tarnished hearts that even this city of fretful stir, weariness, and leaden-eyed despair, might be sweet and of goodly flavour—that even London's cruel face might be made to beam upon all her children like a maternal benediction, if they were wise enough to deserve and demand it!

But—

The wealth and the poverty! the grandeur and the wretchedness!

Sir Howard Vincent, a Conservative M.P., lately told his Sheffield constituents, after a round of visits paid to "almost every state in Europe," that—

He had no hesitation in saying that in a walk of a mile in London, and in the West End too, they saw more miserable people than he met with in all the countries enumerated—more bedraggled, unhappy, unfortunate out-of-works, seeking alms and bread, and strong men earning a few pence loitering along with immoral advertisements on their shoulders. He granted that there were more people in London with palatial mansions, luxurious carriages, and high-stepping horses, but there was much greater poverty and dire distress among the aged.

As regards the luxury, this is true enough. As regards poverty, London's state is bad—God knows!—infinitely worse than that of Paris, which I know intimately; but not so bad, according to my more travelled friends, as that of Russian, Italian, or even Saxon industrial regions. London's destitution at its worst is perhaps more brutal, and more repellent, but not more hopeless than the more picturesque poverty of sunnier climes.

Poplar, Stepney, Hoxton, Bethnal Green, and Whitechapel are as hideous tumours upon a fair woman's face.

They are vile labyrinths of styes, where pallid men and women, and skeleton children,—guileless little things, fresh from the hands of God,—wallow like swine.

Yet, except for vastness, London slums are not more shameful than the slums Sir Howard Vincent may find, if he will look in the town which he has the dishonour of representing in Parliament.

I saw the slum-scum sweltering in their close-packed, fœtid East End courts during the great water famine last summer (miles of luxuriously appointed palaces in the gorgeous West standing the while deserted), but even then I found them cleaner, fresher, and sweeter than the slums of Manchester, Liverpool, Dublin, Dundee, Glasgow, Birmingham, or Darkest Sheffield.

For over all these London possesses one precious, inestimable advantage—the wide estuary and great air avenue of the Thames, through which refreshing winds are borne into the turbid crannies, bringing precious seeds of health and sweeping out the stagnant poisons.

I have beheld the great city in many aspects, fair and foul. I have seen St. Paul's pierce with ghostly whiteness through a mist that swathed and wholly hid its lower parts, the great dome rising like a phantom balloon from out a phantom city. I have seen a blue-grey "London particular" transform a dingy, narrow street into a portal of mystery, romance, and enchantment. I have loitered on Waterloo Bridge to gaze on the magic of the river and listen to the eerie music of Time's roaring loom. I have heard the babel of Petticoat Lane on Sunday morning. I have surveyed the huge wen and contrasted it with the pleasant Kentish weald from Leith Hill's summit. And I would not go back from London to any place that I have lived in. I like London. I am bitten as I have seen all bitten that came under its spell—bitten as I vowed I never could be.

London's air is in my lungs and nostrils, its glamour in my eyes, its roar and moan and music in my ears, its fever in my blood, its quintessence in my heart.

I came to scoff and I pray to remain.

LONDON CHARLIE

Moore.

The celebrated novelist Ouida has made a general indictment against the "cruel ugliness and dulness" of the streets of London.

The greatest city in the world, according to Mdlle. de la Ramé, has "a curiously provincial appearance, and in many ways the aspect of a third-rate town."

Even the aristocratic quarters are "absolutely and terribly depressing and tedious"; and as for decorative beauty, this is all she can find of it in London:—

An ugly cucumber frame like Battersea Park Hall, gaudily coloured; a waggon drawn by poor, suffering horses, and laden with shrieking children, going to Epping Forest; open-air preachers ranting hideously of hell and the devil; gin-palaces, music-halls, and the flaring gas-jets on barrows full of rotting fruit, are all that London provides in the way of enjoyment or decoration for its multitudes!

Instead of which, I am free to maintain that no town of my acquaintance has such diversity of entertainment.

Paris has the bulge in the trifling, foolish matter of theatrical plays and players. But London has more and finer playhouses; as good opportunities of hearing great music; and infinitely larger and better-appointed music-halls.

London has now the finest libraries, museums, and picture-galleries; and as for out-door entertainment, no town possesses such remarkable variety as is offered at the Imperial Institute, the Crystal and Alexandra Palaces, Olympia, and Earl's Court. Thereby hangs a tale.

It must be that the provincial friends who visit me are not as other men. I hear of people receiving guests from the country and taking them out for nice walks to the National Gallery, South Kensington Museum, the Tower, and other places of cultured dissipation provided by the generous rate-payer to discourage and kill off the cheap-tripper; but I have no such luck.

To my ardent, blushing commendation of national eleemosynary entertainments, the rude provincials who assail my hospitality reply with a rude provincial wink.

Frequent failure has, I fear, stripped my plausibility of its pristine bloom. Time was when I could boldly recommend Covent Garden Market at four o'clock in the morning as a first-rate attraction to the provincial pilgrim of pleasure, but your stammering tongue and quailing eye are plaguy mockers of your useful villainy.

Mrs. Dangle herself begins to look doubtfully when, on our periodical little pleasure trips, I repeat the customary: "Tower! eh? It will be such a treat!"

Ah me! Confidence was a beautiful thing. The world grows too cynical. Earl's Court is the thin end of the wedge by which the hydra-headed serpent of unbelief is bred to fly roughshod over the thin ice of irresolute dissimulation, to nip the mask of pretence in the bud, and with its cold, uncharitable eye to suck the very life-blood of that confidence which is the corner-stone and sheet-anchor of friendly trust 'twixt man and man.

Be that as it may, my praise of County Council