Even
as Skindeep was speaking their passage was stopped by a large caravan of
carriages and wagons heavily laden with human creatures and their
children and chattels. On Skindeep inquiring the cause of this great
movement, he was informed by one on horseback, who seemed to be the
leader of the horde, that they were the late dwellers in sundry squares
and streets situated far to the east; that their houses having been
ridiculed by an itinerant balladeer, the female part of the tribe had
insisted upon immediately quitting their unfashionable fatherland; and
that now, after three days' journey, they had succeeded in reaching the
late settlement of a horde who had migrated to the extreme west.
Quitting regions so subject to revolutions and vicissitudes, the
travellers once more emerged into quarters of a less transitory
reputation; and in the magnificent parks, the broad streets, the ample
squares, the palaces, the triumphal arches, and the theatres of
occidental Hubbabub, Popanilla lost those sad and mournful feelings
which are ever engendered by contemplating the gloomy relics of departed
greatness.
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