The scenery of London

Preface

No attempt has been made by either artist or author to give in this book a stereotyped and exhaustive survey of London, that has been done better elsewhere; it is rather the book of two people who love London in all her varying moods, with her wonder, her unexpectedness, her dear familiarity. The questions, " Have I represented this or that or the other?" or "Will not the public miss so and so which always appears in every book of London?" have never once been asked.

Artist and author alike have painted and written out of love, and out of their knowledge of the most wonderful city the world has ever known. It is rather as though they said, " Have you ever seen London like that ? Do you know just that peculiar atmosphere that comes in the grey morning or wintry evening ? Have you realised that the streets are glorious with the records of the great dead ? Can you see them, princes, statesmen, bishops, nobles, men of letters, men of science, walking about by-gone London, the same city at heart but so different in aspect from what it is now ? "

V

This is all I have to say, — for statistics, for minute catalogues of names, for many other highly useful things, look elsewhere ; this book is painted and written by two who love London for those who would be, or are, her lovers also.

The Artist and Publishers desire me to take this opportunity of thanking those owners whose names are printed in the List of Illustrations, for kindly lending the original pictures to be reproduced in the volume,

G. E. MITTON.

Chapter I

proem: LONDON AS A PIECE OF MOSAIC . I

CHAPTER n

Atmosphere— Regent Street on a wet winter afternoon— Omnibuses- Strand by day — Sunsets U

CHAPTER HI

At Mid-day— The Exchange— Old style of City merchant— Ancient house —Growth of the City— Ancient fragments still existing— The modern City— Clerks and their characteristics— The Mayor and Aldermen- Banquets ..••■•••• 31

CHAPTER IV

Westminster Abbey— St. Paul's— The King's palaces— The Guildhall- Museums and art galleries— Westminster Hall— The Charterhouse—

Clerkenwell Gate 57

vii b

CHAPTER V

Trafalgar Square and the Royal Mews — Northumberland House — Charing Cross — Cardinal Wolsey — Scotland Yard — The palace of Whitehall — Holbein gate — The tilt yard and the Privy Gardens — King Street — The Abbey and the ancient Palace — Sanctuary — Gatehouse prison — Tothill Fields and its shows and fairs 83

CHAPTER VI

Watling Street — Tyburn tree — Procession to the gallows — Piccadilly and Maj^air — The Gaming House — Clubland — Carlton House — The Strand and its palaces — Butcher Row — Temple Bar — The Temple — Lincoln's Inn — Babington's execution — Bloomsbur)- Fields — Dulness of London houses — St. Giles's in Elizabeth's reign — Oxford Street

CHAPTER Vn

Knightrider Street — Strand — Paternoster Row — St. Marj'lebone — Earl's Court — Bayswater — Regent Street — Holborn — Cheapside — Grace - church Street — Cannon Street — Jewry — Lombard Street — Piccadilly — Maj'fair — Chelsea . 127

CHAPTER Vni

Contrast with cabmen — Wages — The horses — Hours — Characteristics 1 37

viii

Contents

CHAPTER IX

Hammersmith— Picnics at Barn Elms—Laud's rooms— Pepys— Sir Thomas More and the King— Turner and Carlyle— The bay at Lambeth— A picture of Westminster in 1751 — Shakespeare and Bankside — London

Bridge The Tower — The Upper and Lower Pool— St. Katherine's

by the Tower— Elizabethan ships— Boy-king Edward VL dying at Greenwich . . • • • '5'

CHAPTER X

Chaucer in Thames Street— Baynard's Castle— Tower Royal— Residence at Aldgate — The King's Mews — Westminster — Spenser — The outburst of literature in Elizabeth's time — Executions on Tower Hill — Old London Bridge — At school in the mansion of The Rose — Essex House —Friendships with Ralegh and Sydney— Death in King Street, Westminster— Milton — His ten residences in London — At the sign of the Spread Eagle— St. Bride's Churchyard— His austerity— Scotland Yard —Petty France — His daughters — Closing scenes — Dr. Johnson — No Londoner by birth — His narrow means— Work at Clerkenwell Gateway His love for Fleet Street— Taverns — Learned men — Excessive tea-drinking— Dickens— Hardships in early life— The blacking factory- Great changes in London — Lists of other great men 167

CHAPTER XI

Bow Street— An A.B.C. shop — Gradual extinction of the small shopkeeper— Waterloo Station on a foggy day — Character of the Londoner — Street scenes— The Oval— Varieties of fog— Manners— The London policeman • .201

INDEX 219

List of Illustrations

Owner of Original.

