preliminary tramp
in London.

CHAPTER II.

A PRELIMINARY TRAMP IN LONDON.

"We Britons had at that time particularly settled
that it was treasonable to doubt our having and
our being the best of everything: otherwise, while
I was scared by the immensity of London, I think I
might have had some faint doubts whether it was
not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and
dirty."--_Great Expectations._

SOME sixty or seventy years must have elapsed since Dickens (through the
mouthpiece of Pip, as above) recorded his first impressions of London;
and although he lived in it many years, and in after life he loved to
study its people in every stratum of society and every phase of their
existence, it seems doubtful, apart from these studies, whether he ever
really liked London itself, for in the _Uncommercial Traveller_, on "The
Boiled Beef of New England," in describing London as it existed
subsequently, he contrasts it unfavourably in some respects, not only
with such continental cities as Paris, Bordeaux, Frankfort, Milan,
Geneva, and Rome, but also with such British cities as Edinburgh,
Aberdeen, Exeter, and Liverpool, with such American cities as New York,
Boston, and Philadelphia, and with "a bright little town like Bury St.
Edmunds." Nevertheless, it is indubitable that his writings, beyond
those of any other author, have done wonders to popularize our
knowledge of London,--more particularly the London of the latter half of
the last and the first half of the present century,--and that those
writings have given it a hold on our affections which it might not
otherwise have acquired. In almost all his works we are introduced to a
fresh spot in the Metropolis, perhaps previously known to us, but to
which the fidelity of his descriptions and the reality of the characters
peopling it, certainly give a historical value never before understood
or appreciated. In _The Life of Charles Dickens_, written by his devoted
friend, John Forster, may be found a corroboration of this view:--

"There seemed," says this biographer, "to be not much to add to our
knowledge of London until his books came upon us, but each in this
respect outstripped the other in its marvels. In _Nickleby_, the old
city reappears under every aspect; and whether warmth and light are
playing over what is good and cheerful in it, or the veil is uplifted
from its darker scenes, it is at all tim