given to great hotels which occupy the former sites of these noble
mansions.

The residences of the nobility and gentry were chiefly in the western part
of the metropolis. In this quarter there have been large additions of
handsome streets, squares, and terraces within the last fifty years.
First, the district around Belgrave Square, usually called Belgravia.
Northeast from this, near Hyde Park, is the older, but still fashionable
quarter, comprehending Park Lane and Mayfair. Still farther north is the
modern district, sometimes called Tyburnia, being built on the ground
adjacent to what once was "Tyburn," the place of public executions. This
district, including Hyde Park Square and Westbourne Terrace, early became
a favourite place of residence for city merchants. Lying north and
northeast from Tyburnia are an extensive series of suburban rows of
buildings and detached villas, which are ordinarily spoken of under the
collective name, St. John's Wood, Regent's Park forming a kind of rural
centre to the group.

New thoroughfares and the need thereof make a wholly new set of
conditions, and such landmarks as have survived the stress of time and
weather are thoroughly suggestive and reminiscent of the past, and are
often the only guide-posts left by which one may construct the
surroundings of a former day.

Of this the stranger is probably more observant than the Londoner born and
bred. The gloomy, crowded streets--for they are gloomy, decidedly, most of
the time during five months of the year--do not suggest to the native
emotions as vivid as to the stranger, who, with a fund of reading for his
guide, wanders through hallowed ground which is often neglected or
ignored by the Londoner himself.

As for the general architectural effect of London as a type of a great
city, it is heightened or lowered accordingly as one approves or
disapproves of the artistic qualities of soot and smoke.

Fogs are the natural accompaniment of smoke, in the lower Thames valley,
at least, and the "London particular"--the pea-soup variety--is a thing to
be shuddered at when it draws its pall over the city. At such times, the
Londoner, or such proportion of the species as can do so, hurries abroad,
if only to the Surrey Hills, scarce a dozen miles away, but possessed of
an atmosphere as different as day is from night.

Our own Nathaniel Hawthorne it was who wrote, "There cannot be anything
else in its way so good in the world as this effect"