omfortable things to see in
conjunction with the toll-keeper; also his brisk wakefulness was
excellent company when he rattled the change of halfpence down upon
that metal table of his, like a man who defied the night, with all its
sorrowful thoughts, and didn't care for the coming of dawn. There was
need of encouragement on the threshold of the bridge, for the bridge
was dreary. The chopped-up murdered man, had not been lowered with a
rope over the parapet when those nights were; he was alive, and slept
then quietly enough most likely, and undisturbed by any dream of where
he was to come. But the river had an awful look, the buildings on the
banks were muffled in black shrouds, and the reflected lights seemed
to originate deep in the water, as if the spectres of suicides were
holding them to show where they went down. The wild moon and clouds
were as restless as an evil conscience in a tumbled bed, and the very
shadow of the immensity of London seemed to lie oppressively upon the
river.

Between the bridge and the two great theatres, there was but the
distance of a few hundred paces, so the theatres came next. Grim and
black within, at night, those great dry Wells, and lonesome to
imagine, with the rows of faces faded out, the lights extinguished,
and the seats all empty. One would think that nothing in them knew
itself at such a time but Yorick's skull. In one of my night walks, as
the church steeples were shaking the March winds and rain with strokes
of Four, I passed the outer boundary of one of these great deserts,
and entered it. With a dim lantern in my hand, I groped my well-known
way to the stage and looked over the orchestra--which was like a great
grave dug for a time of pestilence--into the void beyond. A dismal
cavern of an immense aspect, with the chandelier gone dead like
everything else, and nothing visible through mist and fog and space,
but tiers of winding-sheets. The ground at my feet where, when last
there, I had seen the peasantry of Naples dancing among the vines,
reckless of the burning mountain which threatened to overwhelm them,
was now in possession of a strong serpent of engine-hose, watchfully
lying in wait for the serpent Fire, and ready to fly at it if it
showed its forked tongue. A ghost of a watchman, carrying a faint
corpse candle, haunted the distant upper gallery and flitted away.
Retiring within the proscenium, and holding my light above my head
towards the rolled-up curtain--green