Page:Letters from England.djvu/32

 then I have crossed the London streets on countless occasions, but as long as I live I shall never become reconciled to it.

Then I returned from London, crushed, despairing, overwhelmed in mind and body; for the first time in my life I experienced a blind and furious repugnance to modern civilization. It seemed to me that there was something barbarous and disastrous in this dread accumulation of people; it is said that there are seven and a half millions of them here, but I did not count them. I only know that my first impression of this huge assembly was almost a tragic one; I felt uneasy and I had a boundless yearning for Prague, as if I were a child who had lost its way in a forest. Yes, I may as well confess to you that I was afraid; I was afraid that I should get lost, that I should be run over by a motor-bus, that something would happen to me, that it was all up with me, that human life is worthless, that man is a large-sized bacillus swarming by the million on a sort of mouldy potato, that perhaps the whole thing