Chapter VI: Part 6

The parks and garden were laid out to cover some two hundred acres, with terraces and fountains galore, the idea being to produce somewhat the effect as at Versailles, with Les Grande and Petite Eaux, on "grand days" the fountains consuming over 6,000,000 gallons. Cricket, football, and sports of various kinds used to draw vast throngs to "the Palace," and the firework displays at night were, and are to-day, justly celebrated. In short, this "Cockney Arcadia," if rather a tawdry attraction, has had the benefit of much honest admiration of the Londoner, who perforce could not get farther afield for his holiday, and its like can hardly be said to exist elsewhere in Europe or America. Hence it must perforce rank in a way as something unique in present-day outdoor entertainment, as near as is left to us of those of the days of Ranelegh and Vauxhall. Beloved of the clerk and shopkeeper, and altogether an attraction which few of their class appear to be able to resist for long at a time.

London is no more the dread of the visitor who feared the ways that are dark and the tricks that are vain.

London tricks are old as London's history, and from the days of Chaucer the countryman's fear of London's vastness and the cheats practised by her nimble-witted rogues have passed into literature. In the year 1450 John Lydgate sang the sorrows of a simple Kentish wight, who found that, go where he would in London, he could not speed without money:

"To London once, my stepps I bent,
Where trouth in no wyse shoulf be faynt;
To Westmynster ward I forthwith went,
To a man of law to make complaynt.
I sayd, 'for Mary's love, that holy saynt!
Pity the poor that would proceede;'
But for lack of mony I cold not spede."

After going among the lawyers of King's Bench, the Flemings of Westminster Hall with their hats and spectacles, the cloth men and drapers of Cheapside, and the butchers of Eastcheap, poor Lackpenny found that nowhere, without money, could he be sped in London. His final adventure and reflections were these:

"Then hyed I me to Belynsgate;
And one cryed 'hoo, go we hence!'
I prayd a barge man for God's sake,
That he wold spare me my expence.
'Thou scapst not here,' quod he, 'under 2 pence,
I lyst not yet bestow my almes dede;'
Thus lacking mony I could not spede.

"Then I convayed me into Kent;
For of the law wold I meddle no more
Because no man to me tooke entent,
I dyght me to do as I dyd before.
Now Jesus that in Bethlem was bore,
Save London, and send trew lawyers there mede,
For who so wants mony with them shall not spede."

Again one might quote that old Roxburghe ballad, "The Great Boobee," in which a country yokel is made to tell how he was made to look foolish when he resolved to plough no more, but to see the fashions of London:

"Now as I went along the street,
I carried my hat in my hand,
And to every one that I did meet
I bravely bent my band.
Some did laugh, some did scoff,
And some did mock at me,
And some did say I was a woodcock,
And a great Boobee.

"Then I did walk in haste to Paul's,
The steeple for to view,
Because I heard some people say
It should be builded new.
When I got up unto the top,
The city for to see,
It was so high, it made me cry,
Like a great Boobee.

* * * *

"Next day I through Pye-corner past,
The roast meat on the stall
Invited me to take a taste;
My money was but small:
The meat I pickt, the cook me kickt,
As I may tell to thee,
He beat me sore, and made me rore,
Like a great Boobee."

It should be remembered, however, that the great classic of London every-day life, Gay's "Trivia," with its warnings against every danger of the street, from chairmen's poles to thimblerigging, from the ingenious thefts of periwigs to the nuisances caused by dustmen and small coalmen, from the reckless horseplay of the Mohawks to the bewilderment which may overtake the stranger confronted by the problem of Seven Dials, was written for the warning of Londoners themselves. Those were the days when diamond cut diamond.

In the last fifty years the roving swindler has become rare in the streets. London now frightens the countryman more by its size than anything else. And yet the bigger London grows the more it must lose even this power to intimidate. Its greatest distances, its vast suburban wildernesses, are seen by him only through a railway carriage window. He is shot into the centre, and in the centre he remains, where help and convenience are increased every year. It was different in the old days, when the countryman rolled into London by coach, and was robbed on Hounslow Heath before he had seen more than the light of London in the sky. No one nowadays is in danger of being driven mad by the mere spectacle of London opening out before him, yet this was the fate of a West Country traveller who saw London for the first time from a coach early in the nineteenth century. Cyrus Redding tells the story in his entertaining "Fifty Years' Recollections." All went well as far as Brentford. Seeing the lamps of that outlying village, the countryman imagined that he was at his journey's end, but as mile after mile of illumination went on, he asked, in alarm, "Are we not yet in London, and so many miles of lamps?" At last, at Hyde Park Corner, he was told that this was London; but still on went the lamps, on and on the streets, until the poor stranger subsided into a coma of astonishment. When at last they entered Lad Lane, the great Cheapside coaching centre, a travelling companion bade the West Countryman remain in the coffee-room while he made inquiries. On returning, he found no trace of him, nor heard any more of him for six weeks. He then learned that he was in custody at Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, as a lunatic. He was taken home, and after a brief return of his reason he died. He was able to explain that he had become more and more bewildered by the lights and by the never-ending streets, from which he thought he should never be able to escape. Somehow, he walked blindly westward, and at last emerged into the country, only to lose his memory and his wits.

