He passed down Ludgate Hill, across Ludgate Circus, into Fleet Street, turning for a few moments to look back at the Cathedral. Again, he had a sense of anger against the English people who could allow a railway company to fling an ugly bridge across the foot of Ludgate Hill and destroy the view of St. Paul's from the Circus; but he had had too many shocks that morning to feel a deep anger then, and so, turning his back on the Cathedral, he walked up Fleet Street. He stared about him with interest, gazing up at the names of the newspapers that were exhibited in large letters on the fronts of the houses. The street seemed to be shouting at him, yelling out names as if it were afraid to be silent. It was a disorderly street. It seemed to straggle up the hill to the Strand, as if it had not had time to put its clothes on properly. All along its length, he could see, at intervals, scaffold-poles and builders' hoardings. Houses and offices were being altered or repaired or rebuilt. He felt that the street had been constructed for a great game of hide-and-seek, for the flow of the buildings was irregular: here, a house stood forward; there, a house stood back. In one of these bays, a player might hide from a seeker!... Somewhere in this street, John remembered, Dr. Johnson had lived, and he tried to imagine the scene that took place on the night of misery when Oliver Goldsmith went to the Doctor and wept over the failure of _The Good Natured Man_, and was called a ninny for his pains. But he could not make the scene come alive because of the noise and confusion in the street. The air of immediacy which enveloped him made quiet imagination impossible. His head began to ache with the sounds that filled his ears, and he wished that he could escape from the shouting herd into some little soundless place where his mind could become easy again and free from pain. He stared around him, glancing at the big-lettered signs over the newspaper offices, at the omnibuses, at the crowds of men and women, and once his heart leaped into his throat as he saw a boy on a bicycle, carrying a bag stuffed with newspapers on his back, ride rapidly out of a side street into the middle of the congested traffic as if there were nothing substantial to hinder his progress ... and as he stared about him, it seemed to him that Fleet Street was on the verge of a nervous breakdown....