No customers in the shops, and nobody to serve them behind the counter, even if they had turned up.

Here and there on the pavements, an inhabitant with a capacity for staring, and (apparently) a capacity for nothing else.

I said to Reverend Finch's boy, "Is this a rich place ?" Reverend Finch's boy brightened and answered, "That it be!" Good.

At any rate, they don't enjoy themselves here--the infamous rich! Leaving this town of unamused citizens immured in domestic tombs, we got on a fine high road--still ascending--with a spacious open country on either side of it.
A spacious open country is a country soon exhausted by a sight-seer's eye.

I have learnt from my poor Pratolungo the habit of searching for the political convictions of my fellow-creatures, when I find myself in contact with them in strange places.