He ate some food at an eating-house near Blackfriars, and then
wandered aimlessly for hours. The broad river, with its dull brown
flood breaking in oily wavelets against the embankment wall, exercised
a fascination. He admired the Temple, watched some shadows on a lawn,
and wondered if the pigeons by the cab-rank ever went to bed, or if,
changing their natural habits to suit their town-life, they had become
night birds like the owls. The trains passing to and fro in the iron
cage called Hungerford Bridge interested him; and as he approached the
Houses of Parliament, he was stirred by memories of his historical
reading.
The stately pile had become almost black against the western sky by
the time that he drew near to it, and its majestic extent, with the
lamplight gleaming from innumerable windows, gave him a quite personal
satisfaction. It represented all that was grandest in the tale of his
country. The freedom of the subject had been born on this hallowed
spot; here had been thrown down those cruel barriers by which the rich
and powerful penned and confined the poor and humble as cattle or
slaves; by this and because of this, the people's meeting-place, men
like himself had been enabled to aspire and to achieve.
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