Things are different to-day, and yet many people from the remoter parts of England are bewildered, distressed, and crazed by a visit to London. One meets them drifting wearily and anxiously toward King's Cross or St. Pancras at the end of their stay. They will be happy again when they see the utensils glitter on their old kitchen wall; when they have peeped into their best room and found the shade of stuffed squirrels resting undisturbed on the family Bible; and when the steam rises above their big blue teacups more proudly than ever the dome of St. Paul's soars above this howling Babylon, then they will acquiesce in all that is said in praise of the Abbey, the Bank of England, and Madam Tussaud's.

THE UNDER WORLD

As for the people of Dickens and the people he knew so well, they were mostly of the lower middle classes, though he himself had, by the time his career was well defined, been able to surround himself with the society of the leading literary lights of his time.

Surely, though, the Cockney _pur sang_ never had so true a delineator as he who produced those pen-pictures ranging all the way from the vulgarities of a Sykes to the fastidiousness of a Skimpole. It is a question, wide open in the minds of many, as to whether society of any rank is improving or not; surely the world is quite as base as it ever was, and as worthily circumspect too. But while the improvement of the aristocracy in general, since mediæval times, in learning and accomplishments, was having its untold effect on the middle classes, it was long before the immense body of workers, or perhaps one should say skilled labourers, as the economists call them, partook in any degree of the general amendment. Certainly we have a right to assume, even with a twentieth-century standpoint to judge from, that there was a constantly increasing dissemination of knowledge, if not of culture, and that sooner or later it might be expected to have its desired, if unconscious, effect on the lower classes. That discerning, if not discreet, American, Nathaniel Parker Willis, was inclined to think not, and compared the English labourer to a tired donkey with no interest in things about him, and with scarce surplus energy enough to draw one leg after the other. He may have been wrong, but the fact is that there is a very large proportion of Dickens' characters made up of a shiftless, worthless, and even criminal class, as we all recognize, and these none the less than the other more worthy characters are nowhere to be found as a thoroughly indigenous type but in London itself.

There was an unmistakable class in Dickens' time, and there is to-day, whose only recourse, in their moments of ease, is to the public house,--great, strong, burly men, with "a good pair of hands," but no brain, or at least no development of it, and it is to this class that your successful middle-Victorian novelist turned when he wished to suggest something unknown in polite society. This is the individual who cares little for public improvements, ornamental parks. Omnibuses or trams, steamboats or flying-machines, it's all the same to him. He cares not for libraries, reading-rooms, or literature, cheap or otherwise, nothing, in fact, which will elevate or inspire self-respect; nothing but soul-destroying debauchery and vice, living and dying the life of the beast, and as careless of the future. This is a type, mark you, gentle reader, which is not overdrawn, as the writer has reason to know; it existed in London in the days of Dickens, and it exists to-day, with the qualification that many who ought, perforce of their instincts, to be classed therewith do just enough work of an incompetent kind to keep them well out from under the shadow of the law; these are the "Sykeses" of a former day, not the "Fagins", who are possessed of a certain amount of natural wit, if it be of a perverted kind.

An event which occurred in 1828, almost unparalleled in the annals of criminal atrocity, is significantly interesting with regard to Dickens' absorption of local and timely accessory, mostly of fact as against purely imaginative interpolation merely:

A man named Burke (an Irishman) and a woman named Helen M'Dougal, coalesced with one Hare in Edinburgh to murder persons by wholesale, and dispose of their bodies to the teachers of anatomy. According to the confession of the principal actor, sixteen persons, some in their sleep, others after intoxication, and several in a state of infirmity from disease, were suffocated. One of the men generally threw himself on the victim to hold him down, while the other "burked" him by forcibly pressing the nostrils and mouth, or the throat, with his hands. Hare being admitted as king's evidence, Burke and his other partner in guilt were arraigned on three counts. Helen M'Dougal was acquitted and Burke was executed.

This crime gave a new word to our language. To "burke" is given in our dictionaries as "to murder by suffocation so as to produce few signs of violence upon the victim." Or to bring it directly home to Dickens, the following quotation will serve:

"'You don't mean to say he was "burked," Sam?' said Mr. Pickwick."

With no class of society did Dickens deal more successfully than with the sordidness of crime. He must have been an observer of the most acute perceptions, and while in many cases it was only minor crimes of which he dealt, the vagaries of his assassins are unequalled in fiction. He was generally satisfied with ordinary methods, as with the case of Lawyer Tulkinghorn's murder in Lincoln's Inn Fields, but even in this scene he does throw into crime something more than the ordinary methods of the English novelist. He had the power, one might almost say the Shakespearian power, of not only describing a crime, but also of making you feel the sensation of crime in the air. First and foremost one must place the murder of Montague Tigg.

The grinning Carker of "Dombey and Son" is ground to death under the wheels of a locomotive at a French railway station; Quilp, of "The Old Curiosity Shop," is dramatically drowned; Bill Sykes' neck is broken by the rope meant for his escape; Bradley Headstone and his enemy go together to the bottom of the canal; while the mysterious Krook, of "Bleak House" is disposed of by spontaneous combustion.

Certainly such a gallery of horrors could not be invented purely out of an imaginative mind, and must admittedly have been the product of intimate first-hand knowledge of criminals and their ways.

Doubtless there was a tendency to improve moral conditions as things went on. Britain is not the dying nation which the calamity howlers would have us infer.

