The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1859-08-08
A COCKNEY ON LONDON STTYsHTNE

| often wonder if there will ever be A London
Claude Lorraine. If there ever be, he will, for the
hrSt thing, paint London sunshine, out of whose ra-
dance | have just come from ST. Martn's-lape into
my dark chamber, as a man comes from a morning
bath In the molten gold of the sea with the sun on
1t, TO redress himself before breakfast in the soft
darkness ofa Marine Parade room with the blinds
down. Sunshine through spring woods is a deli
clous thing, so is sunshine through three feet of
June grass, fit for moving, when the thick flowers
close ike waves over your face you lie on your
back and listen to the lark that the angels are call
ing to, from that hollow SNOWFALL of A cloud Rut
as we have none of these delights, and are all built
IN Tor various terms of Imprisonment in long defes
OF houses, walled all round with black and brown
DlcK, Gagged under miles of red tile roof in streets
where the ehimneys keep telegraphing to each
other by smoke signals at windows where con-
sumptive geraniums sicken for fresher air and no
thln weed dares to take root between the Joints of
the bricks, from Pharaoh's hard brick yard where
flowers are curiosities and the hot dark breath of
Cares kilns and furnaces thickens the smiling air
which struggles to be bright and free, let us make
the best oft
Talk of your mountain distance your air perspec-
tives! never saw anything in the blue gaps of
the Apennlnes more fairy beautiful than the blue
grey fog that turns the end of a London street as
you look down IN it into mystery and beauty, that
gives the present tnge of the uncertainty of the
future and the past, and throws halo of poetry
over Cover street or Soho. And look now how
the London sunshine falls on a white luminous veil
such as hid the face of Moses, before that vulgar
N ~ ''St4'~"
kers, a publican's and an undertaker's. That
white fog OF glory slants the end of the
street, where the cab No. 3l74 is breaking through
it, like new Jacobs ladder, the cords, golden
threads OF sunbeams, let down in gracious mercy
once more to allow poor suffering life-burden-
ed wretch to crawl up it to the Bright City, Why
1t is complete angelic exhibition, and should be
charged for. 1t is worth guinea seat, vet no one
looks but that poor little skeleton girl with
frozen bunch of yesterdays water-cresses in her
lean hand, who huddles in the doorway of Lattat
the sharp attorney, who (brute) is, actually as
speak, tapping at the glass to bid her go away
See too, yon pur-blind artist with the microscope
eyes, who find nothing to paint in this our dear
London-the darker bar that strikes like giants
sword-blade through the great woof of cobweb sun
shine we speak of-can't imagine where it comes
from? Oh, Macguelp, thou lnole-eyed misuser of
unpaidfor pigments, dos thou not see that tits the
shadow of the chimney above us, which, standing
in the way of the royal blessed purifying sunshine
that brings hope and gladness into the very ewes of
the dying, enfeebes and dims that path Of dark
ness Talk of Samarcand and your Chinese splen-
dor Is it not gorgeous to how the sunshine
gstens on those great old letters Barclay Perkins
Co.," that heraldicay displayed on the
great board above the publican's (Drugger's) gar
ret window at "The FivealIs,' and makes them
shine like letters hewn out of solid buon?-AU the |
Year Round By Charles Dickens