charming a prospect on Westminster Bridge.

My two travelling companions, both in the ship and the post-chaise,
were two young Englishmen, who living in this part of the town,
obligingly offered me any assistance and services in their power,
and in particular, to procure me a lodging the same day in their
neighbourhood.

In the streets through which we passed, I must own the houses in
general struck me as if they were dark and gloomy, and yet at the
same time they also struck me as prodigiously great and majestic.
At that moment, I could not in my own mind compare the external view
of London with that of any other city I had ever before seen. But I
remember (and surely it is singular) that about five years ago, on
my first entrance into Leipzig, I had the very same sensations I now
felt. It is possible that the high houses, by which the streets at
Leipzig are partly darkened, the great number of shops, and the
crowd of people, such as till then I had never seen, might have some
faint resemblance with the scene now surrounding me in London.

There are everywhere leading from the Strand to the Thames, some
well-built, lesser, or subordinate streets, of which the Adelphi
Buildings are now by far the foremost. One district in this
neighbourhood goes by the name of York Buildings, and in this lies
George Street, where my two travelling companions lived. There
reigns in those smaller streets towards the Thames so pleasing a
calm, compared to the tumult and bustle of people, and carriages,
and horses, that are constantly going up and down the Strand, that
in going into one of them you can hardly help fancying yourself
removed at a distance from the noise of the city, even whilst the