ABSTRACT
London, that universe of a city, containing all the climates of the human mind, and all the variations of the human species, was not entered by the reflecting Charles without those tumultuous emotions produced by the gush of novelty, which inebriates the senses. A mixed conception of grandeur hitherto unobserved, and misery hitherto unknown, taught him to feel for humanity, a pride and an humiliation; here he first perceived that man was an enigma yet unsolved; every thing that imagination conceives of great and benevolent, neighbouring closely on every thing it conceives / of mean and cruel. Every glance brought some new object, every sound combined with some new reflection; and in surrounding objects he seemed to lose his own existence. He issued from the inn, the next morning, to wait on Lord Belfield, but had scarcely passed a few streets, when the sweet pliability of his spirits diffused itself around him, and flying from meditation to meditation, he found that no object in London was more interesting than London itself.
