The Express.
London, England, 1868-12-29 00:00:00

18

ono* said Dr. Johnson, " Fleet-
try animated appearance, but I
la of human existence is et Char-
t bis words are even more strictly
accurate now than in his time. Other metropo-
litan thoroughfares are busy and full, but at
Charing-cross you get the loading features of City
and West-end, and to stand in its midst is
to recognise and to wonder at the endless variety
of the stream. Bracketing Trafalgar-square
with it for convenience sake, end booms°
the stroller about Charing-cross finds him-
self within the limits of the former place
almost unconsciously, the approaching removal
of the Royal Academy at once suggests a loss.
No more will that long line of broughams, cha-
riots, and suburban flies block the roadway
throughout May and Juno ; no more will the
oddly-matched groups emerge, catalogue in hand,
frcm the palisaded gateways ; no more will the
street boys assemble here on the " Academy
dinner day," to cheer royalty and the ministers,
and to point out public favourites to each other.
The lighting up of the windows beneath the
funny little pepper-castor domes will men come
to mean other things than life-schools; the well-
known figures of the academicians who are told
off to teach will be seen here no more ; and the
periodical block of vans and picture-carts from
which duly gilded frames and pictures are taken
in at the back-doors will be crowded tlgother
elsewhere. The copyists and sight-seers of the
National Gallery will have so many extra rooms
thrown open to them, and the umbrellas and
stieks which are permitted to wander at will
through the Vernon and Sheepshanks' galleries
at Month Kensington will be confiscated
as usual, but by a National instead
of an Academic porter. Charing-cross will lose
one fruitful source of traffic when the Academy
goes, but will never miss it. Take this trian-
gular opening, as it is called in the guide-books,
at what hour you will, when the London day has
fairly begun, its clatter of wheels and footsteps
exceeds that of any other place we know. Govern-
ment clerks pouring down to Whitehall, or passing
through to Pall-mall—smart dressers the younger
men, and with a general air of being out too early
in their fashionable attire ; ministers and politicians
wending their way to St. Stephen's when the House
is sitting, and looking more commonplace and
prosaic, not to say shabby, than one likes to think
the rulers of this great country ought to be ; family
coaches from Clapham, or the leading squares and
terraces of the Si est, drawn up by the great linen-
drapers' , and lingering long as if their fair owners'
purchases were heavy; warm, comfortable-looking
men, bankers, country gentlemen, and lawyers in
good practice, going to the club at the corner, and
rejoicing or regretting that its regulations prevent
their asking friends to dinner; admirers of Sir
Edwin's lions, who look up at them with open
mouths, and tell wondrous stories of their meaning;
people in waiting for the omnibuses, who upset
the time-keeper's calculations and make him
saturnine by asking if the Waterloos go to
shepherds-bush, or whether an Atlas can be found
to carry them to Battersea; cabs laden with
luggage flitting to the station hard by, and
suggesting continental journey and blusterous
trips across the Channel, when the narrator and
two others are the only men who vs:ituro in the
mail boat, and where the adventures generally are
of the order recorded by the tourist Munchausen
worn and thoughtful but kindly looking men
whose very smiles ere grave, and who have an
indescribable air, partly mercantile, partly
tutorial, partly sea-captainish, and who have
crossed the Atlantic to stay at Morley's Hotel ;
engineers and contractors full of schemes for
carrying railways through fresh districts, and for
tunnelling under and bntiging over every obstacle
to locomotion, about to deposit or dispute plans
at Groat Goorgo-street, Westminster, and to
lunch at the Whitehall Club later in the day ;
single policemen with letter-bags strapped to
their sides, hurrying down to Scotland-yard with
the day's reports from the different metropolitan
stations ; birds of passage of all kinds hasting
through it to the City—of such materials is the
Charing-cross crowd composed. Dr. Magian
wrote what he called an exoellent new ballad on
the removal of the Golden Cross, and the " Down-
falls of • -cross" is one of the best known
of the Percy Reliquea But neither is missed.
That the execution of the regicides, and the pil-
lorying of the notorious Curl took place on the
spot on which old Charing-cross stood, troubles
few people who glance at the gracefully tapering
structure in front of the great railway station ; and
the wonders of Northumberland-house, the Titian,
and Vandycks, are known only to a few art stu-
dents, and are caviare to the crowd of
passers-by. This becomes morereeter!geneous as
the day advances. The typeswe have instanced are
there, but they form only a small majority. This
week the holiday-makers have mingled with and
augmented the crowd ; but on ordinary days
the marvel is in its unconnected diverse cha-
racter. In other
.parts of London the
passers-by may be, in a measure, sorted and
labelled. In Cheapside the Manchester ware-
houseman, fresh from Milk-street or Bread-street,
and with a knowing look as if a taste fur horse-
flesh were combined with his knowledge of goods
and bales, may air his well-cut clothes, bright
hat, and nutty boots with the certainty that his
calling can be ticked off by an averagely-shrewd
observer. In Regent-street in early afternoon the
strollers on the eastern side can be estimate: with
fair accuracy ; the men who walk arm-in-arm, the
men who lounge at the photograph shop windows,
the men who affect hurry, and who race up the
street in order to race down again, have each cha-
racteristics which distinguish them from the rest.
As for such places as Chancery-lane or Pall-mall.
they tell the story of their constituents so clearly
that it is only the stupid or oblivious who cannot
read it. The initiated know the salaried clerk
from the articled, and the articled from the
managing, at a glance. Common law, Chancery
practice, and conveyancing need a little further
insight, but it is not difficult to pick out the fol-
lowers of each of these branches of the profession
when certain leading clues are furnished. The
sin of the bundles they carry, the speed at which
they walk, the air with which they meet your eye
or seek the pavement, all help to label the pro-
fessional men walking or driving in strictly legal
neighbourhoods; while their clients seem pro-
claiming by gesture and expression the anxious
business which has brought them there, and their
own estimate as to suttee's. So in club-land : the
" awe l " lounger, the old man who sleeps in the
library, the curmudgeon who keeps the paper
maliciously when others are waiting for it, the
gourmand who hocks his dinner-bill on the
slightest occasion and la a blister to the committee,
the member who is in chronic opposition and who
Rata up querulous general meetings to prove the
club-world to be wrong—all these people have
their idiosyncrasies written plainly on their front.
But the difficulty, of estimating character et
Charing-cross lies in its overwhehning diversity.
The insurance offices and bank-like buildings
which have put on new red brick and stony faces ;
the bookseller who astutely exhibits portraits of
the leaffing engineers of the day in his shop-
window, imowbg that each original passes his
shop daily to reach the engineering colony in
Westminster, and will remember him as a man of
discrimination; the hoeke who has come west-
ward, and who assumes a severer dignity in his
shop-window display than at his establishment in
the narrow Strand ; the great fishmonger whose
glory it is to purvey the finest produce of eft and
loch and river for his customers at the most distant
parts of the three kingdoms as regularly as when
they Belgrave-equare ; the once famous
's where houris used to dispense cherry
=cfyTuill smiles from behind a pastry covered
counter, but which is now shut up and for sale—ell
these are distinctive in their way, but the never
ending, still beginning crowd ?f passers-by is the
real marvel, for the of
Cherinsreceues is as the sands ttpel;el.ll-41211Daily
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