ay more impressive than a dusky London holiday; it
suggests a variety of reflections. Even looked at superficially the
British capital is one of the most interesting of cities, and it is
perhaps on such occasions as this that I have most felt its interest.
London is ugly, dusky, dreary, more destitute than any European city of
graceful and decorative incident; and though on festal days, like those
I speak of, the populace is massed in large numbers at certain points,
many of the streets are empty enough of human life to enable you to
perceive their intrinsic hideousness. A Christmas Day or a Good Friday
uncovers the ugliness of London. As you walk along the streets, having
no fellow-pedestrians to look at, you look up at the brown brick
house-walls, corroded with soot and fog, pierced with their straight
stiff window-slits and finished, by way of a cornice, with a little
black line resembling a slice of curb-stone. There is not an accessory,
not a touch of architectural fancy, not the narrowest concession to
beauty. If I were a foreigner it would make me rabid; being an
Anglo-Saxon I find in it what Thackeray found in Baker street--a
delightful proof of English domestic virtue, of the sanctity of the
British home. There are miles and miles of these edifying monuments, and
it would seem that a city made up of them should have no claim to that
larger effectiveness of which I just now spoke. London, however, is not
made up of them; there are architectural combinations of a statelier
kind, and the impression moreover does not rest on details. London is
picturesque in spite of details--from its dark-green, misty parks, the
way the light comes down leaking and filtering from its cloudy skies,
and the softness and richness of tone which objects put on in such an
atmosphere as soon as they begin to recede. Nowhere is there such a play
of light and shade, such a struggle of sun and smoke, such aerial
gradations and confusions. To eyes addicted to the picturesque this is a
constant entertainment, and yet this is only part of it. What completes
the effect of the place is its appeal to the feelings, made in so many
ways, but made above all by agglomerated immensity. At any given point
London looks huge; even in narrow corners you have a sense of its
hugeness, and petty places acquire a certain interest from their being
parts of so mighty a whole. Nowhere, else is so much human life gathered
together and nowhere does it press upon you