rent to me that my new friend was a confirmed Rogue.
For opening of the Eyes there is nothing like having spent all your
money. I gave him a shilling, however, out of my three and sixpence, and
crossed London Bridge to see if I could find better luck on the
Middlesex side, determined, if nothing offered itself during the day, to
ask my way to the Barracks at the Savoy and list for a Soldier. I
amused myself as I walked, with the thought that chance might so bring
it about for the Sergeant who would give me the King's shilling to be
the selfsame grenadier whose sconce I had broken years agone in
Charlwood Chase with the Demijohn of Brandy.

I had heard, as most Ignoramuses have done, I suppose, that London
Streets are paved with Gold; and I found 'em as Muddy, as Stony, and as
Hardhearted as I dare say they have been discovered by ten thousand
Ignoramuses before my time to be. I was quite dazed and stupified with
the noise and uproar of the Great City, the more perplexing to me as I
was not only a Stranger, but almost a Foreigner and Outlandish Man in
Great Britain. I could speak my own tongue well enough with Parson Hodge
and Mr. Pinchin, but when it came to be clamoured all around me by
innumerable voices, I a'most lost heart, and gave up the notion that I
was an Englishman at all. It must be confessed, that half a century
since we English were a very Blackguard People, and that London was
about the most disreputable city in all Europe. There were few public
buildings of any great note or of Majestic Proportions, save St. Paul's
Cathedral, the Monument, and the Banqueting House at Whitehall. The
Mansion House and the Bank of England were not yet built, and between
them and the Royal Exchange (the which, noble enough in itself, was girt
about, and choked up with Shops and Tenements exceeding mean and
shabby), was a nasty, rubbishing, faint-smelling place, full of
fruiterers and herbalists, called the Stocks Market. The crazy and
rotten City Gates blocked up the chief thoroughfares, and across the
bottom of Ludgate Hill yawned a marvellous foul and filthy open sewer,
rich in dead dogs and cats, called the Fleet Ditch. This street was fair
enough, and full of commodious houses and wealthy shops, but all about
Temple Bar was a vile and horrid labyrinth of lanes and alleys, the
chief and the most villanous of which was a place full of tripe shops
and low taverns, called Butcher Row, leading from the Bar down to the
Churchya