Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1876-10-25
London.

In fact, London has already become a
sort of white elephant, putting its
possessOrs to their wits end. The ir-
regularity and amazement Of its streets
infinitely exaggerate the virtual area
of the city, and it was a lucky day for
postmen that saw invented the contri-
vance Of dividing up the unweildy mu-
nicipal carcass into fore-quarter, hind
quarter, rib, and sirlOin, clumsy and
arbitrary though the division was. And
the chief aim of Londoners is, having
got biggest town In the world, to make
it as practically small again as possible.
do not refer merely to their under
ground railways, their clbs, buses, and
tramways, their ferry boats, messengers,
and telegraphs, but to the tendency and
reason of all their ways of living. The
London of the dwellers in Cheapside
and Lombard Street is a place of mar
row dimensions; many an American
village is larger. The crowd with and
past which they daily hurry to their
business is but part of the ordinary fur
niture of the streets-they never think
of moralizing about it. Their mind
holds the idea of their cab or bus, of
their Office. of their restaurant, of their
club, and that is all, so far as London
is concerned. Add the houses at which
they dine out once a week or month,
and there remains nothing. Mayfair
is equally limited within itself. They
ride in the Row, they stare out of Pail
Mall windows, they show themselves at
one another's parties, and at the theatre,
the shops in Regent and Bond Streets.
Of Pentonville and Whitechapel they
know nothing. There are London clique
and style, as pronounced and provincial
as any Bacon Street or Pumpkinville.
The typical cockney is not a great but a
small man. The very pressure of the
immensities around hin Grams him into
a certain narrow groove, whence to
bulge would be explosion. I cannot
walk London streets in turban, or in
long tailed blue coat with brass buttons,
without exciting general remark, and
the hostility of the police. This is not
what We would expect; Kaffre naked
from the Zambezi should be able to dine
at the Athenaum and dawdle in the Park
without causing so much as a butchers
boy to turn his head. London, from
this point Of view, is pretty fair
enough set of baby features imbedded
in broad acres of meaningless flesh. 1t
does not all mean one thing; if you pick
it up 1t will fall in twenty pieces. Ii is
cosmopolitan on the surface, hut only
so. 1t Is not an immeasureable unit,
with st. Paul for centre, as it is male
out TO be in the tiIle-picture of the IL
iustrdted London Nsns. liz is bum
die of sticks, not a single giant bole.
Were it otherwise, what a tree Yggdra-
sill it would be! whose terrible roots
would brain all the sap out of the rest
of the world in another generation. But,
by a wise decree of Providence, gi tnts
of body have seldom been giants of soul,
and London does not prove the rule by
being the exception TO it. The Tower
of Babel could ascend only so far, and
London. spread how much it will,
reached long ago the limits of is great
ness. Perhap. it was formerly greater
than now, both OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
there are other giants abroad in these
days; and ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS the in
crease of its skirts has diminished It's
central vitality. Yet, after all subtrac-
tions ad deIractions, there stands Lon
don, unrivaled, inconceivable, invinci
BILE. Ii is an anvil. on which all men
hammer out their reflections without
fear of crscking it.-Appleton's Journal.