Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 1 | Page 4

BIRTHPLACE--By Nathaniel Hawthorne
_(English Literary Shrines continued in Vol. II)_

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME I
FRONTISPIECE TRAFALGAR SQUARE, LONDON
PRECEDING PAGE I WESTMINSTER ABBEY RIVER FRONT OF
THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL
INTERIOR OF ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL CHAPEL OF EDWARD
THE CONFESSOR, WESTMINSTER ABBEY THE TOWER OF
LONDON CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL TINTERN ABBEY
DRYEURGH ABBEY WINDSOR CASTLE
FOLLOWING PAGE 95 THE ALBERT MEMORIAL CHAPEL,
WINDSOR THE THRONE ROOM, WINDSOR CASTLE POETS'
CORNER, WESTMINSTER ABBEY THE GREAT HALL AT
PENSHURST THE ENTRANCE HALL OF BLENHEIM PALACE
GUY'S TOWER AND THE CLOCK TOWER, WARWICK CASTLE
WARWICK CASTLE THE BEAUCHAMP CHAPEL, WARWICK
THE RUINS OF KENILWORTH CASTLE CHATSWORTH
ALNWICK CASTLE HOLLAND HOUSE EATON HALL

I
LONDON
A GENERAL SKETCH [Footnote: From articles written for the
Toronto "Week." Afterward (1888) issued by The Macmillan Company
in the volume entitled "The Trip to England."]
BY GOLDWIN SMITH
The huge city perhaps never imprest the imagination more than when
approaching it by night on the top of a coach you saw its numberless
lights flaring, as Tennyson says, "like a dreary dawn." The most
impressive approach is now by the river through the infinitude of docks,
quays, and shipping. London is not a city, but a province of brick and
stone. Hardly even from the top of St. Paul's or of the Monument can
anything like a view of the city as a whole be obtained.
It is indispensable, however, to make one or the other of these ascents

when a clear day can be found, not so much because the view is fine, as
because you will get a sensation of vastness and multitude not easily to
be forgotten. There is, or was not long ago, a point on the ridge which
connects Hampstead with Highgate from which, as you looked over
London to the Surrey Hills beyond, the modern Babylon presented
something like the aspect of a city. The ancient Babylon may have vied
with London in circumference, but the greater part of its area was
occupied by open spaces; the modern Babylon is a dense mass of
humanity....
The Empire and the commercial relations of England draw
representatives of trading committees or subject races from all parts of
the globe, and the faces and costumes of the Hindu, the Parsee, the
Lascar and the ubiquitous Chinaman mingle in the motley crowd with
the merchants of Europe and America. The streets of London are, in
this respect, to the modern what the great Palace of Tyre must have
been to the ancient world. But pile Carthage on Tyre, Venice on
Carthage, Amsterdam on Venice, and you will not make the equal, or
anything near the equal, of London.
Here is the great mart of the world, to which the best and richest
products are brought from every land and clime, so that if you have put
money in your purse you may command every object of utility or fancy
which grows or is made anywhere without going beyond the circuit of
the great cosmopolitan city. Parisian, German, Russian, Hindu,
Japanese, Chinese industry is as much at your service here, if you have
the all-compelling talisman in your pocket, as in Paris, Berlin, St.
Petersburg, Benares, Yokohama, or Peking. That London is the great
distributing center of the world is shown by the fleets of the carrying
trade of which the countless masts rise along her wharves and in her
docks. She is also the bank of the world. But we are reminded of the
vicissitudes of commerce and the precarious tenure by which its empire
is held when we consider that the bank of the world in the middle of the
last century was Amsterdam.
The first and perhaps the greatest marvel of London is the commissariat.
How can the five millions be regularly supplied with food, and
everything needful to life, even with such things as milk and those
kinds of fruits which can hardly be left beyond a day? Here again we
see reason for excepting to the sweeping jeremiads of cynicism, and

concluding that tho there may be fraud and scamping in the industrial
world, genuine production, faithful service, disciplined energy, and
skill in organization, can not wholly have departed from the earth.
London is not only well fed, but well supplied with water and well
drained. Vast and densely peopled as it is, it is a healthy city. Yet the
limit of practical extension seems to be nearly reached. It becomes a
question how the increasing multitude shall be supplied not only with
food and water, but with air.
The East of London, which is the old city, is, as all know, the business
quarter. Let the worshiper of Mammon when he sets foot in Lombard
Street adore his divinity, of all whose temples this is the richest and