Chapter 25

IN THE CITY OF DIS.

At the end of his brickmaking, our adventurer found himself with a
tolerable suit of clothes--somewhat darned--on his back, several
blood-blisters in his palms, and some verdigris coppers in his pocket.
Forthwith, to seek his fortune, he proceeded on foot to the capital,
entering, like the king, from Windsor, from the Surrey side.

It was late on a Monday morning, in November--a Blue Monday--a Fifth of
November--Guy Fawkes' Day!--very blue, foggy, doleful and gunpowdery,
indeed, as shortly will be seen, that Israel found himself wedged in
among the greatest everyday crowd which grimy London presents to the
curious stranger: that hereditary crowd--gulf-stream of humanity--which,
for continuous centuries, has never ceased pouring, like an endless
shoal of herring, over London Bridge.

At the period here written of, the bridge, specifically known by that
name, was a singular and sombre pile, built by a cowled monk--Peter of
Colechurch--some five hundred years before. Its arches had long been
crowded at the sides with strange old rookeries of disproportioned and
toppling height, converting the bridge at once into the most densely
occupied ward and most jammed thoroughfare of the town, while, as the
skulls of bullocks are hung out for signs to the gateways of shambles,
so the withered heads and smoked quarters of traitors, stuck on pikes,
long crowned the Southwark entrance.

Though these rookeries, with their grisly heraldry, had been pulled down
some twenty years prior to the present visit, still enough of grotesque
and antiquity clung to the structure at large to render it the most
striking of objects, especially to one like our hero, born in a virgin
clime, where the only antiquities are the forever youthful heavens and
the earth.

On his route from Brentford to Paris, Israel had passed through the
capital, but only as a courier; so that now, for the first time, he had
time to linger, and loiter, and lounge--slowly absorb what he
saw--meditate himself into boundless amazement. For forty years he never
recovered from that surprise--never, till dead, had done with his
wondering.

Hung in long, sepulchral arches of stone, the black, besmoked bridge
seemed a huge scarf of crape, festooning the river across. Similar
funeral festoons spanned it to the west, while eastward, towards the
sea, tiers and tiers of jetty colliers lay moored, side by side, fleets
of black swans.

The Thames, which far away, among the green fields of Berks, ran clear
as a brook, here, polluted by continual vicinity to man, curdled on
between rotten wharves, one murky sheet of sewerage. Fretted by the
ill-built piers, awhile it crested and hissed, then shot balefully
through