Miss Cropper

1. Oueen Victoria's Funeral,

2. Hyde Park Corner

3. The Pavilion at 'Lord's'

4. Green Park

6. The Approach to Westminster

7. Hay Barges lying ofF the Horseferry at Westminster

8. Pont Street, Chelsea

9. The South Foreshore of the Pool

10. The India Office . . Mrs. Montefiore Micholls

1 1 . Low Tide at Southwark .....

12. St. Dunstan's, Fleet Street .....

13. On Tower Bridge ......

14. Looking down Ludgate Hill from the Steps of St. Paul' I 5. From Cannon Street Station ....

16. Cheapside, Bow Church in Mortofi Latham, Esq.

distance

17. Cannon Street, Summer Even- C. J. Ashmore, Esq,

ing

18. View from Tower Bridge .....

19. St. Paul's and Ludgate Hill F. Barlozu, Esq.

20. Grocers' Hall . . . M. Barron, Esq. .

xi

FroTitispiece

FACING PAGE

4 6

10 16

18 20 24 26 28

34 36 38 42

44 46

50 54

21. 22.

23- 24.

25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

41. 42.

43- 44.

45- 46.

47. 48.

Owner of Original Dean's Yard, Westminster . J. Iroutbeck, Esq. The Bridge at Westminster The End o^ Victoria Street, Westminster Blackfriars Reach .....

Southwark Bridge and St. Paul's Cathedral . Interior of St. Bartholomew's Mrs. W. Dobson

before restoration St. Bartholomew's Square Lambeth Palace Greenwich

The Tower of London The Waterway to London Houses of Parliament from Lambeth Autumn Morning, Millbank Miss Coxhead Northumberland Avenue St. Martin's, Trafalgar Square Mrs. South Charing Cross Station from the River . Morning in Whitehall Light after Rain . T. Pilkington, Esq.

Whitehall

Emmanuel Hospital, West- Miss Burn

minster At Charing Cross ....

Westward from Hyde Park Corner St. James's Street ....

Asphalting in the Strand . T. Threlfall, Esq. St. Mar)^-le-Strand Holborn Hill .

Autumn Afternoon — from Southwark Bridge Piccadilly ....

Chelsea Staith .

xii

F.^CING PAGE 58 60 62

70 72

94 96

106 108 1 12 114 120 130

134 136

List of Illustrations

Owner of Original, facing page

50. 52.

53- 54- 55- 56.

57- 58.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

(>!• 68.

73. 74-

Victoria Tower and East End of Westminster Abbey From the Corner of Richmond Terrace

The Editor of The Studio Miss Mowbray

A. Moro, Esq.

The Winter of 1895 .

Limehouse Reach

On Westminster Bridge

Chelsea

Battersea Reach

Westminster Towers .

Sunrise at Lambeth

An Arch of London Bridge

The Tower and Upper Pool

Old Essex Wharf

View from Waterloo Bridge

The Foreshore at Southwark

Lavender Wharf

From Whitehall Court

Millbank, Westminster

St. Giles's, Cripplegate

Little Britain, Aldersgate

Street The Shot Tower, etc. ....

St. Clement's and the Law Courts Trafalgar Square .....

South End of Waterloo Bridge .

The Westminster Embankment L. Blum/eld, Esq A Snowy Morning, Whitehall Mrs. Cobb . Grosvenor Road, Pimlico ....

J. C. Hawkshazv,

Sir F. Wigan

Esq.

140 142 144 146 152

174 176 180 184

The Illustrations in this •volume ha-ve been engra-ved in England by the Hentschel Cohurtyfe Process,

XIU

CHAPTER I

PROEM : LONDON AS A PIECE OF MOSAIC

London is not one homogeneous whole, alike in all her parts, but rather a glittering piece of mosaic work, consisting of innumerable facets, each separate in itself yet united with the rest, and forming together a wondrous and intricate pattern. There are mud-coloured lines and dark patches as well as ruby points : seen from one angle the total result is grey confusion, seen from another the radiant points so scintillate as to conceal the darker parts. Both visions are true, both are equally London, yet neither is the whole truth, for neither of mud nor of rubies is the great city made.