In the year 1800, there were--notwithstanding the comparative sparseness of population--eighteen prisons in London alone, whereas in 1850, when Dickens was in his prime and when population had enormously increased, that number had been reduced one-third.

In the early days the jailor in many prisons received no salary, but made his livelihood from the fees he could extort from the prisoners and their friends; and in some cases he paid for the privilege of holding office. Not only had a prisoner to pay for his food and for the straw on which he slept, but, if he failed to pay, he would be detained until he did so.

In Cold Bath Fields prison, men, women, and children were indiscriminately herded together, without employment or wholesome control; while smoking, gaming, singing, and every species of brutalizing conversation obtained.

At the Fleet Prison there was a grate or iron-barred window facing Farringdon Street, and above it was inscribed, "Pray remember the poor prisoners having no allowance," while a small box was placed on the window-sill to receive the charity of the passers-by, and a man ran to and fro, begging coins "for the poor prisoners in the Fleet."

At Newgate, the women usually numbered from a hundred to one hundred and thirty, and each had only eighteen inches breadth of sleeping-room, and all were "packed like slaves in the hold of a slave-ship."

And Marshalsea, which Dickens incorporated into "David Copperfield" and "Little Dorrit," was quite as sordid, to what extent probably none knew so well as Dickens, _père et fils_, for here it was that the father fretfully served out his sentence for debt.

Of all the prisons of that day it may be stated that they were hotbeds of immorality, where children herded with hoary criminals; where no sanitary laws were recognized; where vermin swarmed and disease held forth, and where robbery, tyranny, and cruelty, if not actually permitted, was at least winked at or ignored.

In 1829 Sir Robert Peel brought into force his new police establishment, an event which had not a little to do with the betterment of social life of the day.

"The whole metropolitan district was formed into five local divisions, each division into eight sections, and each section into eight beats, the limits of all being clearly defined and distinguished by letters and numbers; the force itself was divided into companies, each company having one superintendent, four inspectors, sixteen sergeants, and one hundred and forty-four police constables, being also sub-divided into sixteen parts, each consisting of a sergeant and nine men." Incalculable as the boon was in the repression of crime, the Corporation of the City of London could not be persuaded, until several years afterward, to follow such an example, and give up their vested interests in the old system of watchmen. The police system, as remodelled by Sir Robert Peel in 1829, was, of course, the foundation of the present admirable body of constabulary, of which the London "Bobby" must be admitted by all as ranking at the very head of his contemporaries throughout the civilized world. Certainly no more affable and painstaking servants of the public are anywhere to be found; they are truly the "refuge of the inquiring stranger and timid women."

The London policeman, then, is essentially a product of our own times; a vast advance over the peripatetic watchman of a former day, and quite unlike his brother on the Continent, who has not only to keep the peace, but act as a political spy as well. Perhaps it is for this reason that the London policeman is able to exhibit such devotion and affability in the conduct of his duties. Surely no writer or observer has ever had the temerity to assail the efficiency of the London "Peeler" or "Bobby," as he now exists.

No consideration or estimate of middle-class London would be complete without mention of that very important factor in its commissariat--beer, or its various species, mild or bitter, pale or stale. Your true Cockney East-Ender, however, likes his 'arf and 'arf, and further admonishes the cheery barmaid to "draw it mild." Brewers, it would seem, like their horses and draymen, are of a substantial race; many of the leading brewers of the middle nineteenth-century times, indeed, of our own day, are those who brewed in the reigns of the Georges.

By those who know, genuine London ale (presumably the "Genuine Stunning ale" of the "little public house in Westminster," mentioned in "Copperfield") alone is supposed to rival the ideal "berry-brown" and "nut-brown" ale of the old songs, or at least what passed for it in those days.

The increase of brewers has kept pace with London's increase in other respects. Twenty-six brewhouses in the age of Elizabeth became fifty-five in the middle of the eighteenth century, and one hundred and forty-eight in 1841; and in quantity from 284,145 barrels in 1782 to 2,119,447 in 1836. To-day, in the absence of any statistics to hand, the sum total must be something beyond the grasp of any but the statistician.

Without attempting to discuss the merits or demerits of temperance in general, or beer in particular, it can be safely said that the brewer's dray is a prominent and picturesque feature of London streets, without which certain names, with which even the stranger soon becomes familiar, would be meaningless; though they are, as it were, on everybody's tongue and on many a sign-board in nearly every thoroughfare. As a historian, who would have made an unexceptionable literary critic, has said: Beer overflows in almost every volume of Fielding and Smollett. Goldsmith was not averse to the "_parson's black champagne_;" Hogarth immortalized its domestic use, and Gilray its political history; and the "pot of porter" and "mug of bitter" will go down in the annals of the literature, art, and history of London, and indeed all Britain, along with the more aristocratic port and champagne.

LONDON TOPOGRAPHY

From Park Land to Wapping, by day and by night,
I've many a year been a roamer,
And find that no Lawyer can London indite,
Each street, every Lane's a misnomer.
I find Broad Street, St. Giles, a poor narrow nook,
Battle Bridge is unconscious of slaughter,
Duke's Place can not muster the ghost of a Duke,
And Brook Street is wanting in water.

JAMES SMITH, _Comic Miscellanies_.

