The coach rolled at the statute pace along Piccadilly, unobstructed by any thing, and, indeed, unencountered by any thing but two slow market carts, wending heavily towards Covent Garden, and another fac-simile of itself just overcoming--in order to take up some other early passenger--the _vis inertiæ_ which had held it on the straw-littered stand for the last hour. In the Haymarket, however, the progression was more difficult; for there, already had congregated many a loaded cart, the drivers of which, as usual, had, with skilful zeal, contrived to place them as a regular fortification, obstructing every step of the way. Gin and purl, too, were reeking up to the sky from the various temples of the rosy god that line the west side of the street; and amidst the bargainings of some early dealers, and the p[oe]ans of the gin-drinkers, no one attended to the objurgations of the embarrassed coachman. Nevertheless, all these difficulties were at length removed by one means or another; and Cockspur Street opened wide before the traveller, exposing at the end, black with the smoke of fires innumerable, the famous Statue and the girthless horse. On one side, wide and open, lay Whitehall, with all those offices whence many a time has issued the destiny of the world; on the other hand, dark and dingy, wound away the Strand, with the house of the Percys maintaining still the last aspect of a feudal dwelling to be found in London. The King's Mews, on which a violating hand had hardly yet been laid, occupied all the space to the left; and the flaming ensign of the Golden Cross, stuck up in front of a tall narrow-fronted house, told that the place of many coaches was before the traveller's eyes. He found, on alighting, that he had arrived at least ten minutes before the time; and after having been cheated, as usual, by the hackney coachman, and gazed about the dull desolate yard, shut in by the high houses round, in the far shadows of which stood two or three red, blue, and yellow vehicles, all unpacked and unhorsed, he once more sauntered out through the low-browed arch which gave admission to the court, and amused himself with the wider scene exhibited by the street. At that hour, one-half of Murillo's pictures find living representatives in the streets of London; and when the young traveller had moralized for a minute or two on some groups of beggar-boys playing round the Statue--had marked the sage and solemn pace with which an elderly waterman brought forth his breakfast to a coachman on the stand--and had listened to the Solon-like sayings of each upon the weather and the state of the nation--he was looking back to see whether the coming of the coach was hopeless, when the rushing noise of rapid wheels caught his ear, and he turned his eyes in the direction of the sound.