Council Spinks, once a mighty man on’ Change, but who had lately retired from business to enjoy life, alternately at his town house in Crutched-Friars, and his charming summer villa at Newington Butts, near the Montpellier Tea Gardens. As these young ladies lived next door to Mr. Spimkins, and cultivated the gentilities of society--a little neutralized, perhaps, by the circumstance of their indulging in certain pleonastic peculiarities of aspiration, by virtue of which the substantive “air” would be accommodated with an _h_, and the adverb “very” be transformed into a _wherry_--it may reasonably be inferred that they were much looked up to by their neighbours. The Misses Spimkins, in particular, took pattern by them in all things. They were the standards by which, in secret, they regulated their demeanor--the mirror in which they longed to see themselves at full-length reflected.