ss under one of the
arches of Waterloo Bridge, which, in the sweep of its curve, is as
vast--it alone--as the Rialto at Venice, and scarcely less seemly in
proportions. But over the Rialto, though of late and debased Venetian
work, there still reigns some power of human imagination: on the two
flanks of it are carved the Virgin and the Angel of the Annunciation; on
the keystone the descending Dove. It is not, indeed, the fault of living
designers that the Waterloo arch is nothing more than a gloomy and
hollow heap of wedged blocks of blind granite. But just beyond the damp
shadow of it, the new Embankment is reached by a flight of stairs, which
are, in point of fact, the principal approach to it, a-foot, from
central London; the descent from the very midst of the metropolis of
England to the banks of the chief river of England; and for this
approach, living designers _are_ answerable.

85. The principal decoration of the descent is again a gas-lamp, but a
shattered one, with a brass crown on the top of it or, rather,
half-crown, and that turned the wrong way, the back of it to the river
and causeway, its flame supplied by a visible pipe far wandering along
the wall; the whole apparatus being supported by a rough cross-beam.
Fastened to the centre of the arch above is a large placard, stating
that the Royal Humane Society's drags are in constant readiness, and
that their office is at 4, Trafalgar Square. On each side of the arch
are temporary, but dismally old and battered boardings, across two
angles capable of unseemly use by the British public. Above one of these
is another placard, stating that this is the Victoria Embankment. The
steps themselves--some forty of them--descend under a tunnel, which the
shattered gas-lamp lights by night, and nothing by day. They are covered
with filthy dust, shaken off from infinitude of filthy feet; mixed up
with shreds of paper, orange-peel, foul straw, rags, and cigar ends, and
ashes; the whole agglutinated, more or less, by dry saliva into slippery
blotches and patches; or, when not so fastened, blown dismally by the
sooty wind hither and thither, or into the faces of those who ascend and
descend. The place is worth your visit, for you are not likely to find
elsewhere a spot which, either in costly and ponderous brutality of
building, or in the squalid and indecent accompaniment of it, is so far
separated from the peace and grace of nature, and so accurately
indicative of the meth