Sleep had hardly been thought of all night. The general alarm was so
apparent in the faces of the inhabitants, and its expression was so
aggravated by want of rest (few persons, with any property to lose,
having dared go to bed since Monday), that a stranger coming into the
streets would have supposed some mortal pest or plague to have been
raging. In place of the usual cheerfulness and animation of morning,
everything was dead and silent. The shops remained closed, offices and
warehouses were shut, the coach and chair stands were deserted, no carts
or waggons rumbled through the slowly waking streets, the early cries
were all hushed; a universal gloom prevailed. Great numbers of people
were out, even at daybreak, but they flitted to and fro as though they
shrank from the sound of their own footsteps; the public ways were
haunted rather than frequented; and round the smoking ruins people stood
apart from one another and in silence, not venturing to condemn the
rioters, or to be supposed to do so, even in whispers.
At the Lord President's in Piccadilly, at Lambeth Palace, at the Lord
Chancellor's in Great Ormond Street, in the Royal Exchange, the Bank,
the Guildhall, the Inns of Court, the Courts of Law, and every chamber
fronting the streets near Westminster Hall and the Houses of Parliament,
parties of soldiers were posted before daylight.
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