The coach approached a high archway in the road. Through it Colin saw what he took to be a mass of horizontal cloud; and, peering above it in solitary grandeur, like one lone rock above a wilderness of ocean, the dome of a great cathedral. To the left, on descending the hill, stood what he took to be a palace; and still farther on, in Holloway and Islington, so many things of a totally new character presented themselves to him, that he scarcely believed himself in the same world as he was yesterday. The turnpikes, and the Angel Inn, the coaches and cabs, the rabble and noise, the screaming of hawkers, the causeways lined with apple-women and flower-girls, the running and scrambling of men carrying bundles of newspapers, as they bawled to the passengers of outward-bound stages, “_Times, sir!--Chronicle!--Morning Post!_” the swearing of coachmen, the thrashing of drovers, the barking of dogs, and the running of frightened sheep and over-goaded cattle, formed altogether such a Babel as made him for the time utterly forget himself. “City, young man, or get down here?” demanded the coachman.. “Where are we?” asked Colin. “Islington. Where are you going to?” “London,” replied Colin. “I say, Jim,” remarked the coachman to his friend the guard, “that 's a neatish cove now, isn't he, to come here?” “Wot do I care, d----his eyes! Pick up that basket, and go on, without you mean to stop here all day!” Whereupon the driver folded up his waybill, and elbowed his passage through a crowd of miserable, perishing, be-coated and be-capped night-travellers, who blocked up the causeway with trunks, carpet-bags, and hat-boxes. Their pallid visages and heavy eyes, indeed, conveyed to the spectator no indifferent idea of so many unfortunate ghosts just landed on the far side of the Styx. “So you are for London, young 'un, are you?” asked the coachman, when again on his seat. “Yes, sir,” replied Colin, “and I suppose we are not far from it, now?” “Jim!” shouted the coachman, as he leaned half round to catch a glimpse of the guard, “this chap wants to know how far he is from London, if you can tell him!” And this humorous remark he rounded off with a weasing chuckle, that appeared to have its origin in a region far below the thick superstratum of coat and shawl with which the coachman himself was covered. He then deliberately eyed Colin from head to foot several times, with a look of great self-satisfaction, and again inquired,--“Wot did your mother send you from home for?” “Nobody sent me,” said Colin; “I came of my own accord.” “Wot, you 're going i' sarvis, then? or, have you come up to get made Lord Mayor?” Our hero had felt sufficiently his own loneliness before; but this last observation made him feel it doubly. He coloured deeply. “Come, I didn't mean that,” said the driver,--“it was only a joke to raise your spirits. I don't want to spile your feelin's, young man.”