THE PICKWICK CLUB. 521
distance; when, satisfying themselves that it was only some drunken ne'er-do-weel finding his way home, they covered themselves up warm and fell asleep again.
- ' I am particular in describing how my uncle walked up the middle
of the street with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, gentlemen, because, as he often used to say (and with great reason too) there is nothing at all extraordinary in this story, unless you distinctly under- stand at the beginning, that he was not by any means of a marvellous or romantic turn.
- ' Gentlemen, my uncle walked on with his thumbs in his waistcoat
pockets, taking the middle of the street to himself, and singing now a verse of a love song, and then a verse of a drinking one ; and when he was tired of both, whistling melodiously, until he reached the North Bridge, which at this point connects the old and new towns of Edin- burgh. Here he stopped for a minute to look at the strange irregular clusters of lights piled one above the other, and twinkling afar off so high in the air that they looked like stars gleaming from the castle walls on the one side and the Calton Hill on the other, as if they illuminated veritable castles in the air, while the old picturesque town slept heavily on in gloom and darkness below; its palace and chapel of Holy rood, guarded day and night, as a friend of my uncle's used to say, by old Arthur's Seat, towering, surly and dark like some gruff genius, over the ancient city he has watched so long. I say, gentlemen, my uncle stopped here for a minute to look about him ; and then, paying a compliment to the weather which had a little cleared up, though the moon was sinking, walked on again as royally as before, keeping the middle of the road with great dignity, and looking as if he should very much like to meet with somebody who would dispute possession of it with him. There was nobody at all disposed to contest the point, as it happened ; and so on he went, with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, as peaceable as a lamb.
" When my uncle reached the end of Leith Walk, he had to cross a pretty large piece of waste ground which separated him from a short street which he had to turn down to go direct to his lodging. Now in this piece of waste ground there was at that time an inclosure belong- ing to some wheelwright, who contracted with the Post-office for the purchase of old worn-out mail coaches ; and my uncle being very fond of coaches, old, young, or middle-aged, all at once took it into his head to step out of his road for no other purpose than to peep between the palings at these mails, about a dozen of which he remembered to have seen, crowded together in a very forlorn and dismantled state, inside. My uncle was a very enthusiastic, emphatic sort of person, gentlemen; so, finding that he could not obtain a good peep between the palings, he got over them, and setting himself quietly down on an old axletree, began to contemplate the mail coaches with a great deal of gravity.
" There might be a dozen of them, or there might be more — my uncle was never quite certain upon this point, and being a man of very scrupulous veracity about numbers, didn't like to say — but there they stood, all huddled together in the most desolate condition imaginable. The doors had been torn from their hinges and removed, the linings had
