in the world because perhaps the most intellectual ho w different is the very atmosphere of it from america the great open common about this house of english individuality leisure order � anything you will the atmosphere was damp the sun at best a golden haze all the bare trees were covered with a thin of almost spring green moss the ground was were in the sky the trees little red houses in the valleys with combination done in quaint individual chimney pots send upward soft of blue smoke their earth colored trousers just below the knees by a small leather appeared ver and anon s a at forty and span with black dresses white white in their hair becoming of linen made into large bows at their backs appeared at some door or some window of almost every home the sun into such orderly well dressed windows the fields such you can encounter hills of sheep creaking open common land of and wild my little master clad by on a pony my young mistress looks gay and superior on a or a a four year old has a long white donkey to ride that is england how shall it be said � how described it is so delicate so remote so refined so smooth a pleasant land of great verse and great thought chapter vii a glimpse of london a few days i went to london for the first time � i do not count the night of my arrival for i saw nothing but the railway � and i confess i was not impressed as much as i might have been i could not help thinking on this first morning as we passed from park marble arch park lane brook street square square and other streets to street and the neighborhood of the hotel that it was beautiful spacious dignified and well ordered but not imposing fortunately it was a bright and comfortable morning and the air was soft there was a faint haze over the city which i took to be smoke and certainly it as though it were smoky i had a sense of great life but not of crowded life if i manage to make myself clear by that it seemed to me at first blush as if the city might be so vast that no part was important at every turn who was my ever present was explaining now this that we are coming to or this that we are passing or this is so and so and so we sped by interesting things the city me in a vague way but meaning very little at the moment we must have passed through a long stretch of for pointed out a line of clubs them � the st james s the club the club and then st james s palace i was duly impressed i was seeing things which s a at forty after all i thought did not depend so much upon their exterior beauty or vast presence as upon the import of their and connections they were beautiful in a low dark way and certainly they were tinged with an atmosphere of age and respectability after all since life is a of the brain built up notions of things arc really far more impressive in many cases than the things themselves london is a of great names it is a clatter of vast it is a of memories and celebrated beauties and orders and distinctions it is almost impossible any more to the real from the or better spiritual there is something here which is not of brick and stone at all but which is purely a matter of thought it is poetry noble ideas delicious memories of great things and these after all are better than brick and stone the city is low � universally not more than five stories high often not more than two but it is beautiful and it great spaces with narrow in such a way as to give a splendid variety you can have at once a sense of being very crowded and of being very free i can understand now s desire to include poor old with italy in the of romance the thing that struck me most in so brief a survey � we were surely not more than twenty minutes in reaching our destination � was that the buildings were largely a golden yellow in color quite as if they had been white and time had stained them many other buildings looked as though they had been black originally and had been white in spots the truth is that it was quite the other way about they had been snow white and had been by the smoke until they were now nearly coal black and only here and there had the wind and rain whipped bare white a glimpse of london places which looked like or the of lime at first i thought how wretched later i thought this effect is charming we are so used to the new and shiny and tall in america particularly in our larger cities that it is very hard at first to estimate a city of equal or greater rank which is old and low and to a certain extent smoky in places there was more beauty more more dignity more space than most of our cities have to offer the police had an air of dignity and intelligence such as i have never seen anywhere in america the streets were beautifully swept and clean and i saw soldiers here and there in fine standing outside palaces and walking in the public ways that alone was sufficient to london from any american city we rarely see our soldiers they are too few i think what i felt most of all was that i could not feel anything very definite about so great a city and that there was no use trying we were soon at the bank 