The casual visitor, and the foreigner who looks at her from afar, can never know London. To the latter all detail is lost, her majesty only is manifest ; he sees the magnificence of the whole, heightened by the value of her position, and the permanence of her historic setting, but he sees none of the light and shade, the infinite diversity of detail which are really London. The casual visitor sees the detail prominently enough, but sees part of it only. He is impressed by one aspect, probably " the dust and din and steam of town," and carries that away with him as his mental reference to London. Therefore it is not the foreigner or the stranger who knows her as she should be known. That knowledge comes only after years of patient intimacy ; by slow growth, like the growth of the one friendship of a lifetime ; by adding facet to facet and interweaving the mosaic as a part of the background of daily life : thus only can one know the mystery and the fascination of London, and feel it in one's blood until it becomes a love second only to the strong love felt for the home of one's childhood.

The aspect most familiar to the stranger, and probably one of the most repellent, is that of the streets at mid-day on one of those days so frequent in the climatic cycle through which we are passing. A day of grey skies and mud-brown streets, when the drab and stone-coloured walls put on their dingiest tones, and the passers-by form a stream as monotonous and uninteresting as a lowland brook.

Any street will do as the background for such a picture. Take the Piccadilly end of Shaftesbury Avenue as a specimen. Here several omnibuses stand at the corner, and the passers-by thread their way amid the inert loiterers. Here is a man moving briskly, he knows what he wants, and thinks little of what may be correctly deemed a "shove" — hardly a push — in order to attain it. He is short without being exceptionally so, spare without actual thinness ; his fair hair and

HYDE PARK CORNER moustache are sparse and straw-coloured, his face not noticeably differing from them in hue. He is decently and even warmly clothed, yet he cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be called well dressed. Age and position can only be guessed approximately, for he may be anything from five -and -twenty to forty, and in position from a plumber to a clerk. Multiply him by the million, and you have the men who make the wheels go round, with so little pleasure or profit to themselves in the process that the wonder is that the momentum which started them is sufficient to keep them running. And yet perhaps the exertion required to come to a full stop would be greater.

Here comes a boy in buttons pulling on white thread gloves as he walks, a putty-faced lad with abnormally smooth hair, and an expression which may be termed unwholesome. Two elderly ladies in passing hold up their skirts unnecessarily high, and display square-toed boots the worse for wear ; they are of a better class than the young man who jumped on to the 'bus before them, " ladies" in the usual, not the shop-girl's, sense of the word. In every line of their clothes, in every movement they make, they betray the price they have paid for this gentility, namely, the loss of freedom and the narrowness of the stultified lives they lead. A bold girl comes next, with her hair in curl papers, her eyes bright and roving ; you feel she is ready, on the smallest provocation, to emit the scream which with her is the sign of enjoyment ; over her arm she carries a black linen cloth concealing some finished clothes which she has been machining for the "sweater." Two nondescript men of an altogether unascertainable rank, but well dressed and smoking cigars, part at the street corner with much affectionate handshaking and returning for another last word. Their very exuberance of friendship, in contrast with their narrow faces and untrustworthy expressions, speaks of their attempts to get the better of each other. These figures and many like them are set in a grey atmosphere, overhung by leaden skies ; the surroundings are drab houses, and a muddy street.

It is an unlovely crowd in an unlovely environment; and this is the view they take of it who see only the mud-coloured stripes that run throughout the whole mosaic of London.

Take another point of view. Here is a young officer, very young, and fresh as a public-school boy ; he is vicious neither by inclination nor habits. He comes of a good stock, which is as much as to say, in London parlance, that he " knows every one " ; he has money in his pocket, and gets away from his rather dreary station for a day or so in London. It is summer, and he plays polo at Hurlingham or Ranelagh surrounded by the fairest Englishwomen, exquisitely dressed ; he dines in private houses where the appointments are perfect, the guests entertaining, beautiful, witty, or clever, at any rate never dull. He goes to the first night at a theatre where he sees a play by a well-known playwright. In the stalls some of the most notable men and women in England are pointed out to him, and all

THE PAVILION AT "LORD'S Sketch from the Grand Stand.

