ENGLAND.

OLD ENGLAND.

FAR up, at the source of the streams of the ages, deep in the darkness of distant Time, when the sea-kings were unborn, when the East was the centre of human power, Albion lay like a dot upon the waters... She and her children, the Orkneys and the Shetlands, the Isle of Man and the Isle of Wight, were a sort of fabled region of terror. Horror brooded over these strange isles; the fury of the north wind, the wrath of the angry and chafing seas, quelled the boldest heart.

England must have been old two thousand years ago. At that time, before Cæsar landed, Helvellyn and Scawfell laughed until the neighbouring hills shook their sides again and again in the thunder storm. Then the eagle hovered over Skiddaw, the wolf prowled on the banks of the Rother and the Don, and a savage wilderness of wood frowned from the heights of Benmacduich to the cliffs of Dover.

This was the land; but as yet all its resources were undeveloped they slept in the bosom of the soil like might in a giant's arm. The moments were fast ripening when this land of forests and floods, of swamps and morasses, of savage beasts, and men almost as savage, was to appear among the nations, girt and ready for the race, the enterprise, and the war...Her mountain fastnesses treasured greater wealth than the mines of Mexico and Peru; her swamps were destined to brighten with the waving green and gold of flax and wheat, or to echo the bleating of sheep and the lowing of cattle; her valleys were to gleam with the beauty of homestead and farm. On castled crags the feudal turrets were to rear their heads, and over the whole land were to spread the graces of civilisation.

First we have England in the mythologic days,-days halting between day and night,—the twilight time of the ration, the age of portents and of marvels, the age of superstition, of haunted halls and forests... Then the spectre held its own in the dim chamber, and the outlaw his revels in the cave. Then anarchy* glowered slily over the whole land, and force and fraud were dancing along in cap and bells.

Next dawned the brighter morning of the fantastical day, when extensive farthingales† fenced the bodies of our greatgreat-grandmothers; when long-flowing wigs hung round the necks of the young as well as the old; when gentlemen and courtiers displayed their ruffles and silk breeches, and dangled their swords crosswise; when cocked hats moved about like walking triangles.

Again, in this land of railways could we but see the old stage coach once again, with its six horses, lumbering slowly along the road, how like the nation of our fathers it would seem. Fine gaudy colors adorned the panellings, with long lists of all the towns through which it would pass, painted on its sides. It was a great lumber room in itself, and it was scarcely possible to travel a hundred miles in it without meeting with almost a hundred adventures...That old rolling travelling machine has passed away along with Old England. It is succeeded by an altogether different traveller, wonderfully adapted to its day, as doubtless our fathers thought the old coach adapted to theirs.

Well! all these things are swept away into the lumber room of the past, and now everything is neat and ready to hand. We have cast aside the rough bold manners of old; the punctilious etiquette ‡ of later times we are fast laying aside...We have also given up much of the straightforward honesty of those times. If our forefathers, in rising from the dead, would have to sit for instruction at our feet, we too might learn not a little from them.

Old England.

*Anarchy, political confusion and commotion; revolution. + Farthingales, hoop-petticoats, re-introduced in 1855, under the form of crinoline; so that the "fantastical day" is not dead yet. Punctilious etiquette (etikét), ceremonious rules of polite in

tercourse.

LONDON.

MAGNITUDE is the chief feature of London, as grandeur of natural position and scenery is that of Naples-beauty, that of Florence-historical interest that of Rome

shops, boulevards*, ornamented squares and gardens, that of Paris...But in no other city does the peculiar characteristic of a place so force itself upon one's notice as in London. There you are reminded of magnitude whichever way you turn. You soon become insensible to the beauty of Florence, to the shops of Paris, to the ancient glory of Rome; but you never forget for one single moment how vast London is, how great its population... You find, after spending your first week in doing nothing else than scouring the capital from end to end, in order to catch some general notion of the place, that you are as much a stranger as when you began your travels. Though you have gone so far, you have made no progress; though you have seen so much, you know and can remember nothing: you are bewildered with the vastness of everything... Yet it is not you, after all, who are so much interested by this size, as the Londoner himself, who is proud of it, and forces the subject upon you...He talks not of art, pictures, and statues, books, literature; but of London, its streets, squares, and parks; its extent, the masses always abroad, the crowds in the streets; the number of miles across it, the number of miles around it, its growth every day the countless omnibuses, the huge drays, and the splendid equipages...In the presence of London, it is just as if you met a man fifty feet high, and of a weight proportionable. You are in a state of perpetual astonishment. You feel, moreover, as if you were swallowed up and lost in the enormous

mass.