It is not easy to delimit the territorial confines of a great and growing city like London. The most that the most sanguine writer could hope to do would be to devote himself to recounting the facts and features, with more or less completeness, of an era, or an epoch, if the word be thought to confine the period of time more definitely.

There is no London of to-day; like "unborn to-morrow" and "dead yesterday," it does not exist. Some remains there may be of a former condition, and signs there assuredly are of still greater things to come, but the very face of the earth in the great world of London is constantly changing and being improved or disimproved, accordingly as its makers have acted wisely or not.

_General Post-Office._ _King William Street and_
_Gracechurch Street._

_St. Paul's, Cheapside,_ _Fleet Street at Temple Bar._
_and Paternoster Row._

_"The City"--London._]

The London of Dickens' time--the middle Victorian period--was undergoing, in some degree, at least, the rapid changes which were making themselves felt throughout the civilized world. New streets were being put through, old landmarks were being removed, and new and greater ones rising in their stead; roadways were being levelled, and hills were disappearing where they were previously known. How curious it is that this one topographical detail effects so great a change in the aspect of the buildings which border upon the streets. Take for instance the Strand as it exists to-day. Dickens might have to think twice before he would know which way to turn to reach the _Good Words_ offices. This former narrow thoroughfare has been straightened, widened, and graded until about the only recognizable feature of a quarter of a century ago is the sky-line. Again, St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, a noble and imposing church, is manifestly made insignificant by the cutting down of the grade, and even removing the broad and gentle rising flight of steps which once graced its façade. Generally speaking, the reverse is the case, the level of the roadway being immeasurably raised, so that one actually steps down into a building which formerly was elevated a few steps. All this and much more is a condition which has worked a wondrous change in the topography of London, and doubtless many another great city.

As for grandeur and splendour, that can hardly be claimed for any city which does not make use of the natural features to heighten the effect of the embellishments which the hand of man has added to what nature has already given. London possesses these features to a remarkable degree, and she should make the best of them, even if to go so far as to form one of those twentieth-century innovations, known as an "Art Commission," which she lacks. Such an institution might cause an occasional "deadlock," but it would save a vast deal of disfigurement; for London, be it said, has no streets to rank among those of the world which are truly great, such as High Street at Oxford, and Prince's Street in Edinburgh, to confine the comparison to Great Britain.

The author of this book has never had the least thought of projecting "a new work on London," as the industrious author or compiler of Knight's "Old and New London" put it in 1843, when he undertook to produce a monumental work which he declared should be neither a "survey nor a history." The fact is, however, that not even the most sanguine of those writers who may hope to say a new word about any subject so vast as that comprehended by the single word, London, could even in a small measure feel sure that he has actually discovered any new or hitherto unknown fact. In short, one may say that this would be impossible.

London's written history is very extensive and complete, and it is reasonable to suppose that most everything of moment has at one time or another been written down, but there are constantly varying conditions and aspects which do present an occasional new view of things, even if it be taken from an old standpoint; hence even within the limits of which this section treats it is possible to give something of an impression which once and again may strike even a supercritical reader as being timely and pertinent, at least to the purport of the volume.

The latter-day City and County of London, including the metropolitan and suburban area, literally "Greater London," has within the last few years grown to huge proportions. From being a city hemmed within a wall, London has expanded in all directions, gradually forming a connection with various clusters of dwellings in the neighbourhood. It has, in fact, absorbed towns and villages to a considerable distance around: the chief of these once detached seats of population being the city of Westminster. By means of its bridges, it has also absorbed Southwark, Bermondsey, Lambeth, and Vauxhall, besides many hamlets and villages beyond.

Even in Dickens' day each centre of urban life, whether it be Chelsea, Whitechapel, or the Borough,--that ill-defined centre south of London Bridge,--was closely identified with local conditions which were no part of the life of any other section. Aside from the varying conditions of social life, or whether the section was purely residential, or whether it was a manufacturing community, there were other conditions as markedly different. Theatres, shops, and even churches varied as to their method of conduct, and, in some measure, of their functions as well. It was but natural that the demand of the Ratcliffe Highway for the succulent "kipper" should conduce to a vastly different method of purveying the edible necessities of life from that of the West End poulterer who sold only Surrey fowl, or, curiously enough, as he really does, Scotch salmon. So, too, with the theatres and music-halls; the lower riverside population demand, if not necessarily a short shrift, a cheap fare, and so he gets his two and three performances a night at a price ranging from three pence to two shillings for what in the west brings from one to ten shillings.

To vary the simile still farther, but without going into the intricacies of dogma, the church has of necessity to appeal to its constituency in the slums in a vastly different method of procedure from what would be considered dignified or even devout elsewhere; and it is a question if the former is not more efficacious than the latter. And so these various centres, as they may be best described, are each of themselves local communities welded, let us hope, into as near as may be a perfect whole, with a certain leeway of self-government and privilege to deal with local conditions.

In 1850, taken as best representative of Dickens' time, London was divided into twenty-six wards (and several liberties). The "Out Parishes" of the "City," the City of Westminster, and the five "Parliamentary Boroughs" of Marylebone, Lambeth, Southwark, Finsbury, and Tower hamlets, and a region of debatable land lying somewhere between that which is properly called London and its environs, and partaking in a certain measure of the attributes of both.

