Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 1 | Page 5

the
most famous. Note the throng incessantly threading those narrow and
tortuous streets. Nowhere are the faces so eager or the steps so hurried,
except perhaps in the business quarter of New York. Commerce has
still its center here; but the old social and civic life of the city has fled.
What once were the dwellings of the merchants of London are now 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