At Length We Arrived At The Magnificent Bridge Of Westminster.
The
prospect from this bridge alone seems to afford one the epitome of a
journey, or a voyage in miniature, as containing something of
everything that mostly occurs on a journey.
It is a little
assemblage of contrasts and contrarieties. In contrast to the
round, modern, and majestic cathedral of St. Paul's on your right,
the venerable, old-fashioned, and hugely noble, long abbey of
Westminster, with its enormous pointed roof, rises on the left.
Down the Thames to the right you see Blackfriar's Bridge, which does
not yield much, if at all, in beauty to that of Westminster; on the
left bank of the Thames are delightful terraces, planted with trees,
and those new tasteful buildings called the Adelphi. On the Thames
itself are countless swarms of little boats passing and repassing,
many with one mast and one sail, and many with none, in which
persons of all ranks are carried over. Thus there is hardly less
stir and bustle on this river, than there is in some of its own
London's crowded streets. Here, indeed, you no longer see great
ships, for they come no farther than London Bridge
We now drove into the city by Charing Cross, and along the Strand,
to those very Adelphi Buildings which had just afforded us so
charming a prospect on Westminster Bridge.
My two travelling companions, both in the ship and the post-chaise,
were two young Englishmen, who living in this part of the town,
obligingly offered me any assistance and services in their power,
and in particular, to procure me a lodging the same day in their
neighbourhood.
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.
At that moment, I could not in my own mind compare the external view
of London with that of any other city I had ever before seen. But I
remember (and surely it is singular) that about five years ago, on
my first entrance into Leipzig, I had the very same sensations I now
felt. It is possible that the high houses, by which the streets at
Leipzig are partly darkened, the great number of shops, and the
crowd of people, such as till then I had never seen, might have some
faint resemblance with the scene now surrounding me in London.
There are everywhere leading from the Strand to the Thames, some
well-built, lesser, or subordinate streets, of which the Adelphi
Buildings are now by far the foremost. One district in this
neighbourhood goes by the name of York Buildings, and in this lies
George Street, where my two travelling companions lived. There
reigns in those smaller streets towards the Thames so pleasing a
calm, compared to the tumult and bustle of people, and carriages,
and horses, that are constantly going up and down the Strand, that
in going into one of them you can hardly help fancying yourself
removed at a distance from the noise of the city, even whilst the
noisiest part of it is still so near at hand.
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