قراءة كتاب With the World's Great Travellers, Volume 3
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME III
| The Cathedral, City of Mexico | Frontispiece |
| London Bridge | 14 |
| Bank of England | 50 |
| Westminster Abbey and Victoria Tower | 62 |
| Canterbury Cathedral from the Northwest | 114 |
|
Princes Street and Sir Walter Scott’s Monument,
Edinburgh |
122 |
| The Forth Bridge from the North | 136 |
| Custom-House, Dublin, Ireland | 150 |
| Queenstown Harbor | 164 |
| Grand Opera House, Paris | 180 |
| The Luminous Palace, Paris | 216 |
| The Grotto of the Sibyl, Tivoli | 250 |
WITH THE WORLD’S
GREAT TRAVELLERS.
THE WORLD’S GREAT CAPITALS OF TO-DAY.
OLIVER H. G. LEIGH.
London.
To the ordinary eye the moon and stars have at least prettiness, perhaps grandeur. To the trained astronomer, and the contemplative poet, the mighty firmament overwhelms the mind with the sense of human inability to grasp the vast. Knowing and loving the features and characteristics of London as a lover those of his mistress, it can be imagined how such a one despairs of doing justice, in a brief space, either to his subject or his own sane enthusiasm. He would fain impart his knowledge, insight, and what glimmerings of romantic fancy may add charm to the prosy exposition, but the showman’s harangue is received as art without heart.
London is a hundred captivating sights and themes for our hundred capacities and moods. You go to it the first time with the child’s enviable eye-delight in novelty, and are lucky if in a week you are not eye-sore, dazed, and jaded with the very monotony of new scenes and blurred impressions. You wisely fly to the lovely country lanes for restful change, and come back with new eyes and a clean slate. Then the mysterious quality which lifts visible London into the London of real romance and realizable antiquity dawns upon the mind. A third exploration reveals its almost omniscient and omnipotent headship as for three centuries the world’s centre for the intellectual and material forces that have so largely built up our civilization. Continued observation brings other and endless aspects of the indescribable city, which is no city, but a Chinese puzzle of separately whirling worlds within each other.
This mystifying prelude may seem rather disheartening to the stranger, primed with rational curiosity to understand, as well as see, this unwieldy London. He will find, however, his curiosity whetted, deepened, elevated, in proportion as he takes with him a moderate grounding in the historical associations of the old city. This easily acquired information will prove to be a key that will unlock hidden places holding bunches of other keys, so that everywhere one may turn, the streets, buildings, and monuments recite their own fascinating stories.
We live in the day of big things, and sneer as we may at the superficiality of estimating quality by size, there is no escape from it when the purpose is only to kindle interest. Analysis can be undertaken afterwards. London “whips creation” in the
