New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1878-08-17
Thou strikest-absenee perisheth,
Ind ference IL no more;
The future bIfghtens on our sight
For ON the past has fallen 9 light
That tempts US 70 huOi'e.


That tempts us TO adore"
But it is not alone in the great Abbey that the
rambler in London is impressed by poetic antiquity
and all kinds of historic assOciatiOn-always pre-
summing that he has been a reader of English Litera-
tuFe and that his reading has sunk into his mnd.
Little things equally with great ones, commlngled
in medley most luxuriant and most delicious 30
people the memory of such pilgrim that all his
walks will be haunted. The London of to-day, to
be sure las may be seen in Macaulay's famous Third
Chapter, and in Scotts Fortunes of Nigel y, Is
very little like even the London of Charles the
Second when the had destroyed eighty-nlne
churches and $4,000 houses, and when what Is now
Regent-st. was a rural solitude, IN which sports
men sometimes shot the wOOdcock. Yet, though
much of the old capital has vanished, and more OF
it has been changed many remnants of its historic
past exist, and many of its streets and houses are
fraught with delightful, romantic interest 1t is
not forgotten that sometimes the charm resides in
the eve that sees quite as much in the object that
is seen The storied spots of London may not be
apprecable to those who look upon them every day.
The cab-drivers in KensingtOn may neither regard
nor even notice the house in which Thackeray llved
and died. The shop-keeDers OF Old Bond
ST. NAV, perhaps, neither care nor KNOW
that this famous thorOughfare witnessed the death
of Lawrence Sterne. The BOw-st. runners are quite
unlikely to think of Wills Coffee House, and Dry
den or ButtOn's and Addison, they pass the sites
of those vanished haunts of wit and revery in the
DAYS of Queen Anne. The fashionable l0unger
through Berkeev-square, when perchance he pauses
at the corner of Brutonst, will not discern CoLey
Cibber, in wig and ruffies, standing at the parlof
window and drumming with his hands on the frame
The casual passenger hating at the Tavistock VIII
not remember that this was once Macklin's Ordi-
thp irOn vi
aspect of the first great Shylock of the British stage
formally obsequious to his guests, or striving to
edify them, despite the banter of the volatile Foote
with discourse upon the Causes of Duelling in Ire
land. The Barbican does not TO everyone bring mp
the memory of MlltOn nor H0lborn raise
the melancholy shade of ChattertOn; nor Tower
Hill arouse the gloomy ghost of Otway Yet Lon
don never disappoints; and, for him who knows
and feels its history, these associations ana
hundreds like to these, make it popn-
lOus with noble or strange or pathetic figures, ana
diversity the aspect of its vital present with pic
lures of a still more vital past. Such wanderer
soon discovers that in this vast capital, there Is
literally no end to the themes that are to rouse his
imagination touch his heart, and broaden his mind
SOothed already by the equable English climate
and the lovely English scenery, he Is aware now OF
an influence in the soid English city that turns his
intellectual life to perfect tranquility. He stands
amidst achievements that are finished, careers that
are cOnsummated great deeds that are done, great
memories that are immortal; he views and cOmpre-
hends the sum of all that is possible to human
thought, passion aud labor; and then, high over
mighty London. piercing the Clouds greeting the
sum- drawing into itself all the tremendous life of
the great city and all the meaning of its past and
present-above the dome of st. PauPs Cathedral.
the golden cross Of Christ WV.