THE FINEST CITY IN THE WORLD.
NOTWITHSTANDING the cholera scare, the capitals of Europe, from Christiania to Constantinople, the ancient cities of France and Germany, of Italy and Spain, will be filled, or are filled already, with crowds of British sightseers. Letters will be written to private friends and the public press, articles will be concocted and whole books published, on the beauties and the glories, the present pleasantness and the poetry of the past, which are to be found in this or that town scattered up and down the length and breadth of the two hemispheres. Some enthusiastic persons will even go so far as to discover that even in England "towered cities please us then" (when we cannot get anywhere else), and may, perhaps, discover that, after all, the position of Berne is inferior to that of Durham, and that York and Canterbury need not shrink from the comparison with Strasburg or Amiens. But whatever else they may con- spire to praise, whatever enthusiasm may be roused elsewhere, British tourists find never a word to say in favour of the capital of their own country, and the sight of London never raises any enthusiasm except for the nearest railway-station that will take them out of it. It is natural and reasonable enough, of course, that the large section of the tourist world that inscribes London as its headquarters in the visitors' book should fly as far as possible from the tedious street, the well-known haunt. It is perhaps excusable that the denizens of Leeds and Liverpool should look upon London only as another place of business, only a repetition on a larger scale of what he sees every day at home. It is excusable, but only on account of ignorance. For it is quite certain that London is no more a repetition of Leeds and. Liverpool than Veuice is a repetition of Verona, or Westminster Abbey of Manchester Cathedral. The things are totally unlike. Even the Pool and the Docks of London are no more a repetition of the estuary of the Mersey than St. Paul's is a repetition of a stucco garden temple. In fact, even in its particular business aspect, the City is wholly different fram the business quarters of other towns. As in Virgil's day, the Mantuan swain went up to Rome expecting to find it a larger edition but still like his little country town, "for so he knew puppies like dogs, and kids to resemble their mothers," but found that there was no more comparison between them in reality than there was between a cypress and an osier twig ; so the Lancashire or Yorkshire man who expects in London merely a larger series of factories or a dustier line of warehouses, will find that his method of comparing great things to small is as inapplicable as that of his Italian counterpart. The mere volume of London business, the mere rush and roar of the London streets, are wholly incomparable with even the busiest of busy towns elsewhere. Liverpool may challenge the Pool, the Manchester warehouses may affect to rival Cannon Street and Paul's Wharf, Birmingham may claim as great a show of shops as Queen Victoria Street or Cheapside, Worcester may sneer at the potteries of Lambeth ; but it is the conglomera- tion of all these together, and each element in larger propor- tions than any other city of the Old World can show, that makes London so unlike, so much greater than any other city in England. Then, again, the mere business quarter, or rather quarters, of London are but a part of the whole. Besides the Poolthere are the Parks, besides the Bank and the Exchange there are the Public Offices and the Houses of Parliament, besides the Guildhall and the Mansion House there are the National Gallery and the British Museum. In fact, because London is the capital, and a natural capital, because it is London, it must needs be infinitely vaster and more complex in life and develop- ment than other cities. It is not merely a province of houses—other towns are smaller provinces of houses—but it is a nation of houses. It is the visible embodiment in stone and brick of the country as a whole.
For this reason it is that London is so well worth a touring visit, if not from the inhabitants of other 'great towns whose business brings them from time to time to London, but who probably have no real knowledge of London as a city to "do," yet, at all events, from the ever-increasing army of country and country-town folks who seek recompense for the quiet of their ordinary homes in the racket of a tour among foreign cities. If you must visit a city, no city will repay a visit so well as London. In the matter of hotels, it is now as well, or better, supplied than any other city in Europe. Even if the change to foreign foods and modes of life is sought, Alderman de Keyser will supply a courtyard and a table d'hôte, and bedrooms without soap, but with polished floors, without the trouble of crossing the Channel ; while the restaurant out-of-doors is to be found at the Healtheries, and the restaurant in-doors in the illustrious Kettner's. Then, for historical buildings, the Tower is unsurpassed for interest by the Piombi and the Bridge of Sighs, or the gloomy dungeons of Nuremburg ; Westminster Abbey as a piece of Gothic architecture need hardly fear comparison with St. Ouen at Rouen, while as a Campo Santo, there is, of course, no place in the world which would even pretend to com- pete with it. But even apart from leviathans like these, and St. Pant's, and the Guildhall, and Westminster Hall, and Lambeth Palace, there are enough minor buildings to make the fortune of a score of continental cities. Crosby Hall, the Temple Church, and the Middle Temple Hall, Christ's Hospital, St. Saviour's, old Chelsea Church, Chelsea Hospital, are not these enough for many a Murray-guided day Then for the enthu- siastic lover of art who, never having looked at a picture nor felt the want of it for a year, must needs spend hours of rapture in galleries, is there any collection which, take it all in all, is better chosen or better hung, or, even now we may say better housed, than the neglected treasures of the National Gallery It would be interesting to take a census of those who will prate to you of the art glories of Florence, or Dresden, or Munich, who have never seen the inside of the National Gallery, much less paid a visit to the Nene Pinakothek, which finds its home at South Kensington. And of all the crowd who talk of the statues of the -Vatican or the Venus of Milo, how many have discovered the beauties of the Townley Venus, or of the Comic Muse, or realised that the Elgin marbles are the finest sculptures in the world, and that they are located in Bloomsbury ? Nor are
the pictures of Grosvenor House, and the armour and curios of Sir Richard Wallace, so remote from access as the treasures of the Green Vaults or the Golden Chamber. For expeditions, are there not Hampton Court and Dulwich, and Greenwich Hospital, and, for scientific tastes, the Zoological Gardens and Kew ; and for purely natural scenery, Richmond and Bushey Parks aud the "open sewer" which, above Teddington at least, is still full of water and beauty, and is purity itself compared with the Rance at Dinan or the yellow Tiber ; while, to crown all,- are not Windsor's Royal Towers within an easy afternoon outing from the centre of the town ? For our country cousins, who really must have had enough of the couutry by the middle of August, there is no tour which could open up such a mine of sight-seeing and produce such a magazine of new ideas as a visit to London. Even in its mere physical outward aspect, taken by itself in its infinite variety of street, and square, and park, the abodes of labour, and business, and politics, and art, and pleasure, of hunger and satiety, it is a marvellous place. But if the patriotic Englishman wishes to feel his patriotism exalted and justified, even where it is sometimes most depreciated and con- demned, let him take his stand on Waterloo Bridge, not as Words- worth did when he pronounced on old Westminster Bridge that "Earth has not anything to show more fair," at early dawn only, but let him do so at any hour in the twenty-four, and look East, to the swelling dome of St. Paul's, or Wrest, to the "massy towers" of Westminster, or along the green-outlined masses of the Embankment, or across to the many-coloured spars and sails of the clustering Thames lighters and the bulky storehouses and factories behind them, and if, not only for power and movement but for mere physical beauty, he does not pronounce London to be the finest city in the world—why, he is either very blind or _ very prejudiced.
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