r, I resided fifteen months in London, and the present record
will consist of my later and more matured impressions. An American who
has never seen this metropolis can have but a faint idea of it. A fair
distribution of the houses would cover Manhattan Island. Two of its
parks contain some square miles of pleasure-ground, and the smallest of
five would clear New-York of buildings from the City Hall to the
Battery. It is indeed a mammoth city. The ancient suburbs of
Westminster, Southwark, Lambeth, Chelsea, Islington, Pentonville,
Shoreditch, Hackney, Whitechapel, Limehouse, Rotherhithe, with the
modern Pimlico, Knightsbridge, Old and New Brompton, Bayswater,
Paddington, St. John's Wood, Camden Town, Somer's Town, Kingsland,
Camberwell, and many more, are now united with it, and make it by far
the largest city in the world. Starting from almost any point of its
extreme boundary, and traversing the city till you reach the opposite
boundary--as from Brompton to Hackney--you will walk nine miles nearly
in a straight line without quitting the pavement. I was disappointed in
many of the public buildings; I would be understood, however, to refer
to them only as works of architecture, for to the interest attaching to
their historical associations I could not be insensible. Protestantism
has built no churches. St. Paul's is its best effort, and that is a
failure. It is, indeed, a wonderful building, considered _per se_, but
compare it with the Continental cathedrals, or with York Minster. I must
own that the shameful exaction of money at the doors created a feeling
of dissatisfaction which, perhaps, in some measure transferred itself to
the edifice. The English are the only people who are so mercenary as to
charge for admission to their temples, and the man who guards the door
of St. Paul's is one of the worst specimens of his class. I paid
cheerfully a dollar and a quarter to see a play of Shakspeare's
performed at the Haymarket Theatre, but I grudged the four cents that I
dropped into the exacting palm of the rubicund janitor of St. Paul's,
'Tis a vile system. They sell the memories of their famous heroes, of
their philosophers and poets, by making a raree-show of their tombs. A
nation should have free access to the hallowed spots where rest the
ashes of its mightiest dead. St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, and all such
buildings, should be free as the streets to decent people, for genius
receives inspiration at such altars, and me