ndeed
seem as purposeless at this height as the hurry-scurrying about an
anthill. At this height, indeed, one seems to understand how small a
matter a bank smash may seem to the Almighty; though, as a lady said to
me--as we clung tightly together in terror 'a-top of the topmost
bough'--it must be gratifying to see so many churches.

Those who would keep their illusions about the beauty of London had
better stay below, at least in the daytime, for it makes one's heart
sink to look on those miles and miles of sordid grey roofs huddled in
meaningless rows and crescents, just for all the world like a huge
child's box of wooden bricks waiting to be arranged into some
intelligible pattern. Of course, this is not London proper. Were the
Great Wheel set up in Trafalgar Square, one is fain to hope that the
view from it would be less disheartening--though it might be better not
to try.

By night, except for the bright oases of the Indian Exhibition, the view
is little more than a black blank, a great inky plain with faint sparks
and rows of light here and there, as though the world had been made of
saltpetre paper, and had lately been set fire to. Were you a traveller
from Mars you would say that the world was very badly lighted. But, for
all that, night is the time for the Great Wheel, for the conflagration
of pleasure at our feet makes us forget the void dark beyond. Then the
Wheel seems like a great revolving spider's web, with fireflies
entangled in it at every turn, and the little engine-house at the
centre, with its two electric lights, seems like the great lord spider,
with monstrous pearls for his eyes. And, as in the daytime the height
robs the depth of its significance, strips poor humanity of any
semblance of impressive or attractive meaning, at night the effect is
just the reverse. What a fairy-world is this opening out beneath our
feet, with its golden glowing squares and circles and palaces, with its
lamplit gardens and pagodas! and who are these gay and beautiful beings
flitting hither and thither, and passing from one bright garden to
another on the stream of pleasure? If this many-coloured, passionate
dream be really human life, let us hasten to be down amongst it once
more! And, after all, is not this flattering night aspect of the world
more true than that disheartening countenance of it in the daylight?
Those golden squares and glowing gardens and flashing waters are, of
course, an illusion of the magician K