NIGHT is generally my time for walking. In the summer
I often leave home early in the morning, and roam about
fields and lanes all day, or even escape for days or weeks
together, but saving in the country I seldom go out until
after dark, though, Heaven be thanked, I love its light and
feel the cheerfulness it sheds upon the earth, as much as
any creature living.

I have fallen insensibly into this habit, both because it
favours my infirmity and because it affords me greater
opportunity of speculating on the characters and occupa-
tions of those who fill the streets. The glare and hurry
of broad noon are not adapted to idle pursuits like mine;
a glimpse of passing faces caught by the light of a street
lamp or a shop window is often better for my purpose than
their full revelation in the daylight, and, if I must add the
truth, night is kinder in this respect than day, which too
often destroys an air-built castle at the moment of its
completion, without the smallest ceremony or remorse.

That constant pacing to and fro, that never-ending
restlessness, that incessant tread of feet wearing the rough
stones smooth and glossy--is it not a wonder how the
dwellers in narrow ways can bear to hear it! Think of a
sick man in such a place as Saint Martin's Court, listen-
ing to the footsteps, and in the midst of pain and weariness
obliged, despite himself (as though it were a task he must
perform) to detect the child's step from the man's, the
slipshod beggar from the booted exquisite, the lounging
from the busy, the dull heel of the sauntering outcast from
the quick tread of an expectant pleasure-seeker--think of
the hum and noise being always present to his senses, and
of the stream of life that will not stop, pouring on, on, on,
through all his restless dreams, as if he were condemned
to lie dead but conscious, in a noisy churchyard, and had
no hope of rest for centuries to come.

Then the crowds for ever passing and repassing on the

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