itchen hour), here is a noble harmony of heaven and the earth of
the works of man, speaking a grander tongue than barren sea or wood or
wilderness. Just a moment; it goes; as, when a well-attuned barrel-organ
in a street has drawn us to recollections of the Opera or Italy, another
harshly crashes, and the postman knocks at doors, and perchance a
costermonger cries his mash of fruit, a beggar woman wails her hymn. For
the pinched are here, the dinnerless, the weedy, the gutter-growths,
the forces repressing them. That grand tongue of the giant City
inspires none human to Bardic eulogy while we let those discords be. An
embittered Muse of Reason prompts her victims to the composition of
the adulatory Essay and of the Leading Article, that she may satiate an
angry irony 'upon those who pay fee for their filling with the stuff.
Song of praise she does not permit. A moment of satisfaction in a
striking picture is accorded, and no more. For this London, this
England, Europe, world, but especially this London, is rather a thing
for hospital operations than for poetic rhapsody; in aspect, too,
streaked scarlet and pock-pitted under the most cumbrous of jewelled
tiaras; a Titanic work of long-tolerated pygmies; of whom the leaders,
until sorely discomforted in body and doubtful in soul, will give
gold and labour, will impose restrictions upon activity, to maintain
a conservatism of diseases. Mind is absent, or somewhere so low down
beneath material accumulations that it is inexpressive, powerless to
drive the ponderous bulk to such excisings, purgeings, purifyings as
might--as may, we will suppose, render it acceptable, for a theme of
panegyric, to the Muse of Reason; ultimately, with her consent, to the
Spirit of Song.

But first there must be the cleansing. When Night has fallen upon
London, the Rajah remarks:

Monogamic Societies present
A decent visage and a hideous rear.

His Minister (satirically, or in sympathetic Conservatism) would
have them not to move on, that they may preserve among beholders the
impression of their handsome frontage. Night, however, will come; and
they, adoreing the decent face, are moved on, made to expose what the
Rajah sees. Behind his courteousness, he is an antagonistic observer of
his conquerors; he pushes his questions farther than the need for them;
his Minister the same; apparently to retain the discountenanced people
in their state of exposure. Up to the time of the expl