I the time he is surrounded by an atmosphere of comfort from which mud, dirt, and the rough edge of hfe are carefully excluded. He has in the interspaces of other amusements, one of the best clubs in Piccadilly open to him, where the difficulty is to find that crumpled rose-leaf that so enhances appreciation. After the theatre or the music hall he may go to the Carlton with a party for supper. Here are the best-dressed women in Europe. At that table not far off a cabinet minister is supping with a party, beyond him is a man whom England calls her finest general. The women are all beautiful or have, what is more attractive than beauty, distinction. The soft swish of silk and satin, the delicate yet audacious combinations of colour in the gowns, the priceless laces, the scintillating jewels ; the atmosphere of the right warmth, with just a suggestion of scent ; the music which blends with conversation ; the menu chosen by the highest connoisseur in London — that is to say in the world, and the noiseless waiting ; all form a picture appealing to every sense, and soothing all. The young soldier goes back to his barracks, and the mental picture of London he carries with him is one of flashing radiance ; the rubies have been his portion.

The gold of London is apparent to those whose tastes are cultivated, who are literary, artistic, scientific, or musical. In London are to be found the men who are at the top of their professions, celebrated authors, artists, and musicians. Even without being aught but a nonentity it is open to all to hear the best music composed by men famed all the world over, to see the great masterpieces of painting, to attend lectures by the men who are in the vanguard of science. Priceless objects of art, rare books, ancient treasures, are open free for the inspection of the poorest ; these things are the real gold of the richest city in the world. Yet some find it in the evidences of wealth so apparent in what is called the season. In Hyde Park on a summer afternoon, a triple and quadruple line of carriages stretches for a mile or more from Hyde Park Corner upwards, and were the occupants to sit on golden seats they could not proclaim their wealth more certainly. The pair of roans champing their bits with haughty pride are almost priceless, and they are not exceptional, carriage after carriage in its admirable appointments speaks of money ; this is one detail by which to measure the wealth of London. The Opera on a gala night may claim to rank equally, so far as display goes, for here is a " dream of fair women," exquisitely clothed and sparkling with jewellery difficult to estimate in terms of money ; these women are born to wealth, and live on swansdown.

But what of the dark lines that run throughout the pattern, culminating here and there in black patches of terrible poverty, or of vice with or without the accompanying poverty ? These lines and patches are very obvious. Of the darker side of vice this is not the place to speak, but it is well known ; the lines of poverty are not generally so much noticed. Take this one, for instance, and follow it out. Stand outside the gates of the Green Park at 4.30 a.m. It is a raw November morning without wind, and all traffic is for

GREEN PARK

-in - a while at rest. Near at hand may be heard in the darkness hoarse breathing, and many a husky cough, which, if it emanated from any of those you love, would madden you with anxiety. Then there is the grinding of a key in the lock, the opening of a gate, and that wretched sodden handful of men and women who have paced the wet pavements all night, with the command to " move on " breaking in on any intermittent slumbers, pass through into the wide green spaces where permission to sleep is graciously accorded them. Sleep ! What mockery ; with the dawn of a damp winter morning enwalling them round, with the terrible darkness of the sky for a ceiling overhead ; with the soaking, tufted grass for mattress upon a bed of sodden soil. For furniture in this vast bedroom, a few dripping trees, and soaked seats. What could one want more ? If it were summer the weary ones would fling themselves in all attitudes on the grass, looking like bundles of old clothes, and lie there half the day, men and women alike, until maybe the sun had put a little reviving life into their chill bodies. But in winter even those stiff and tired limbs decline the inviting " bed," and prefer the hard wooden seat, which does not strike so chill to rheumatic bones, and sitting there at an angle, which ensures with perfect certainty a cricked neck, the miserable, empty, ill-clad creatures sleep in sheer exhaustion until the rumble of the omnibuses in Piccadilly has long been heard ; sleep until the sun is well risen, a disc of burnished copper against a sky of solid slate ; sleep until the string of brisk clerks of both sexes tramp

9 2 along the diagonal path which crosses the wide green space. These outcasts, when they at length bestir themselves, make a rough toilet in the park in view of all the world. There the women shake out their battered, shapeless hats, and wipe their faces with a dirty bit of rag, smoothing their tangled shreds of hair with their hands. There may be seen a man, in a faded green coat, tying the bit of knotted string that holds his "boot" together. They are pulling themselves up to face once more the infinity of days that stretches before them.

