nd from the Exchange to the Strand; and therefore it is quite
pardonable if he, when a poor German poet, gazing into a print-shop
window, stands bolt in his way on the corner of Cheapside, should knock
the latter sideways with a rather rough "God damn!"

But the picture at which I was gazing as I stood at Cheapside corner was
that of the French crossing the Beresina.

And when I, jolted out of my gazing, looked again on the raging street,
where a parti-colored coil of men, women, and children, horses,
stagecoaches, and with them a funeral, whirled groaning and creaking
along, it seemed to me as though all London were such a Beresina Bridge,
where every one presses on in mad haste to save his scrap of life; where
the daring rider stamps down the poor pedestrian; where every one who
falls is lost forever; where the best friends rush, without feeling,
over one another's corpses; and where thousands in the weakness of
death, and bleeding, grasp in vain at the planks of the bridge, and are
shot down into the icy grave of death.

How much more pleasant and homelike it is in our dear Germany! With what
dreaming comfort, in what Sabbath-like repose, all glides along here!
Calmly the sentinels are changed, uniforms and houses shine in the quiet
sunshine, swallows flit over the flagstones, fat Court-counciloresses
smile from the windows; while along the echoing streets there is room
enough for the dogs to sniff at each other, and for men to stand at ease
and chat about the theatre, and bow deeply--oh, how deeply!--when some
small aristocratic scamp or vice-scamp, with colored ribbons on his
shabby coat, or some Court-marshal-low-brow struts along as if in
judgment, graciously returning salutations.

I had made up my mind in advance not to be astonished at that immensity
of London of which I had heard so much. But I had as little success as
the poor schoolboy who determined beforehand not to feel the whipping
which he was to receive. The facts of the case were that he expected to
get the usual blows with the usual stick in the usual way on the back,
whereas he received a most unusually severe licking on an unusual place
with a cutting switch. I anticipated great palaces, and saw nothing but
mere small houses. But their very uniformity and their limitless extent
impress the soul wonderfully.

These houses of brick, owing to the damp atmosphere and coal smoke, are
all of an uniform color, that is to say, of a brown olive-green,