Highways and Byways in London. Emily Constance Baird Cook

hinted, take many days to explore thoroughly; the Holborn and Strand Inns of Court and of Chancery, especially the Temple and Staple Inn, should be known and studied well; nothing can exceed the charm of these quiet and secluded "haunts of ancient peace."

      Space, however, is limited; I have now said enough to give some idea, even to the uninitiated, of London's many highways and byways, with their suggestions and associations. Yet one word of caution I would add: London must be approached with reverence; her cult is a growth of years, rather than a sudden acquisition. And the love of London stones, once acquired, never leaves the devotee. Whether he walk blissfully through Fleet Street with Johnson and Goldsmith, linger by the Temple fountain with Charles Lamb or Dickens, or traverse the glades of Kensington Gardens with Addison and Steele, "where'er he tread is haunted, holy ground." Here, on Tower Hill, once stood spikes supporting ghastly heads of so-called "traitors"; there, at Smithfield, were burned numberless martyrs. Even the London mud has its poetic associations. We may all tread the same road as that once trodden by Rossetti and Keats; strange road:

      "Miring his outward steps who inly trode

       The bright Castalian brink and Latmos' steep."

      Yes, the love of London grows on the constant Londoner. He will not be long happy away from the comforting hum of the busy streets, from the mighty pulse of the machine. In absence his heart will ever fondly turn to "streaming London's central roar," to the spot where, more than anywhere else, he may be at once the inheritor of all the ages.

      How interesting would it be if one could only—by the aid of some Mr. Wells's "Time Machine"—take a series of flying leaps backward into the abysm of time! Strange to imagine the experience! Beauty, one reflects, might be gained at nearly every step, at the expense, alas! of sanitary conditions, knowledge, and utility. Let us, for a moment, imagine how the thing would be.... First, in a few rapid revolutions of the wheel, would disappear the hideous criss-cross of electric wires overhead, the ugly tangle of suburban tram-lines, and the greater part of the hideous modern growth of suburbs.... Another whirl of the machine, and every sign of a railway station would disappear, every repulsive engine shed and siding vanish ... while the dull present-day rumble of the metropolis would give place to a more indescribably acute and agonising medley of sound.... Again a little while, and the hideous early Victorian buildings would disappear, making way for white Stuart façades, or sober red-brick Dutch palaces.... With yet a few more revolutions, the metropolis will shrink into inconceivably small dimensions, and the atmosphere of the city, losing its peculiar blue-grey mist, will gradually brighten and clear—a radiance, unknown to us children of a later day—diffusing itself over the glistening towers and domes, no longer blackened, but gleaming, Venetian-like, in the Tudor sunlight.... The aspect of the river too has changed; no more ugly steamers, but an array of princely barges deck its waters, gay with the bright dresses of ladies and gallants.... Its solid embankments have crumbled to picturesque overgrown mud banks, its many bridges shrunk to one; the little separate towns of "London" and "Westminster" presenting now more the appearance of rambling villages, adorned by some palaces and churches.... Another turn of the machine, and lo! the imposing façades that adorned the Strand have in their turn given way to picturesque rows and streets of overhanging gabled houses with blackened cross-beams, their quaint projecting windows almost meeting over the narrow streets ... stony streets with their crowds of noisy, jostling, foot-passengers.... Again a long pause ... and now the scene changes to Roman London, the ancient "Augusta," with its powerful walls, its slave ships and pinnaces, its mailed warriors, ever in arms against the blue-eyed Saxon marauders. Then—a final interval—and we see the primitive British village, its mud huts erected by the kindly shores of our "Father Thames," their smoke peacefully rising heavenwards above the surrounding marshes and forests.

      Waterloo Bridge.

CHAPTER II

       THE RIVER

       Table of Contents

      "Above the river in which the miserable perish and on which the fortunate grow rich, runs the other tide whose flood leads onto fortune, whose sources are in the sea empire, and which debouches in the lands of the little island; above the river of the painters and poets, winding through the downs and meadows of the rarest of cultivated landscape out to the reaches where the melancholy sea breeds its fogs and damp east winds, is that of the merchant and politician, having its springs in the uttermost parts of the earth, and pouring out its golden tribute on the lands whence the other steals its drift and ooze."—W. J. Stillman.

      "Above all rivers, thy river hath renowne....

       O! towne of townes, patrone and not compare,

       London, thou art the Flour of Cities all."—Dunbar.

      No one, be he very Londoner indeed, has ever seen the great city aright, or in the true spirit, if he have not made the journey by river at least as far as from Chelsea to the Tower Bridge. From even such a commonplace standpoint as the essentially prosaic Charing Cross Railway Bridge some idea can be gained of the misty glory of this highway of the Nations. It is indeed, often one of these condemned approaches to London that give the traveller the best idea of the vast and multitudinous city. London railway approaches are often abused, even anathematized, yet surely nowhere is the curious picturesqueness of railways so proved as by the impressive approach to Charing Cross Station, across the mighty river. Here, at nightfall, all combines to aid the general effect; the mysterious darkness, the twinkling lights of the Embankment, reflected in the dancing waters, and cleansed by the white moonlight. What approach such as this can Paris offer? But, if the traveller be wise, he will soon seek to supplement such initiatory views by pilgrimages on his own account, pilgrimages undertaken in all reverence, up and down the stream. For, whatever Mr. Gladstone may have said of the omnibus as a mode of seeing London, may be reiterated more forcibly as regards the deck of a penny steamer. It is the fashion to call London ugly; Cobbett nicknamed it "the great wen"; Grant Allen has called it "a squalid village"; and Mme. de Staël "a province in brick." Yet, how full of dignity and beauty is the city through which this wide, turbid river rolls!—"the slow Thames," says a French writer, "always grey as a remembered reflection of wintry skies." Here, by day, hangs that veiling blue mist, which is the combined product of London fog and soot, adding all the indescribable charm of mystery to the scene; and, as twilight draws on, the grand old buildings loom up, vaguely dark, against the sky, their added blackness of soot giving a suggestion as of solidity and antiquity; that poetic time of twilight, "when," as Mr. Whistler puts it.

      "The evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairyland is before us."

      At night, the scene changes: the vast Embankment shines with lamps all a-glitter, and behind them the myriad and deceitful "lights of London" twinkle like a magician's enchanted palace.

      And it is altogether in the fitness of things that the river should be both introduction and entrance gate, so to speak, of modern London. For it is the river, it is our "Father Thames," indeed, that has made London what it is. In our childhood we used to learn in dull geography books, as inseparable addition to the name of any city, that it was "situated" on such-and-such a river; facts that we then saw little interest in committing to memory, but, nevertheless vastly important; how important, we see from this city of London. For London is, and was, primarily a seaport. In Sir Walter Besant's interesting pages may be read the story of the early settlers—Briton, Roman, Saxon, Norman—who successively founded their infant settlements on this marshy site, and had here their primitive wharves, quays, and trading ships for hides, cattle, and merchandise. It is the river, more than anything else, that recalls the past history of London. For London, ever increasing, ever rebuilt, has buried most of her eventful past in an oblivion far deeper than that of Herculaneum. Nothing destroys antiquity like energy; nothing blots out the old like the new. London, ever rising, like the phœnix, from her own ashes, has by the intense