London would seem to be particularly fortunate in its situation, and that a large city should have grown up here was perhaps unavoidable: sufficiently far from the open sea to be well protected therefrom, yet sufficiently near thereto to have early become a powerful city and a great port.

Roman occupation, in spite of historians to the contrary, has with the later Norman leavened the Teutonic characteristics of the people of Britain perhaps more than is commonly credited. Cæsar's invasion was something more than a mere excursion, and his influence, at least afterward, developed the possibilities of the "mere collection of huts" with the Celtic name into the more magnificent city of Londinium.

It has been doubted if Cæsar really did know the London of the Britons, which historians have so assiduously tried to make a great and glorious city even before his time. More likely it was nothing of the sort, but was simply a hamlet, set down in a more or less likely spot, around which naturally gathered a slowly increasing population.

In a way, like the Celtic hill towns of Normandy and Brittany, it took Roman impulse to develop it into anything more beautiful and influential than the mere stockade or _zareba_ of the aborigine. The first mention of London is supposed to be in the works of Tacitus, a century and a half after Cæsar's invasion. From this it would appear that by the year 62, in the reign of Nero, _Londinium_ was already a place of "great importance."

Against the Roman domination the Britons finally rose at the call of the outraged Boadicea, who marched directly upon London as the chief centre of power and civilization. Though why the latter condition should have been resented it is still difficult to understand. Ptolemy, who, however, got much of his information second-hand, refers to London in his geography of the second century as _Londinion_, and locates it as being situate somewhere south of the Thames. All this is fully recounted in the books of reference, and is only mentioned as having more than a little to do with the modern city of London, which has grown up since the great fire in 1666.

As a British town it occupied a site probably co-extensive only with the later Billingsgate and the Tower on one hand, and Dowgate on the other. Lombard and Fenchurch Streets were its northerly limits, with the Wall-Brook and Sher-Bourne on the west. These limits, somewhat extended, formed the outlines of the Roman wall of the time of Theodosius (394).

Coming to a considerably later day, a matter of twelve hundred years or so, it is recalled that the period of the great fire is the time from which the building up of the present city dates, and from which all later reckoning is taken. London at that day (1666) was for the most part timber-built, and the flames swept unobstructed over an area very nearly approximating that formerly enclosed by London wall.

The Tower escaped; so did All-Hallows, Barking, Crosby Hall, and Austin Friars, but the fire was only checked on the west just before it reached the Temple Church and St. Dunstan's-in-the-West.

He who would know London well must be a pedestrian. Gay, who wrote one of the most exact and lively pictures of the external London of his time, has put it thus:

"Let others in the jolting coach confide,
Or in a leaky boat the Thames divide,
Or box'd within the chair, contemn the street,
And trust their safety to another's feet:
Still let me walk."

Such characteristic features as are properly applicable to the Thames have been dealt with in the chapter devoted thereto. With other localities and natural features it is hardly possible to more than make mention of the most remarkable.

From Tower Hill to Hampstead Heath, and from the heights of Sydenham to Highgate is embraced the chief of those places which are continually referred to in the written or spoken word on London.

The Fleet and its ditch, with their unsavoury reputations, have been filled up. The Regent's Canal, which enters the Thames below Wapping, winds its way, now above ground and occasionally beneath, as a sort of northern boundary of London proper. Of other waterways, there are none on the north, while on the south there are but two minor streams, Beverly Brook and the River Wandle, which flow sluggishly from the Surrey downs into the Thames near Wandsworth.

As for elevations, the greatest are the four cardinal points before mentioned.

Tower Hill, with its rather ghastly romance, is first and foremost in the minds of the native and visitor alike. This particular locality has changed but little, if at all, since Dickens' day. The Minories, the Mint, Trinity House, the embattled "Tower" itself, with the central greensward enclosed by iron railings, and the great warehouses of St. Katherine's Dock, all remain as they must have been for years. The only new thing which has come into view is the garish and insincere Tower Bridge, undeniably fine as to its general effect when viewed from a distance down-river, with its historic background and the busy activities of the river at its feet. A sentiment which is speedily dispelled when one realizes that it is but a mere granite shell hung together by invisible iron girders. Something of the solidity of the Tower and the sincerity of a former day is lacking, which can but result in a natural contempt for the utilitarianism which sacrifices the true art expression in a city's monuments.

Of the great breathing-places of London, Hyde Park ranks easily the first, with Regent's Park, the Green Park, St. James' Park, Battersea Park, and Victoria Park in the order named. The famous Heath of Hampstead and Richmond Park should be included, but they are treated of elsewhere.

Hyde Park as an institution dates from the sixteenth century, and with Kensington Gardens--that portion which adjoins Kensington Palace--has undergone no great changes during the past hundred years.

At Hyde Park Corner is the famous Apsley House presented by the nation to the Duke of Wellington. At Cumberland Gate was Tyburn. The "Ring" near Grosvenor Gate was the scene of gallantries of the days of Charles II.; of late it has been devoted to the games of gamins and street urchins. The Serpentine is a rather suggestively and incongruously named serpentine body of water, which in a way serves to give a variety to an otherwise somewhat monotonous prospect.

