Chapter 32

CHAPTER 32

Relating chiefly to some remarkable Conversation, and some
remarkable Proceedings to which it gives rise

'London at last!' cried Nicholas, throwing back his greatcoat and
rousing Smike from a long nap. 'It seemed to me as though we should
never reach it.'

'And yet you came along at a tidy pace too,' observed the coachman,
looking over his shoulder at Nicholas with no very pleasant
expression of countenance.

'Ay, I know that,' was the reply; 'but I have been very anxious to
be at my journey's end, and that makes the way seem long.'

'Well,' remarked the coachman, 'if the way seemed long with such
cattle as you've sat behind, you MUST have been most uncommon
anxious;' and so saying, he let out his whip-lash and touched up a
little boy on the calves of his legs by way of emphasis.

They rattled on through the noisy, bustling, crowded street of
London, now displaying long double rows of brightly-burning lamps,
dotted here and there with the chemists' glaring lights, and
illuminated besides with the brilliant flood that streamed from the
windows of the shops, where sparkling jewellery, silks and velvets
of the richest colours, the most inviting delicacies, and most
sumptuous articles of luxurious ornament, succeeded each other in
rich and glittering profusion. Streams of people apparently without
end poured on and on, jostling each other in the crowd and hurrying
forward, scarcely seeming to notice the riches that surrounded them
on every side; while vehicles of all shapes and makes, mingled up
together in one moving mass, like running water, lent their
ceaseless roar to swell the noise and tumult.

As they dashed by the quickly-changing and ever-varying objects, it
was curious to observe in what a strange procession they passed
before the eye. Emporiums of splendid dresses, the materials
brought from every quarter of the world; tempting stores of
everything to stimulate and pamper the sated appetite and give new
relish to the oft-repeated feast; vessels of burnished gold and
silver, wrought into every exquisite form of vase, and dish, and
goblet; guns, swords, pistols, and patent engines of destruction;
screws and irons for the crooked, clothes for the newly-born, drugs
for the sick, coffins for the dead, and churchyards for the buried--
all these jumbled each with the other and flocking side by side,
seemed to flit by in motley dance like the fantastic groups of the
old Dutch painter, and with the same stern moral for the unheeding
restless crowd.

Nor were there wanting objects in the crowd itself to give new point
and purpose to the shifting scene. The rags of the squalid ballad-
singer fluttered in the rich light that showed the goldsmith's