under sail quite astonished as well as delighted me, insomuch that I could not help breaking out into such-like expressions, 'My dear, what a fine sight this is; I never saw the like before! Pray will they get to London this tide? 'At which the good-natured gentleman smiled, and said. 'Yes, my dear; why, there is London, and as the wind is quite fair for them, some of them will come to an anchor in about half-an-hour, and all within an hour.'
I was so taken up with looking down the river that, till my husband spoke, I had not once looked up the river; but when I did, and saw London, the Monument, the cathedral church of St Paul, and the steeples belonging to the several parish churches, I was transported into an ecstasy, and could not refrain from saying, 'Sure that cannot be the place we are now just come from, it must be further off, for that looks to be scarce three miles off, and we have been three hours, by my watch, coming from our lodgings in the Minories! No, no, it is not London, it is some other place!'
Upon which one of the gentlemen present offered to convince me that the place I saw was London if I would go up to the top of the house, and view it from the turret I accepted the offer, and I, my husband, and the three gentlemen were conducted by the master of the house upstairs into the turret. If I was delighted before with my prospect, I was now ravished, for I was elevated above the room I was in before upwards of thirty feet. I seemed a little dizzy, for the turret being a lantern, and giving light all ways, for some time I thought myself suspended in the air; but sitting down, and having eat a mouthful of biscuit and drank a glass of sack, I soon recovered, and then the gentleman who had undertaken to convince me that the place I was shown was really London, thus began, after having drawn aside one of the windows.
'You see, my lady', says the gentleman, 'the greatest, the finest, the richest, and the most populous city in the world, at least in Europe, as I can assure your ladyship, upon my own knowledge, it deserves the character I have given it.' 'But this, sir, will never convince me that the place you now show me is London, though I have before heard that London deserves the character you have with so much cordiality bestowed upon it. And this I can testify, that London, in every particular you have mentioned, greatly surpasses Paris, which is allowed by all historians and travellers to be the second city in Europe.'
Here the gentleman, pulling out his pocket-glass, desired me to look through it, which I did t and then he directed me to look full at St. Paul's, and to make that the centre of my future observation, and thereupon he promised me conviction.
Whilst I took my observation, I sat in a high clair, made for that purpose, with a convenience before you to hold the glass. I soon found the cathedral, and then I could not help saying I have been several times up to the stone gallery, but not quite so often up to the iron gallery. Then I brought my eye to the Monument, and was obliged to confess I knew it to be such. The gentleman then moved the glass and desired me to look, which doing, I said, 'I think I see Whitehall and St. James's Park, and I see also two great buildings like barns, but I do not know what they are.' 'Oh', says the gentleman, 'they are the Parliament House and Westminster Abbey.' 'They may be so', said I; and, continuing looking, I perceived the very house at Kensington which I had lived in some time; but of that I took no notice, yet I found my colour come, to think what
