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LONDON

I have seen the greatest wonder which the world can show to the
astonished spirit; I have seen it, and am still astonished; and still
there remains fixed in my memory the stone forest of houses, and amid
them the rushing stream of faces of living men with all their motley
passions, all their terrible impulses of love, of hunger, and of
hatred--I mean London.

Send a _philosopher_ to London, but, for your life, no poet! Send a
philosopher there, and station him at a corner of Cheapside, where he
will learn more than from all the books of the last Leipzig fair; and as
the billows of human life roar around him, so will a sea of new thoughts
rise before him, and the Eternal Spirit which moves upon the face of the
waters will breathe upon him; the most hidden secrets of social harmony
will be suddenly revealed to him; he will hear the pulse of the world
beat audibly, and see it visibly; for if London is the right hand of the
world--its active, mighty right hand--then we may regard that route
which leads from the Exchange to Downing Street as the world's pyloric
artery.

But never send a poet to London! This downright earnestness of all
things, this colossal uniformity, this machine-like movement, this
troubled spirit in pleasure itself, this exaggerated London, smothers
the imagination and rends the heart. And should you ever send a German
poet thither--a dreamer, who stares at everything, even a ragged
beggar-woman, or the shining wares of a goldsmith's shop--why, then, at
least he will find things going right badly with him, and he will be
hustled about on every side, or perhaps be knocked over with a mild "God
damn!" _God damn!_--damn the knocking about and pushing! I see at a
glance that these people have enough to do. They live on a grand scale,
and though food and clothes are dearer with them than with us, they must
still be better fed and clothed than we are--as gentility requires.
Moreover, they have enormous debts, yet occasionally, in a vainglorious
mood, they make ducks and drakes of their guineas, pay other nations to
box about for their pleasure, give their kings a handsome _douceur_ into
the bargain; and, therefore, John Bull must work to get the money for
such expenditure. By day and by night he must tax his brain to discover
new machines, and he sits and reckons in the sweat of his brow, and runs
and rushes, without much looking around, from the Docks to the Exchange,
a