The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-07-22
LONDON TO-DAY.
EFFECT OF RECENT CHANGES ( \
 THE BRITISH CAPITAL.

Altered Appearance of PiecadilIy-The Thames-Side Alleys of Former Days
 Now Things of the Past-The Gaiety
 Theatre.
 As the wanderer entered London one June morning, after many years absence. ne recalled a saying that fell from the lips of a noble lord who hourished before the present era of sybaritism. Descending the steps of his mansion, periwigged and powdered, his 1 lordship noticed workmen laying down drain pipes. Whereupon he frowned and muttered, T like not new-fangled things"
 That noble lord had the wanderers sympathy, for startling stories had peached him in his exile of London 1 given over to the housebreakers and submerged in lust; of a London with a Bluecoat School. and with an under ground Clapham Junction by the bank; of London gazing on the ruins of St. 1 James Hall and the Home of Mystery; of a London without an Old Bailey, and with a transformed Drury Lane; Of a new London, white, dazzling. fam boyant, rising amid the disarray of it's ancient landmarks, it's fusty streets ! demolished, it's warrens deOdorized, its chop houses destroyed, it's quiet hotels distorted into cosmopolitan caravan sar.es.
 1 But something must remain, he argu- ed, and the Englishman being what he ] is. has surely preserved the ugliest monument that London possesses-the granite nbeisk to Spoke in Kensing- ton Gardens. So he drove thither, aver ing his eyes from the Improvements, determined that the Spoke monument, | if it still existed, should be the start ing point of his exploration of re- juvenated London.
 On the way, he wondered whether the Spoke obelisk was uglier than the statue to Golden, in Kentish Town, and could not decide Mercifully he was spared the sight of the atrocity, crowned with a methylated spirit have erected to the memory of Queen Victoria by St Mary Abbot's Church. he seen 1t (even bus drivers scoff) he would have exclaimed, Spoke and Golden are outrivalled. Is't possible? l wot that through ignoronce they did lit"
 In Piccadilly he was astonished to find that broad, gravelled path had been driven across the Green Park. He walked down 1t and lost his way amid the whirl of roads radiating from the new proCessional boulevard that has grabbed the shady sidewalks, where, last century, man could stroll and compose verses But Buckingham Pal- ace, dingy and unworthy, was un- touched. He wondered why 1t had not been rebuilt, and why the legal lumin- aries of Brussels should have finer house than the King of England, Aud The wondered at the campanile in the near distance towering above the roof of Buckinham Palace.
 That" said a policeman in answer to his inquiry, lis the tower of the new Roman Catholic Cathedral"
 He walked down the professional road, rejoicing to find the finest monu- ment in London still stands-Nelson on his column-and threaded his course into the Strand by way of a new pail ace, white, with tall columns, where the latest steamship amalgamation is housed. Imagine his amazement when he perceived that Courts bank had been blown across the road, looking cleaner, but not a whit less solemn than before. Further wonders awaited him. It seemed to his bewildered eyes that third of the Strand had been aggrandized by the Cecil and Savoy Hotels and between them rose noble building bearing the legend Metrepoli- Itan Water Board. His eyes were daz- zled by the magniflcence of these classical sky-scrapers. "Pll rest them, he murmured. "by a glance at the old, homely, odoriferous entrance to Sim son's." But the Simpsons that he knew before his exile was no more. It had been clawed into the magnificence of the Savoy Hotel.
 Sad at heart, he plunged down Foun- tain Court, but found no relief, as of old, in the mouldering precents Of the Savoy. Over those dark Thames-side alleys the harlequin wand had also passed. Sumptuous glazed-brick build ings, with bow windows and lace cur
 tains. lowered to the sky; cabs; broug' hams motor-cars even, navigated those passages perilous, and when ne paused before the resplendent sloS-
 door of what formerly would have beer called tavern, he observed the legend