VII. PAPA AND MAMMA 133

our late arrivals¹); fancy the change from this, to high mass in Rouen Cathedral, its nave filled by the white-capped peasantry of half Normandy!

Nor was the contrast less enchanting or marvellous between the street architecture familiar to my eyes, and that of Flanders and Italy, as an exposition of mercantile taste and power. My father’s counting-house was in the centre of Billiter Street, some years since effaced from sight and memory of men, but a type, then, of English city state in perfection. We now build house fronts as advertisements, spending a hundred thousand pounds in the lying mask of our bankruptcies. But in my father’s time both trade and building were still honest. His counting-house was a room about fifteen feet by twenty, including desks for two clerks, and a small cupboard for sherry samples, on the first floor, with a larger room opposite for private polite receptions of elegant visitors, or the serving of a chop for himself if he had to stay late in town. The ground floor was occupied by friendly Messrs. Wardell and Co., a bottling retail firm, I believe. The only advertisement of the place of business was the brass plate under the bell-handle, inscribed “Ruskin, Telford, and Domecq,” brightly scrubbed by the single female servant in charge of the establishment, old Maisie,-abbreviated or tenderly diminished into the “sie,” from I know not what Christian name- Marion, I believe, as Mary into Mause. The whole house, three-storied, with garrets, was under her authority, with, doubtless, assistant morning charwoman,-cooking, waiting, and answering the door to distinguished visitors, all done by Maisie, the visitors being expected of course to announce themselves by the knocker with a flourish in proportion to their eminence in society. The business men rang the counting-house bell aforesaid, (round which the many coats of annual paint were cut into a beautiful slant section by daily scrubbing, like the coats of an agate;) and were

¹ [See above, p. 72.]

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