The paragon was, of course, an experienced Londoner, and it was under his guidance that Brion made his first real acquaintance with the Town. It seemed to him the most beautiful city that mind could conceive. Perhaps that impression may have been partly due to his regarding it, during these first days, through a luminous mist of expectancy touching the person of her whose golden shrine it contained hid somewhere in the depths of its labyrinthine mysteries. But indeed it was a fair town; built up of colour and picturesqueness; beating with a fierce and palpitating life; full of a sort of dashing merriment which reminded Brion somehow of late-fallen raindrops on eaves, dancing and sparkling and shaking off under a race of wind and brave opened sky. Everybody seemed in a hurry--to sell, to buy, to show off, to fight, to enjoy; as if each day were the last day of the holidays, and the ultimate flavour and profit must be got out of it before the Fair closed. To look down any street was to see its perspective like a turning kaleidoscope, with colours and patterns perpetually changing and forming into new bewildering complications. And there were swinging signs and fluttering banners everywhere, with jingle of harness and blast of horns, as if victory in the abstract was always in the air, and rehearsals for its celebration were a never-ending occurrence. While he waited, as composedly as he could, news from Raleigh, the youngster turned the time on his hands to the best account of exploration he and Clerivault could contrive. They visited the Abbey, and such parts of the ancient palace of Westminster as had survived the disastrous fire of fifty years before--the Hall, the beautiful Chapel, and the Star and Painted Chambers; they went to Charing village to view the noble cross erected by the first Edward to the memory of his dead Queen; and they pushed further, to the bar-gate which led into the liberties of the City, a great timber barrier mortised into the adjoining houses, and bearing on its roof a row of iron spikes, some with dried and blackened heads on them, like a grotesque sort of cocoanuts put up for any who listed to roll, bowl, or pitch at. There was one, cocked askew, that seemed to leer at Brion as he hurried beneath it, as if it speculated obscenely on the chances of having him up there for a companion some day; and another that, tilted back, appeared to be watching a flight of rooks winging overhead. Ugly memento mori they were in such a feast of colour, skulls and cross-bones on an emblazoned standard, yet not so dark a blot on the City as its living profanities. For in St Paul’s Church, which the two went to visit, they found the whole nave blocked with unhallowed traffic. Here was a hiring fair for low class servants; there a cheap-jack bawling his goods from a cart, the donkey that drew it standing blinking in the shafts, while a merry-Andrew intervened with coarse jests, or tumbled for the delectation of the gaping crowd.