midnight
Prosaically , he wants to earn his bread , and , if possible , butter wherewith to flavour it . Like Britons in general , from Dick Whittington downwards , he thinks that the capital is the place in which to seek one 's fortune , and to find it . He had not expected streets paved with gold , nor yet with the metaphorical plenty of penny loaves ; but an indefinite disappointment weighs upon him as he passes through quarters fully as dingy and poverty-stricken as those in his own provincial town . Still on -- on -- across ` the province covered with houses ; ' sometimes in a great thoroughfare , where midnight is as noisy as noon-day , and much more glaring ; sometimes through a region of silence and sleep , where gentility keeps proper hours , going to bed betimes in its respectable streets . Robert Wynn began to wonder when the journey would end ; for , much as he knew of London by hearsay and from books , it was widely different thus personally to experience the metropolitan amplitude . A slight dizziness of sight , from the perpetual sweeping past of lamps and shadowy buildings , caused him to close his eyes ; and from speculations on the possible future and the novel present , his thoughts went straight home again . Home to the Irish village where his ancestors had long been lords of the soil ; and the peasantry had deemed that the greatest power on earth , under majesty itself , was his Honour Mr. Wynn of Dunore , where now , fallen from greatness , the family was considerably larger than the means .