He speaks thusly of the approach to London by the Dover road: ’If the sky is gloomy, the first aspect of London is no less so. The smoky look of the houses gives them the appearance of a recent fire. If to this you add the silence prevailing amidst a population of a million and a half of inhabitants, all in motion (so that you seem to behold a stage full of Chinese shadows), and the uniformity of the houses, as if you were in a city of beavers, you will easily understand that on entering into such a beehive pleasure gives way to astonishment. This is the old country style, but since the English have substituted blue pills for suicide, or, still better, have made a journey to Paris—since, instead of Young’s "Night Thoughts," they read the novels of Walter Scott, they have rendered their houses a little more pleasing in outward appearance. In the West End especially they have adopted a more cheerful style of architecture. But I do not by this mean to imply that the English themselves have become more lively; they still take delight in ghosts, witchcraft, cemeteries, and similar horrors. Woe to the author who writes a novel without some apparition to make your hair stand on end!’ In speaking of the thinness of the walls and floors of London houses, he says: ’I could hear the murmur of the conversation of the tenant of the room above and of that of the one below me; from time to time the words "very fine weather," "indeed," "very fine," "comfort," "comfortable," "great comfort," reached my ears. In fact, the houses are ventriloquous. As already mentioned, they are all alike. In a three-storied house there are three perpendicular bedrooms, one above the other, and three parlours, equally so superposed.’ We know how much of this description is true. ’Why are the English,’ he asks, ’not expert dancers? Because they cannot practise dancing in their slightly-built houses, in which a lively caper would at once send the third-floor down into the kitchen. This is the reason why the English gesticulate so little, and have their arms always glued to their sides. The rooms are so small that you cannot move about rapidly without smashing some object,’ or, as we should say, you cannot swing a cat in them.