Of late, reductions in the cost of window-glass, and improvements in the science of architecture, had made it possible to build whole blocks of shops with large windows facing the street, so that fine goods could be set out in view of passers-by. Shrewd builders such as Sterling (the Earl of Willesden) Waterhouse and Roger (the Marquis of Ravenscar) Comstock had built neighborhoods where courtiers went to do just that. The noun 'shop' had been verbed; people went 'shopping' now. Daniel of course never lowered himself to this newfangled vice – except that as he crossed the river he seemed to be doing it with ships. And he was a discriminating shopper. The watermen's boats, the smacks and barges of the estuary were beneath his notice altogether, and the coasting vessels – anything with a fore-and-aft rig – were scarcely more than impediments. He raised his eyes up out of the clutter to scan for the great ships thrusting their yards up, like High Church priests exalting the sacraments above the rabble, into the sky where the wind blew straight and brave. The sails hung from those yards like vestments. There were not many such ships in the Pool tonight, but Daniel sought them all out and appraised each one shrewdly. He was shopping for something to take him away; he wanted to voyage out of sight of land for once in his life, to die and be buried on another continent.