The first Great International Exhibition was held in Hyde Park in 1851, and rank and fashion, in the mid-Victorian era, "church paraded" in a somewhat more exclusive manner than pursued by the participants in the present vulgar show. The Green Park and St. James's Park touch each other at the angles and, in a way, may be considered as a part of one general plan, though for a fact they vary somewhat as to their characteristics and functions, though under the same "Ranger," a functionary whose office is one of those sinecures which under a long-suffering, tax-burdened public are still permitted to abound.

The history of Regent's Park, London's other great open space, is brief. In 1812, the year of Dickens' birth, a writer called it "one of the most fashionable Sunday promenades about town." It certainly appears to have been quite as much the vogue for promenading as Hyde Park, though the latter retained its supremacy as a driving and riding place. The Zoological Gardens, founded in 1826, here situated, possess a perennial interest for young and old. The principal founders were Sir Humphrey Davy and Sir Stamford Raffles.

The rambler in old London, whether he be on foot or in a cab, or by the more humble and not inconvenient "bus," will, if he be in the proper spirit for that edifying occupation, be duly impressed by the mile-stones with which the main roads are set. Along the historic "Bath Road," the "Great North Road," the "Portsmouth Road," or the "Dover Road," throughout their entire length, are those silent though expressive monuments to the city's greatness.

In old coaching days the custom was perhaps more of a consolation than it proves to-day, and whether the Londoner was on pleasure bent, to the Derby or Epsom, or coaching it to Ipswich or Rochester,--as did Pickwick,--the mile-stones were always a cheerful link between two extremes.

To-day their functions are no less active; the advent of the bicycle and the motor-car makes it more necessary than ever that they should be there to mark distance and direction.

No more humourous aspect has ever been remarked than the anecdote recounted by a nineteenth-century historian of the hunt of one Jedediah Jones for the imaginary or long since departed "Hicks' Hall," from which the mile-stones, cryptogrammatically, stated that "this stone was ten (nine, eight, etc.) miles from Hicks' Hall." The individual in question never was able to find the mythical "Hicks' Hall," nor the equally vague "Standard in Cornhill," the latter being referred to by an accommodating 'bus driver in this wise: "Put ye down at the 'Standard in Cornhill?'--that's a good one! I should like to know who ever seed the 'Standard in Cornhill.' Ve knows the 'Svan wi' Two Necks' and the 'Vite Horse' in Piccadilly, but I never heerd of anybody that ever seed the 'Standard in Cornhill.' Ve simply reckons by it."

The suburbs of London in Dickens' time were full of such puzzling mile-stones. As late as 1831 a gate existed at Tyburn turnpike, and so, as if marking the distinction between London and the country, the mile-stones read from Tyburn.

Hyde Park Corner is still used in a similar way. Other stones read merely from London, but, as it would be difficult to know what part of London might best be taken to suit the purposes of the majority, the statement seems as vague as was Hicks' Hall. Why not, as a writer of the day expressed it, measure from the G. P. O.? which to the stranger might prove quite as unintelligible, meaning in this case, however, General Post-Office.

The population return of 1831 shows a plan with a circle drawn eight miles from the centre, a region which then comprised 1,776,000 inhabitants. By 1841 the circle was reduced to a radius of one-half, and the population was still as great as that contained in the larger circle of a decade before. Thus the history of the growth of London shows that its greatest activities came with the beginning of the Victorian era.

By the census of 1861, the population of the City--the E. C. District--was only 112,247; while including that with the entire metropolis, the number was 2,803,034, or _twenty-five times_ as great as the former. It may here be remarked that the non-resident, or, more properly, "non-sleeping" population of the City is becoming larger every year, on account of the substitution of public buildings, railway stations and viaducts, and large warehouses, in place of ordinary dwelling-houses. Fewer and fewer people _live_ in the City. In 1851, the number was 127,869; it lessened by more than 15,000 between that year and 1861; while the population of the _whole_ metropolis increased by as many as 440,000 in the same space of time.

In 1870, when Dickens was still living, the whole population was computed at 3,251,804, and the E. C. population was further reduced to 74,732.

In 1901 the "City" contained only 3,900 inhabited houses, and but 27,664 persons composed the night population.

The territorial limits or extent of London must vary greatly according as to whether one refers to "The City," "London proper," or "Greater London," a phrase which is generally understood of the people as comprehending not only the contiguous suburbs of a city, but those residential communities closely allied thereto, and drawing, as it were, their support from it. If the latter, there seems no reason why London might not well be thought to include pretty much all of Kent and Surrey,--the home counties lying immediately south of the Thames,--though in reality one very soon gets into green fields in this direction, and but for the ominous signs of the builder and the enigmatic references of the native to the "city" or "town," the stranger, at least, might think himself actually far from the madding throng.

For a fact this is not so, and local life centres, even now, as it did in days gone by, very much around the happenings of the day in London itself.

Taking it in its most restricted and confined literal sense, a circuit of London cannot be better expressed than by quoting the following passage from an author who wrote during the early Victorian period.

