eight
o'clock
He had hardly patience to breakfast , so eager was he to be out in the streets ; and while he ate , his eyes were out of the windows all the time , and his ears drinking in all the London morning sounds like music . At the foot of the street ran the Thames ; he had caught a thrilling glimpse of it as he stepped from his cab , and had had a childish impulse to rush down to it before entering his hotel . At last , free of food and baggage , light of heart , and brimming over with youth , he stepped into the street . It was but little past eight o'clock . He had just heard the hour chimed , in various tones of sweetness and solemnity , from several mellow clocks , evidently hidden high in the air in his near vicinity . For two or three hours there would be no editor or publisher to be seen , and meanwhile he had London to himself . He stepped out into it as into a garden , -- a garden of those old-time flowers in which antiquity has become a perfume full of pictures .