In the streets through which we passed, I must own the houses in general struck me as if they were dark and gloomy, and yet at the same time they also struck me as prodigiously great and majestic.

As I passed along the side walls of Westminster Abbey, I hardly saw any thing but marble monuments of great admirals, but which were all too much loaded with finery and ornaments, to make on me at least, the intended impression.

A pedestrian seems in this country to be a sort of beast of passage - stared at, pitied, suspected and shunned by everyone who meets him ... Every passing coachman called out to me: "Do you want to ride on the outside?" If I met only a farm worker on a horse he would say to me companionably "Warm walking sir," and when I passed through a village the old women in their bewilderment would let out a "God Almighty!

All over London as one walks, one everywhere, in the season, sees oranges to sell; and they are in general sold tolerably cheap, one and even sometimes two for a halfpenny; or, in our money, threepence.

Every view, and every object I studied attentively, by viewing them again and again on every side, for I was anxious to make a lasting impression of it on my imagination.

I now resolved to go to bed early, with a firm purpose of also rising early the next day to revisit this charming walk; for I thought to myself, I have now seen this temple of the modern world imperfectly; I have seen it only by moonlight.

On a very gloomy dismal day, just such a one as it ought to be, I went to see Westminster Abbey.