e houses in the more aristocratic
streets and squares were composed. Belgravia, with its grand houses, was
never dreamt of. The hotels were of the stuffiest character; some of
them had galleries all round for the sleeping chambers, which, however,
as often as not were over the stables, where the coach horses were left
to rest after the last gallop into London, and to be ready for the early
start at five or six in the morning. Perhaps at that time the best way
of coming into London was sailing up the Thames. As there were few
steamers then the number of ships of all kinds was much greater than at
present, when a steamer comes up with unerring regularity, discharges her
cargo, takes in a fresh one, and is off again without a moment's delay.
You saw Greenwich Hospital, as beautiful then as now, the big docks with
the foreign produce, the miles of black colliers in the Pool, the Tower
of London, the Customs House, and Billingsgate, a very inconvenient hole,
more famed for classic language then than now. Yet it was always a
pleasure to be landed in the city after sitting all day long on the top
of a stage coach. In many ways the railway was but a poor improvement on
the stage coach. In the first place you could see the country better; in
the second place the chances were you had better company, at any rate
people talked more, and were more inclined to be agreeable; and the third
place, in case of an accident, you felt yourself safer. As an old Jehu
said, contrasting the chances, "If you have an accident on a coach there
you are, but if you are in a railway carriage where are you!" And some
of the approaches to London were almost dazzling. Of a winter's night it
was quite a treat to come into town by the East Anglian coaches, and to
see the glare of the Whitechapel butchers' shops all lit up with gas, and
redolent of beef and mutton. It was wonderful in the eyes of the young
man from the country.

The one great improvement in London was Regent Street, from Portland
Place and Regent's Park to the statue an infatuated people erected to a
shady Duke of York in Trafalgar Square. Just by there was the National
Gallery, at any rate in a situation easy of access. Right past the
Mansion House a new street had been made to London Bridge, and there the
half-cracked King William was honoured by a statue, which was supposed to
represent the Royal body and the Royal head. In Cornhill there was an
old-fashioned building known