There is something so fantastically tawdry in the coloured marble of the architecture.

It is for all the world like a triumph of ornamental soap work; one expects to smell the odours.

And the torrent of humanity pouring liquidly aslant through the mirror-like light, and the spaciousness....

Yes, it is fantastic, somehow; ironical, too.
I was watching the devious passage of a rather drunken, gigantic, florid Englishman, wondering, I think, how he would reach his bed.
"That must be a relation of yours," the correspondent said, pointing.

My glance followed the line indicated by his pale finger.