The Portland daily press., 1876-07-12
London.

In fact, London has already become a sort of
white eleph ant, putting its possessors to their
wits end. The irregularity and amazement
of its streets infinitely exaggerate the virtual
area of the city, and it was lucky dayIfor post
men that saw invented the contrivance of di-
viding up the unwieldy municipal 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
the biggest town in the world, to make it as
practically small again as possible do not
refer merely to their underground railways
their cabs, buses, and tram ways, 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 place of very narrow di-
mensions; many an American village is larger.
The crowd with and past which they daily hur-
ry to their business is but part of the ordinary
furniture of the streets-they never think of
moralizing about it, The 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 remaing nothing. Mayfair is equal
ly 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 Whtechapel they
know nothing. There are London clique and
style. as pronounced and provincial as any of
Beacon street or Pumpkinville. The typical
cockney is not great but a small man. The
very pressure of the immensities around him
Grams him into certain narrow groove
whence to bulge would be explosion. L can
not walk London streets in a turban, or in a
long tailed blue coat with brass buttons, with
ont exciting general remark, and the hostility
of the police. This is not what we would ex-
pect; 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 affair enough; a
set OF baby features embedded in broad acres
of meaningless flesh. 1t does not all mean
one thing; if you pick it up it will tall in
twenty pieces. 1t is Cosmopolitan on the sur
| face, but only So 1t is not an Unreasonable
unit with st. Paul's for centre, as it is made
out to be in the title picture of the Illustrated
London News. 1t is a bundle OF sticks, not
single giant hole. Were 1T otherwise what
| Tree Yggdrasi it would bel whose terrible
roots would drain all the;sap out of the rest of
| the world in another generation. But, by
wise decree of Providence, giants of body have
seldom been giants of soul, and London does
not prove the rule by being an exception to it.
The Tower OF Babel could ascend only so far,
and London, spread how much it WILL reached
long ago the limits or its greatness. Perhaps
1t was formerly greater than now, both COM
paratively-because there are other giants
abroad in these days; and intrinsically-be-
cause the increase of its skirts has diminished
its central vitality. Yet, after all subtractons
and detractions, there stands London, unri-
vailed, inconceivable, invncible. IL is as an
anvil, on which all men hammer out their re-
Elections without fear of cracking it.-Jt.lian
Hdacthorae IN AppIetoR'S Journal,