Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 1 | Page 5

vast collections of offices. The merchants dwell in the mansions of the West End, their clerks in villas and boxes without number, to which when their offices close they are taken by the suburban railways. On Sunday a more than Sabbath stillness reigns in those streets, while in the churches, the monuments of Wren's architectural genius which in Wren's day were so crowded, the clergyman sleepily performs the service to a congregation which you may count upon your fingers.
It is worth while to visit the city on a Sunday. Here and there, in a back street, may still be seen what was once the mansion of a merchant prince, ample and stately, with the rooms which in former days displayed the pride of commercial wealth and resounded with the festivities of the olden time; now the sound of the pen alone is heard. These and other relics of former days are fast disappearing before the march of improvement, which is driving straight new streets through the antique labyrinth. Some of the old thoroughfares as well as the old names remain. There is Cheapside, along which, through the changeful ages, so varied a procession of history has swept. There is Fleet Street, close to which, in Bolt Court, Johnson lived, and which he preferred, or affected to prefer, to the finest scenes of nature. Temple Bar, once grimly garnished with the heads of traitors, has been numbered with the things of the past, after furnishing Mr. Bright, by the manner in which the omnibuses were jammed in it, with a vivid simile for a legislative deadlock....
Society has migrated to the Westward, leaving far behind the ancient abodes of aristocracy, the Strand, where once stood a long line of patrician dwellings, Great Queen Street, where Shaftesbury's house may still be seen; Lincoln's Inn Fields, where, in the time of George II, the Duke of Newcastle held his levee of office-seekers, and Russell Square, now reduced to a sort of dowager gentility. Hereditary mansions, too ancient and magnificent to be deserted, such as Norfolk House, Spencer House and Lansdowne House, stayed the westward course of aristocracy at St. James's Square and Street, Piccadilly, and Mayfair; but the general tide of fashion has swept far beyond.
In that vast realm of wealth and leisure, the West End of London, the eye is not satisfied with seeing, neither the ear with hearing. There is not, nor has there ever been, anything like it in the world. Notes of admiration might be accumulated to any extent without aiding the impression. In every direction the visitor may walk till he is weary through streets and squares of houses, all evidently the abodes of wealth, some of them veritable palaces. The parks are thronged, the streets are blocked with handsome equipages, filled with the rich and gay. Shops blaze with costly wares, and abound with everything that can minister to luxury.
On a fine bright day of May or early June, and days of May or early June are often as bright in London as anywhere, the Park is probably the greatest display of wealth and of the pride of wealth in the world. The contrast with the slums of the East End, no doubt, is striking, and we can not wonder if the soul of the East End is sometimes filled with bitterness at the sight. A social Jeremiah might be moved to holy wrath by the glittering scene. The seer, however, might be reminded that not all the owners of those carriages are the children of idleness, living by the sweat of another man's brow; many of them are professional men or chiefs of industry, working as hard with their brains as any mechanic works with his hands, and indispensable ministers of the highest civilization. The number and splendor of the equipages are thought to have been somewhat diminished of late by the reduction of rents.
The architecture of the West End of London is for the most part drearily monotonous; its forms have too plainly been determined by the builder, not by the artist, tho since the restoration of art, varieties of style have been introduced, and individual beauty has been more cultivated. It is the boundless expanse of opulence, street after street, square after square, that most impresses the beholder, and makes him wonder from what miraculous horn of plenty such a tide of riches can have been poured.
A beautiful city London can not be called. In beauty it is no match for Paris. The smoke, which not only blackens but corrodes, is fatal to the architecture as well as to the atmosphere. Moreover, the fine buildings, which if brought together would form a magnificent assemblage, are scattered over the immense city, and some of them are ruined by their surroundings. There is a fine group at