"I heard him relate that he had the curiosity to measure the circuit of London by a perambulation thereof. The account he gave was to this effect: He set out from his house in the Strand toward Chelsea, and, having reached the bridge beyond the water works, Battersea, he directed his course to Marylebone, from whence, pursuing an eastern direction, he skirted the town and crossed the Islington road at the 'Angel.' ... passing through Hoxton he got to Shoreditch, thence to Bethnal Green, and from thence to Stepney, where he recruited his steps with a glass of brandy. From Stepney he passed on to Limehouse, and took into his route the adjacent hamlet of Poplar, when he became sensible that to complete his design he must take in Southwark. This put him to a stand, but he soon determined on his course, for, taking a boat, he landed at the Red House at Deptford and made his way to Saye's Court, where the wet dock is, and, keeping the houses along Rotherhithe to the right, he got to Bermondsey, thence by the south end of Kent Road to Newington, and over St. George's Fields to Lambeth, and crossing over at Millbank, continued his way to Charing Cross and along the Strand to Norfolk Street, from whence he had set out. The whole excursion took him from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon, and, according to his rate of walking, he computed the circuit of London at about twenty miles."

Since this was written, even these areas have probably extended considerably, until to-day the circuit is more nearly fifty miles than twenty, but in assuming that such an itinerary of twenty miles covers the ground specifically mentioned, it holds equally true to-day that this would be a stroll which would exhibit most of the distinguishing features and characteristics of the city.

Modes of conveyance have been improved. One finds the plebeian cab or "growler," the more fastidious hansom, and the popular electric tram, which is fast replacing the omnibus in the outlying portions, to say nothing of the underground railways now being "electrified," as the management put it.

These improvements have made not only distances seem less great, but have done much toward the speedy getting about from one place to another.

It matters not how the visitor enters London; he is bound to be duly impressed by the immensity of it. In olden times the ambassador to St. James' was met at Dover, where he first set foot upon English soil, by the Governor of the Castle and the local Mayor. From here he was passed on in state to the great cathedral city of Canterbury, sojourned for a space beneath the shadow of Rochester Castle, crossed the Medway, and finally reached Gravesend, reckoned the entry to the port of London. Here he was received by the Lord Mayor of London and the Lord Chamberlain, and "took to water in the royal galley-foist," or barge, when he was rowed toward London by the Royal Watermen, an institution of sturdy fellows which has survived to this day, even appearing occasionally in their picturesque costumes at some river fête or function at Windsor.

With a modern visitor it is somewhat different; he usually enters by one of the eight great gateways, London Bridge, Waterloo, Euston, Paddington, St. Pancras, King's Cross, Victoria or Charing Cross, unless by any chance he arrives by sea, which is seldom; the port of London, for the great ocean liner, is mostly a "home port," usually embarking or disembarking passengers at some place on the south or west coast,--Southampton, Plymouth, Liverpool, or Glasgow.

In either case, he is ushered instantly into a great, seething world, unlike, in many of its features, anything elsewhere, with its seemingly inextricable maze of streets and bustle of carriages, omnibuses, and foot-passengers.

He sees the noble dome of St. Paul's rising over all, possibly the massiveness of the Tower, or the twin towers of Westminster, of those of the "New Houses of Parliament," as they are still referred to.

From the south only, however, does the traveller obtain a really pleasing first impression. Here in crossing any one of the five central bridges he comes at once upon a prospect which is truly grand.

The true pilgrim--he who visits a shrine for the love of its patron--is the one individual who gets the best of life and incidentally of travel. London sightseeing appeals largely to the American, and it is to him that most of the sights and scenes of the London of to-day--and for that matter, of the past fifty years--most appeal. In the reign of James I. sights, of a sort, were even then patronized, presumably by the stranger. "The Londoner never goes anywhere or sees anything," as one has put it. In those days it cost two pence to ascend to the top of Old St. Paul's, and in the Georges' time, a penny to ascend the "Monument." To-day this latter treat costs three pence, which is probably an indication of the tendency of the times to raise prices.

With many it may be said it is merely a rush and a scramble, "personally conducted," or otherwise, to get over as large a space of ground in a given time as legs and lungs will carry one. Walpole remarked the same sad state of affairs when he wrote of the Houghton visitors.

"They come and ask what such a room is called ... write it down; admire a cabbage or a lobster in a market piece (picture?); dispute as to whether the last room was green or purple, and then hurry to the inn for fear the fish should be overdressed."

One who knows his London is amused at the disappointment that the visitor often feels when comparing his impression of London, as it really is, with the London of his imagination.

As they ride down Fleet Street they are surprised at the meanness of the buildings as compared with those which had existed in their mind's eye. This might not be the case were but their eyes directed to the right quarter. Often and often one has seen the stranger on a bus gazing at the houses in Fleet Street instead of looking, as he should, right ahead. In this way he misses the most sublime views in London: that of the "Highway of Letters" in its true relation to St. Paul's in the east and the Abbey in the west.

The long dip of the street and the opposite hill of Ludgate give an incomparable majesty to the Cathedral, crowning the populous hill, soaring serenely above the vista of houses, gables, chimneys, signals, and telegraph wires,--

"Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,
Which men call town."

