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From the foot of the bridge to Coal Harbour Stairs, extended what Dryden finely calls "a quay of fire." All the wharves and warehouses were in flames, and burning with astonishing rapidity, while this part of Thames-street, "the lodge of all combustibles," had likewise become a prey to the devouring element.
One heard of the enormous preparations that America was making in France of the new docks, warehouses, and railways, of the vast depots and splendid camps that were being laid out with a mixture of wonder and irritation.
I am spent; people will not obey me. I have been pulling down houses; but the fire overtakes us faster than we can do it." So I walked home, seeing people almost all distracted, and no manner of means used to quench the fire. The houses, too, so very thick thereabouts, and full of matter for burning, as pitch and tar in Thames Street, and warehouses of oil and wines and brandy.
I searched the station, but found nothing except a cavalry brigade entraining. I rushed about feverishly. There was no one I knew, no one who had heard anything of my company. Then I grew horribly frightened that I should be left behind. I pelted back to the old warehouses, but found everybody had left two hours ago.
The surface of Spain, save only around the few royal residences, exhibited no splendour of architecture, whether in town or country, no wonders of agricultural or horticultural skill, no monumentsof engineering and constructive genius in roads, bridges, docks, warehouses, and other ornamental and useful fabrics, or in any of the thousand ways in which man facilitates intercourse among his kind and subdues nature to his will.
This bridge was fully thirty feet overhead, and flanked by wings of masonry. The four tracks led into a small yard, almost surrounded by high stone warehouses; a yard devoted solely to turn-tables for locomotives. There was no exit from it except under the bridge that we passed beneath. "Good!" we heard Nolenki cry, fifty yards behind. "We have them now in a trap!"
England, mistress of the seas, proud carrier of the traffic of the world, the center of international finance, the richest among all the investing nations England was reeking with poverty. Beside her factories and warehouses were vile slums in which people huddled as Ruskin said, "so many brace to a garret."
They will then have the whole commerce of the Continent in their hands, and the British, though blockading with powerful armaments the hostile ports of Europe, will behold fleets of American merchantmen enter in safety the harbors of the enemy, and carry on a brisk and lucrative trade, whilst Englishmen, who command the ocean and are sole masters of the deep, must quietly suffer two thirds of their shipping to be dismantled and lie useless in little rivers or before empty warehouses.
These texts were printed in large type, so that every passer-by might read them; while many were able to lay them to heart, and to practise the advices which they enjoined. On other occasions Mr. Baxendale would distribute amongst his workpeople, or desire to be set up in his warehouses and places of business, longer and more general maxims.
Twice he lost it in the throng. But the yellow patch bobbed up again in the sunlight far beyond, and led him on, and on, and on, a breathless chase, down empty lanes and alley-ways, through unfrequented courts, among the warehouses and wharf-sheds along the river-front, into the kennels of Billingsgate, where the only sky was a ragged slit between the leaning roofs.
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