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Revelations of the Dead Alive. [by J. Banim.]
Revelations of the Dead Alive - by J. Banim. Author:John BANIM General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1824 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV. -- ' Troja fiiit" -- Ovid. Passing through Hanover-square, of which three sides were taken up with shops, I got into -Regent-street. Alas! that theatrical chain of lath and plaister splendour was in utter ruing. Scarcely any of the original houses remained, "and these in rags and patchwork; wind and rain, sun and frost, had done their natural work upon them. I was no longer disagreeably . startled with the inconsistency of a Crispin or a stay-maker, hammering or stitching under a Grecian portico. The ostentatious, misplaced, and, as I could afterwards learn, never-inhabited quadrant, had vanished. Sensible looking- houses, with plain, tradesman-like, brick faces, predominated, and even these were venerable; here and there was a shed. I must remark, in general application to the change that had come over the whole physiognomy of future London, that noblemen's houses, retail shops, agent's offices, and the dwellings of petty gentry, individually bore some resemblance to their real character. You could scarcely confound one with another. They seemed in outside pretension, as distinct as they were in name, nature, and purpose. The only trait of my old Regent-street, that I thought I could now recognize, and even that smoe my soul with something of the horror experienced by Voltaire, at a sight of his old mistress after half a century of separation, was the romantic steeple of the new church I had left unfinished, at the upper end, towards Portland-place. I well remembered its pristine assumption of form, agreeably resembling a thick, clumsy, antique candlestick, with an extinguisher p...« less