Then they sally forth to "pick over" the refuse of the dust- bins, and find therein treasures. They may be seen any morning before the dust-carts have removed the contents of those prim, cylindrical zinc receptacles on which the British householder prides himself. These grim, gaunt creatures, never young and never very old, prowling around with furtive air, turning over filth that makes a decent man sick to look at, and grasping at the revolting details to carry them away. Take as a specimen this one drawn from life, a small man with a woolly black beard and matted hair, who shuffles along in a pair of enormous flat boots that turn up at the toes and look as if they had no feet in them. His trousers are split at the seams and hang in tatters touching the ground, in places they are caked with ancient mud ; his coat is of many shades of weather-worn green, bulging at the pockets with the treasure-trove found in the dust heaps, and hangs at the back in rags, showing several linings ; the man is a human kite living on ofFal, and degraded inexpressibly.

KNIGHTSBRIDGE View westwarri from St. George's Hospital.

In the neighbourhood of Shaftesbury Avenue, about nine o'clock there may often be seen an irregular army of shabby men, worn and pinched with hunger, scattering to the right and left across the roadway ; these are the rejected of the men who give out sandwich boards ; they have been unable to obtain a " job " even of the lowest sort, others have been preferred before them. These instances are but lines and threads of that blackness that is woven throughout the pattern. It needs the vocabulary of a Carlyle to describe London, so we will end with straight-spoken Thomas : —

London City, with all its houses, palaces, steam-engines, cathedrals, and huge immeasurable traffic and tumult. What is it but a Thought, but millions of Thoughts made into one ; a huge immeasurable Spirit of a Thought, embodied in brick, in iron, smoke, dust, palaces, parliaments, hackney-coaches, Katherine Docks, and the rest of it !

Chapter II

A RAILING accusation has been brought against this our famous city that she has no colour ; no colour, not figuratively speaking but actually, no colour like the brilliant tones that make harmonies of the meanest streets in Japan, or such as the clear air reveals in every fabric and texture in Paris. Of all unfounded accusations this is the most untenable ! Colour we have in quantity, crude in startling variety, strewn along our streets, and about our parks and open spaces ; colour on the hoardings and in the shops, colour massed in the baskets of the flower women, colour in the neverending procession of brilliant-hued omnibuses that pass along our streets.

This much must be in all honesty granted, but altering the point of the indictment it may be asserted querulously that this colour is to be found only on mean objects of a common sort, and is not worthy of mention. What then of the boasted colour of Japan ? Is it made of gold and precious stones ? Where lies it but in lanterns and paper walls, in screens and fans of the flimsiest, veritable child's toys? What gives the gorgeousness to these slight textures and materials is the warm living atmosphere, sunlight pouring down in a golden flood that enriches even paper until its very flimsiness and transparency become valuable assets in its colour-producing properties, by giving it that transparent glow to be seen in a wild rose growing on a hedge, never on that same wild rose in a room. Granted is the brilliance of the sunlight ; our sunlight is comparatively pale at the best ; we are never bathed in amber ; but we have an atmosphere of our own as wonderful in its colour effects as sunlight itself, and bringing forth pictures of hues as superior to mere clarity as a Turner is to a prim pastel.

Look now on this picture, and see it for once with eyes cleared of prejudice, or the mist that grows of long looking, and acknowledge it beautiful. Regent Street on a winter's evening when the lights are lit, and the shops not yet closed. The street is wet, of course ; it has been raining ; and the lights flash on the wet harness of the brown-flanked horses, and on the waterproof capes of their drivers. The very roadway is a living river of light and colour, for each swiftly moving lamp, be it yellow or red or white or green, sends a flashing, swaying pyramid behind it or before, to mingle and interlace with other pyramids. Darting hither and thither above this rippling river are the fireflies from which the flashes emanate, moving to and fro, crossing and recrossing in a mystic maze. Here and there their continuity is broken by a broad band of

i6

THE APPROACH TO WESTMINSTER startling colour as an omnibus heaves itself into the wide reflection of the electric lights of a gay shopwindow — a band of colour seen an instant and gone.

