About the year 1822 I resided in a comfortable and roomy old house, the exact locality of which I need not particularise, further than to say that it was not very far from Old Brompton, in the immediate neighbourhood, or rather continuity (as even my Connemara readers perfectly well know), of the renowned city of London. Though this house was roomy and comfortable, as I have said, it was not, by any means, a handsome one. It was composed of dark red brick, with small windows, and thick white sashes; a porch, too-none of your flimsy trellis-work, but a solid projection of the same vermillion masonry-surmounted by a leaded balcony, with heavy, half-rotten balustrades, darkened the hall-door with a perennial gloom.