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On
the left of the hall is a little room: a hatter's shop. On the
first floor, is the English bank. On the first floor also, is a
whole house, and a good large residence too. Heaven knows what
there may be above that; but when you are there, you have only just
begun to go up-stairs. And yet, coming down-stairs again, thinking
of this; and passing out at a great crazy door in the back of the
hall, instead of turning the other way, to get into the street
again; it bangs behind you, making the dismallest and most lonesome
echoes, and you stand in a yard (the yard of the same house) which
seems to have been unvisited by human foot, for a hundred years.
Not a sound disturbs its repose. Not a head, thrust out of any of
the grim, dark, jealous windows, within sight, makes the weeds in
the cracked pavement faint of heart, by suggesting the possibility
of there being hands to grub them up. Opposite to you, is a giant
figure carved in stone, reclining, with an urn, upon a lofty piece
of artificial rockwork; and out of the urn, dangles the fag end of
a leaden pipe, which, once upon a time, poured a small torrent down
the rocks. But the eye-sockets of the giant are not drier than
this channel is now. He seems to have given his urn, which is
nearly upside down, a final tilt; and after crying, like a
sepulchral child, 'All gone!' to have lapsed into a stony silence.

In the streets of shops, the houses are much smaller, but of great
size notwithstanding, and extremely high. They are very dirty:
quite undrained, if my nose be at all reliable: and emit a
peculiar fragrance, like the smell of very bad cheese, kept in very
hot blankets. Notwithstanding the height of the houses, there
would seem to have been a lack of room in the City, for new houses
are thrust in everywhere. Wherever it has been possible to cram a
tumble-down tenement into a crack or corner, in it has gone. If
there be a nook or angle in the wall of a church, or a crevice in
any other dead wall, of any sort, there you are sure to find some
kind of habitation: looking as if it had grown there, like a
fungus. Against the Government House, against the old Senate
House, round about any large building, little shops stick so close,
like parasite vermin to the great carcase. And for all this, look
where you may: up steps, down steps, anywhere, everywhere: there
are irregular houses, receding, starting forward, tumbling down,
leaning against their neighbours, crippling themselves or their
friends by some means or other, until one, more irregular than the
rest, chokes up the way, and you can't see any further.

One of the rottenest-looking parts of the town, I think, is down by
the landing-wharf: though it may be, that its being associated
with a great deal of rottenness on the evening of our arrival, has
stamped it deeper in my mind. Here, again, the houses are very
high, and are of an infinite variety of deformed shapes, and have

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