This brilliant vision is lined on each side by founts of colour. Here are displayed, behind protecting glass, fabrics fresh as flowers in their tints ; and here is a flower shop with a wealth of scarlet poinsettias resting near a bank of violets ; " deep tulips dashed with fiery dew " ; a loose bunch of giant chrysanthemums in amber and terra-cotta, gorgeous anemones make spots of blood -red amid their green, contrasting with the sulphur-yellow fronds of mimosa ; if the time be ever so little into the New Year garlands of pink roses and brilliant daffodils will be mingled with the rest ; and the whole is banked by green and white. In the other division of the same shop fruit is displayed, the purple and gold of grapes and oranges contrasting with red and green apples in piles, while deeply tinted apricots and downy peaches rest against the greeny purple of fresh figs. In another window near at hand flashes a marvellous arrangement of sequin-covered gowns in Prussian blue, crimson, and silver ; they vie in their coruscating light with the contents of a window filled with admirable paste ornaments, set ofl^ by turquoise and white velvet. A great confectioner's near has the daintiest arrangement of heliotrope and eau-de-nil^ upon which sweets of every variety and device lie in silver-lined trays. These items might be multiplied indefinitely.

I granted just now that London street colour is

17 3 ofttimes crude ; it lacks the tender tones and shades of Japan, and this is noticeably true of the omnibuses. It may be due to the colour-blind condition of a large percentage of our population. We have omnibuses of orange and vermilion and green and blue, but we have no intermediate tones, no purple or primrose, magenta or rose pink. Our omnibus managers, be it presumed, are business men, they work to suit the public taste ; when the bolder and simpler colours are exhausted, and it is desired to put a new line of omnibuses on the streets, what does the manager do ? Start a new colour ^ Not at all. He knows that to the man in the street crimson and vermilion are both simply " red," and that therein would result confusion. So he varies his colours, by the device of a stripe, white upon green, red upon chocolate, and so on, and adds greatly to the gay aspect of the streets in so doing, but fails to educate the public taste one whit.

In lines of omnibuses at present running I can recall of simple colours, blue, green, orange, red, white, and chocolate ; and of mixed colours, white upon blue (if white may for the moment be granted as a variation in colour), upon green, and upon red ; red upon green, and blue, and yellow ; blue upon chocolate, and upon red ; also red upon yellow.

In regard to this same colour-blindness has it not often seemed that it must be a matter of education solely ? We see what we are trained to see ; in nurseries where children are carefully brought up no chUd is allowed to call scarlet and crimson alike red. Yet

HAY BARGES LYING OFF THE HORSE- FERRY AT WESTMINSTER to the untrained mind all tones of blue, from turquoise to indigo, even including purple, are blue only. Some time ago it was the fashion to carry out one line of colour throughout a costume ; if the dress were trimmed with blue or brown, the hat must show items of blue or brown also, hence the terrible falsities of colour seen on the hat of the street girl whose " Reckitt " blue skirt positively shrieked at her peacock blue bow. Now it has dawned upon that same girl, whose education consists wholly in imitation of those above her, that contrasts are fashionable, hence she adopts a violently puce hat with velvet of moss green reposing on it, for has she not seen some well-dressed woman in a becoming costume of indigo and emerald.'* And to her, blue and green of all shades and tones are merely blue and green.

Let us consider now for a while those atmospheric effects of which we make such a proud boast ; there is little possibility of exhausting the subject. The atmosphere of London is a soft ashen grey that refines all outlines, and forbids all crude black patches. This is seen at its best on a clear frosty morning, when the sun is apparently scarce twenty yards above the horizon, when the zenith is clear blue, pale, but deepening every moment, and the sides of the great dome drop downwards to ashen grey. Stand in an open space like that at Hyde Park Corner, and look across to the leafless trees in the Green Park. Around and about the interlacing boughs the shadows are all of tender shades of grey, so soft, so artistic, that they melt and fade imperceptibly into one another, while the vistas hold the greyness as if it were a tangible substance. This surprising atmosphere is often overlooked, for it is so inseparable from the object it enfolds, that it is not easily noticed. But go to one of our black northern towns where there is nothing of the same sort, where blacks and hard browns are the predominating characteristics, and you will be amazed by the contrast with this elusive atmosphere of London, so beautiful, so gentle, but so unobtrusive. Go, if you like, to Kensington Gardens, and see this tender grey enclosed by the overarching branches of the trees in the Broad Walk ; here it is unbroken, untouched, and easily noticed. To it are due the principal tones in the London streets in the daytime. Trafalgar Square, apart from its ever-moving traffic, is a delicate harmony of olive tints, pearl greys, and drabs. Our principal buildings are mostly grey and drab. Heine's description of London, besides being offensive, is inaccurate. He says : —