Pears' legendary soap, and of Eno's fruit salt, which, by sheer

brass and notoriety, and the most disgusting pictures I ever

remember to have seen, has overlaid that comforter of my childhood,

Lamplough's pyretic saline. Lamplough was genteel, Eno was

omnipresent; Lamplough was trite, Eno original and abominably

vulgar; and here have I, a man of some pretensions to knowledge of

the world, contented myself with half a sheet of note-paper, a few

cold words which do not directly address the imagination, and the

adornment (if adornment it may be called) of four red wafers! Am

I, then, to sink with Lamplough, or to soar with Eno? Am I to

adopt that modesty which is doubtless becoming in a duke? or to

take hold of the red facts of life with the emphasis of the

tradesman and the poet?'

Pursuant upon these meditations, he procured several sheets of the

very largest size of drawing-paper; and laying forth his paints,

proceeded to compose an ensign that might attract the eye, and at

the same time, in his own phrase, directly address the imagination

of the passenger. Something taking in the way of colour, a good,

savoury choice of words, and a realistic design setting forth the

life a lodger might expect to lead within the walls of that palace

of delight: these, he perceived, must be the elements of his

advertisement. It was possible, upon the one hand, to depict the

sober pleasures of domestic life, the evening fire, blond-headed

urchins and the hissing urn; but on the other, it was possible (and

he almost felt as if it were more suited to his muse) to set forth

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