In this way I traversed England, a grown-up child, delighted by every object, great and small; and betraying a wondering ignorance, and simple enjoyment, that provoked many a stare and a smile from my wiser and more experienced fellow-travellers.  Such too was the odd confusion of associations that kept breaking upon me, as I first approached London.  One of my earliest wishes had been to see this great metropolis.  I had read so much about it in the earliest books that had been put into my infant hands; and I had heard so much about it from those around me who had come from the “old countries.”  I was familiar with the names of its streets, and squares, and public places, before I knew those of my native city.  It was, to me, the great centre of the world, round which every thing seemed to revolve.  I recollect contemplating so wistfully, when a boy, a paltry little print of the Thames, and London Bridge, and St. Paul’s, that was in front of an old magazine; and a picture of Kensington Gardens, with gentlemen in three-cornered hats and broad skirts, and ladies in hoops and lappets, that hung up in my bed-room; even the venerable cut of St. John’s Gate, that has stood, time out of mind, in front of the Gentleman’s Magazine, was not without its charms to me; and I envied the odd-looking little men that appeared to be loitering about its arches.

How then did my heart warm when the towers of Westminster Abbey were pointed out to me, rising above the rich groves of St. James’s Park, with a thin blue haze about their gray pinnacles!  I could not behold this great mausoleum of what is most illustrious in our paternal history, without feeling my enthusiasm in a glow.  With what eagerness did I explore every part of the metropolis!  I was not content with those matters which occupy the dignified research of the learned traveller; I delighted to call up all the feelings of childhood, and to seek after those objects which had been the wonders of my infancy.  London Bridge, so famous in nursery songs; the far-famed Monument; Gog and Magog, and the Lions in the Tower, all brought back many a recollection of infantile delight, and of good old beings, now no more, who had gossiped about them to my wondering ear.  Nor was it without a recurrence of childish interest, that I first peeped into Mr. Newberry’s shop, in St. Paul’s Church-yard, that fountain-head of literature.  Mr. Newberry was the first that ever filled my infant mind with the idea of a great and good man.  He published all the picture-books of the day; and, out of his abundant love for children, he charged “nothing for either paper or print, and only a penny-halfpenny for the binding!”