in the month of February, the days were short, and evening came on
as we reached Hounslow. Brentford I imagined to be London, and was
disappointed to find myself again driven out of town. The lighted
lamps and respectable buildings of Turnham Green made me conclude that
to be the place, or at least the beginning, which Hammersmith did but
confirm; and my surprise, at once more finding myself in a noble road,
still lighted with lamps and with only here and there a house, was
increased.

At Kensington to me London actually began, and I thought myself
hurried nearly through it when the coach stopped at the Gloucester
Coffee-house, in Piccadilly. I had already for miles been driven
through streets, over stones, and never out of sight of houses, and
was astonished to be told that I was now only as it were at the
entrance of London.

The quantity of carriages we had passed, the incessant clattering of
hoofs and rolling of wheels over the pavement, the general buzz
around me, the hurry and animation of the people, and the universal
illumination of streets, houses, and shops, excited ideas which were
new, unexpected, and almost confounding! Imagination conjured up a
mass that was all magnificence! The world till now had to me been
sleeping; here only men were alive! At Oxford indeed, owing to
circumstances, I had felt some similar emotions. But that was a
transient scene that quickly declined into stillness and calm: here I
was told it was everlastingly the same! The mind delighted to revel in
this abundance: it seemed an infinitude, where satiety, its most fatal
and hated enemy, could never come.

I had questions innumerable to ask, and made fifty attempts to get