The Nevada journal., 1855-11-02
London Seen by an American

LOusAOn seen Dy an American.
Having been but three days in London,
L have not yet acquired the right to speak
of what is being thought and said in this
mighty Emporium. London, as de Quin-
cey has we'll said, is more than city-it
is. like Rome in her glory, an Empire
the Commercial, as Rome was long the
Political metropolis of the world. Other
cities are commercially important or tri-
vial only as they are related or auxiliary
to this. Under the canopy of yellow foc
which covers like blanket the district
stretching six miles in every direction fl ON
Temple Bar or Charing Cross, is gathered
more wealth, more intellectual force, more
commercial activity, than any thousand
square miles beside. \ meeting Of half a
dozen PLAIN citizens in dingy back-room
in the city decides on a step which shall
give new life to the industry of province
in Central Asia or an island in the Pacific.
Mexican mines are worked or deserted
oceans are traverssd in search of islands
of guano, or beds of pearls, as few long
heads, quietly laid together in London, sec
fit to direct. Here dwells the great heart
whose pulsations are felt and obeyed in
China or Australia, Egypt and Brazil,
and whose life-giving currents are con-
stantly returning to enrich their source
and augment its power. And thus, vast
as it already is, London still grows, by vir-
tue OF the momento she long ago acquired,
and of the fact that no railroad can be
constructed, no obstacle to continuous
navigation removed, no mine opened, no
clearing made, in any part of the world
which will not increase her trade and pros
perity.
The first impression made on a stranger
wandering through the streets of London
is one ofsolidity and permanence. Though
the town still grows in its circumference,
especially westward, yet little building or
renovation seem to be in progress in its
more central portions, and you may trav-
erse whole streets and squares without see
ing any evidence that brick has been re-
moved therein since the beginning of this
century. The dark incrustation ofsmoke
which covers and transforms the original
white paint of most structures contributes
to highten the appearance of age almost
everywhere presented. Traversing these
miles after miles of well-built dwellings or
princely warehouses, it seems hard to re-
alize that Thcbes or Palmyra, Nineyeh OF
Tyre, was ever like to this.
[ think one who saw London first in
1851, and now sees it for the second time,
must observe a general gravity of aspect
now prevailing here. In the former year
John Bull was on excellent terms with
himself and with all mankind-gratiGcd
with the success and eclat OF the Great
Exhibition, with the presence of crowds OF
foreigners as admiring guests if not as COM
mercial customers, with the efforts of the
Queen, Prince Consort and Aristocracy tc
carry the enterprise triumphantly forward
with the state Of Trade and industry, the
prices of Bread and Beer, and with the
position of his country among Nations.
L do not say how far the case is altered
now, bat that it is altered almost every in.
telllgent countenance attests The events
of the last winter in the Crimea, the pres
ent attitude of the contending forces there
opposed to each other, the blank rejection
Of the proposed terms of Peace by the
Russian Plenipotentiarics at Vienna, the
universal conviction that Austria is about
to prove faithless to the Western Powers
the Chancellor of the Exchequers little
bill, and the strong probability that the
bloody and most expensive war in the
East is but just fairly begun-these com
bined might well lend a shadow to the
brow of even the most invetcrately l;eht-
eartcd; can 1t DC wondered that erumb.
ling John wears a decidedly sober aspect:
Yet hear Of no confessions of want of
heart for the fray; all seem resolved that
the war shall be vigorously prosecuted at
whatever cost; but if England were this
day fairly out of it, I believe Russia might
march straight into Constantinople ere a
British cannon shot should be fred to pre-
vent hcr-Horace Greely.