t
I found that, with my way of viewing things, it would be to me an
inexhaustible studio, and that, if life were only long enough, I would
live there for years obscure in some corner, from which I could issue
forth day by day to watch unobserved the vast stream of life, or to
decipher the hieroglyphics which ages have been inscribing on the
walls of this vast palace (I may not call it a temple), which human
effort has reared for means, not yet used efficaciously, of human
culture.

And though I wish to return to London in "the season," when that city
is an adequate representative of the state of things in England, I
am glad I did not at first see all that pomp and parade of wealth and
luxury in contrast with the misery, squalid, agonizing, ruffianly,
which stares one in the face in every street of London, and hoots at
the gates of her palaces more ominous a note than ever was that of owl
or raven in the portentous times when empires and races have crumbled
and fallen from inward decay.

It is impossible, however, to take a near view of the treasures
created by English genius, accumulated by English industry, without a
prayer, daily more fervent, that the needful changes in the condition
of this people may be effected by peaceful revolution, which shall
destroy nothing except the shocking inhumanity of exclusiveness,
which now prevents their being used, for the benefit of all. May their
present possessors look to it in time! A few already are earnest in
a good spirit. For myself, much as I pitied the poor, abandoned,
hopeless wretches that swarm in the roads and streets of England, I
pity far more the English noble, with this difficult problem before
him, and such need of a speedy solution. Sad is his life, if a
conscientious man; sadder still, if not. Poverty in England has
terrors of which I never dreamed at home. I felt that it would be
terrible to be poor there, but far more so to be the possessor of that
for which so many thousands are perishing. And the middle class, too,
cannot here enjoy that serenity which the sages have described as
naturally their peculiar blessing. Too close, too dark throng the
evils they cannot obviate, the sorrows they cannot relieve. To a man
of good heart, each day must bring purgatory which he knows not how to
bear, yet to which he fears to become insensible.

From these clouds of the Present, it is pleasant to turn the thoughts
to some objects which have cast a light upon the Past,