It is good to think, nevertheless,--and I gladly accept
the analogy and the moral,--that the cathedral was really there, and as
substantial as ever, though those earthly mists had hidden it from mortal
eyes.
I found ------ in better spirits than when I saw him last, but his
misfortune has been too real not to affect him long and deeply. He was
cheerful, however, and his face shone with almost its old lustre. It has
still the cheeriest glow that I ever saw in any human countenance.
I went home by way of Holborn, and the fog was denser than ever,--very
black, indeed more like a distillation of mud than anything else; the
ghost of mud,--the spiritualized medium of departed mud, through which
the dead citizens of London probably tread in the Hades whither they are
translated. So heavy was the gloom, that gas was lighted in all the
shop-windows; and the little charcoal-furnaces of the women and boys,
roasting chestnuts, threw a ruddy, misty glow around them. And yet I
liked it. This fog seems an atmosphere proper to huge, grimy London; as
proper to London as that light neither of the sun nor moon is to the New
Jerusalem.
On reaching home, I found the same fog diffused through the drawing-room,
though how it could have got in is a mystery. Since nightfall, however,
the atmosphere is clear again.
December 20th.--Here we are still in London, at least a month longer than
we expected, and at the very dreariest and dullest season of the year.
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