Coming by one of the existing modern gateways the railway termini, before mentioned, the visitor would be well advised to reënter London the next day _via_ the "Uxbridge Road," upon an omnibus bound for the Bank, securing a front seat. He will then make his triumphal entry along five miles of straight roadway, flanked by magnificent streets, parks, and shops, until, crossing Holborn Viaduct, he is borne past the General Post-Office, under the shadow of St. Paul's, and along Cheapside to the portico of the Royal Exchange--the hub of the world. As Byron well knew, only time reveals London:

"The man who has stood on the Acropolis
And looked down over Attica; or he
Who has sailed where picturesque Constantinople is,
Or seen Timbuctoo, or hath taken tea
In small-eyed China's crockery-ware metropolis,
Or sat midst the bricks of Nineveh,
May not think much of London's first appearance;
_But ask him what he thinks of it a year hence!_"

As with society, so with certain localities of London; there are some features which need not be described; indeed they are not fit to be, and, while it cannot be said that Dickens ever expressed himself in manner aught but proper, there are details of the lives and haunts of the lower classes of which a discussion to any extent should be reserved for those economic works which treat solely of social questions. The "Hell's Kitchens" and "Devil's Furnaces," all are found in most every large city of Europe and America; and it cannot be said that the state of affairs, with regard thereto, is in any way improving, though an occasional slum is blotted out entirely.

Not alone from a false, or a prudish, refinement are these questions kept in the background, but more particularly are they diminished in view in order to confine the contents of this book to a résumé of the facts which are the most agreeable. Even in those localities where there is little else but crime and ignorance, suffering and sorrow, there is also, in some measure, propriety and elegance, comfort and pleasure.

If the old "Tabard" of Chaucer's day has given way to a garish and execrable modern "Public House," some of the sentiment still hangs over the locality, and so, too, with the riverside communities of Limehouse and Wapping. Sentiment as well as other emotions are unmistakably reminiscent, and the enthusiastic admirer of Dickens, none the less than the general lover of a historical past, will derive much pleasure from tracing itineraries for himself among the former sites and scenes of the time, not far gone, of which he wrote.

Eastcheap has lost some of its old-world atmosphere, and is now given over to the coster element. Finsbury and Islington are covered with long rows of dull-looking houses which have existed for a matter of fifty or seventy-five years, with but little change except an occasional new shop-front and a new street cut through here and there. Spring Gardens, near Trafalgar Square, is no longer a garden, and is as dull and gloomy a place as any flagged courtyard in a less aristocratic neighbourhood.

The old "Fleet Ditch" no longer runs its course across Holborn and into the Thames at Blackfriars. Churches, palaces, theatres, prisons, and even hospitals have, in a measure, given way to progressive change and improvement.

Guy's Hospital, identified with letters from the very foundation of its patron,--one Thomas Guy, a bookseller of Lombard Street,--dates only from the eighteenth century, and has to-day changed little from what it was in Dickens' time, when he lived in near-by Lant Street, and the fictional character of "Sawyer" gave his famous party to which "Mr. Pickwick" was invited. "It's near Guy's," said Sawyer, "and handy for me, you know."

On the whole, London is remarkably well preserved; its great aspects suffer but very little change, and the landmarks and monuments which met Dickens' gaze are sufficiently numerous and splendid to still be recognizable by any who possess any degree of familiarity with his life and works. Many well-known topographical features are still to be found within the sound of Bow Bells and Westminster. Those of the Strand and Fleet Street, of the Borough, Bermondsey, Southwark southward of the river, and Bloomsbury in the north, form that debatable ground which is ever busy with hurrying feet. The street-sweeper, though, has mostly disappeared, and the pavements of Whitehall are more evenly laid than were the Halls of Hampton Court in Wolsey's day.

Where streets run off from the great thoroughfares, they are often narrow and in a way ill kept, but this is due more to their confined area than to any carelessness or predisposition on the part of the authorities to ignore cleanliness.

London possesses a series of topographical divisions peculiar to itself, when one considers the number thereof, referring to the numerous squares which, in a way, correspond to the Continental place, platz, or plaza. It is, however, a thing quite different. It may be a residential square, like Bedford, Bloomsbury, or Belgrave Squares, or, like Covent Garden and Lincoln's Inn Fields, given over to business of a certain sedate kind. These latter two are the oldest of London squares. Or, like Trafalgar Square, of a frankly commercial aspect.

On the Continent they are generally more of architectural pretensions than in London, and their functions are quite different, having more of a public or ceremonial character; whereas here the more exclusive are surrounded with the houses of the nobility or aristocracy, or what passes for it in these days; or, as in the case of Trafalgar Square,--in itself of splendid architectural value,--little more than a point of crossing or meeting of streets, like Piccadilly and Oxford Circus.

In the "City," the open spaces are of great historical association; namely, Charterhouse, Bridgewater, Salisbury, Gough, and Warwick Squares. They show very few signs of life and humanity of a Sunday or a holiday, but are active enough at other times.

Further west are the quiet precincts of the Temple and Lincoln's Inn Fields, one of the most ancient and, on the whole, the most attractive of all, with its famous houses and institutions of a storied past.

While, if not actually to be counted as city squares, they perform in no small degree many of their functions.

Red Lion Square, to the north of Fleet Street, is gloomy enough, and reminiscent of the old "Red Lion" Inn, for long "the largest and best frequented inn in Holborn," and yet more worthily, as being the residence of Milton after his pardon from King Charles.

Soho Square and Golden Square are quiet and charming retreats, away from the bustle of the shoppers of Regent and Oxford Streets, though perhaps melancholy enough to the seeker after real architectural charm and beauty.

It is to Bloomsbury that the heart of the American most fondly turns, whether he takes residence there by reason of its being "so near to the British Museum, you know," or for motives of economy, either of which should be sufficient of itself, likewise commendable.