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¬driven down from the houses just above us, would have made the blackest assemblage of steam-engines at Birmingham or Wolverhampton appear like the gayest palaces lighted up with gas. — Through this dismal medium, my half- extinguished eyes (which so filled with earth in England would have given me a vote for Middlesex) could see only by short snatches sometimes the head of one horse and sometimes the tail of another, with now and then part of a carriage moving on at the pace of a funeral procession, which my friend told me, (for I could see nothing farther,) extended about a mile, but hemmed in on each side, with people riding or rather tumbling over one another. We were now and then stopped besides by vehicles, completely jammed, out of which we could see ladies disengaging themselves, or at least their head-dresses and drapery, looming, as sailors term it, through the mist, and, to keep up the metaphor, flapping against each other like sails and colours in a gale of wind at sea. ¬My ¬