In other capitals, your admiration is directed to the palaces of some of the nobility, one here, and another there; sometimes to the houses of a few of the great commoners; sometimes to a street of palaces, as in Venice; but in London you note these signs of wealth, not only *Boulevards (boolvard), broad, elegant street-promenades, with which New Paris is intersected.

here and there, but everywhere-not only in this street and in that; but in street after street beyond counting, and then in square after square beyond counting. In certain parts of the West End the population seems wholly composed of those who dwell in palaces.

They are in no

Another feature of London, similar for magnificence, for nobleness as well as vastness, is its Parks. proper sense of the word, however, parks. country rather than parks; a portion of the in, with houses just visible in the distance.

They are the country fenced

It would be absurd to attempt to describe London in any detail. With most other cities, it is the parts, the particular objects, which excite the chief interest; ruins, churches, palaces, museums, galleries, and the like. In London, all such things become subordinate... You prefer the crowds in Fleet Street and the Strand to seeing the Tower, the Crown jewels, the knights on horseback, and the stairs down which Lady Jane Grey went to execution...The excitement is the crowd, the crush, and the apparent confusion. You are

witnessing a flow of human life to which there is nothing like anywhere else, and which is a greater thing to witness than all objects of still life whatsoever. It is hardly a stream or flow of life, but a torrent roaring along with all the tumult and rage of Niagara.

London is, as a city, in its arrangements and regulations, perhaps the most complete in the world. All seems in the most perfect order; everything in its place, like the brooms, brushes, dusting-cloths of a perfect housekeeper; and for that prime virtue, cleanliness, it is perhaps more remarkable than any other.... Even the air of London is sweet, save in a few neighbourhoods. The atmosphere is often, indeed, thick with mingled smoke and fog, but the sense of smell is rarely offended, and this is the best evidence of an all-pervading cleanliness...All that side of life in London that has relation to locomotion, either on the narrowest or the broadest scale, from the employment of a porter, a barrow, a hand-cart, to a cab, a hackney-coach, an omnibus, a railroad-car, or train-all such arrangements are like those of the English household, remarkable

for their punctuality, trustworthiness, skill, celerity, honesty, neatness...Nothing can be conceived more complete in all its parts than the management of the postoffice department in London. Ten times daily all throughout London there is a penny-post delivery of letters; notes often scarce bigger than the wax that seals them, are conveyed with exactness and rapidity to and from every street, lane, and alley, of the vast metropolis.

A SAUNTER DOWN HOLBORN.

FROM our house, which is our starting point, we have several large and small streets leading to the south, and opening into Holborn, which is one of the great arteries of the world of London. Holborn extends to the east to the old prison of Newgate, where it joins the chief streets of the city; in the west, it merges into Oxford Street, which leads in a straight line to the north side of Hyde Park; the same line then bears Bayswater on the right, and Kensington Gardens on the left.

Holborn is a business street. Shops and plate-glass windows side by side on each hand; the houses covered with sign-boards and inscriptions; busy crowds on either side; costermongers* and itinerant vendors† all along the pavement... One man recommends his dogcollars of all sizes, which he wears round his neck like a chain; another offers to mark our linen; a third produces his magic strops; others hold out note-books, cutlery, prints, caricatures, exhibition medals-all-all for one penny. It seems as if all the world were on sale at a penny a bit...Men with advertising boards slung over their shoulders walk to and fro; and boys keep distributing bills by the hundred, with smiles of deep bliss whenever they meet a charitable soul who takes them. All around you is that bewildering turmoil of human voices, carriage wheels, and horses' hoofs, which pervades the leading streets of crowded cities.

We have just reached a point in Holborn where a great * Costermongers, criers of fruit, &c. borne on a hand- or donkeybarrow.

† Itinerant vendors, travelling salesmen, or hawkers.