don presents it. If we can allow ourselves a moment for not
inquireing scrupulously (you will do it by inhaling the aroma of the ripe
kitchen hour), here is a noble harmony of heaven and the earth of the
works of man, speaking a grander tongue than barren sea or wood or
wilderness. Just a moment; it goes; as, when a well-attuned barrel-organ
in a street has drawn us to recollections of the Opera or Italy, another
harshly crashes, and the postman knocks at doors, and perchance a
costermonger cries his mash of fruit, a beggar woman wails her hymn. For
the pinched are here, the dinnerless, the weedy, the gutter-growths, the
forces repressing them. That grand tongue of the giant City inspires none
human to Bardic eulogy while we let those discords be. An embittered Muse
of Reason prompts her victims to the composition of the adulatory Essay
and of the Leading Article, that she may satiate an angry irony 'upon
those who pay fee for their filling with the stuff. Song of praise she
does not permit. A moment of satisfaction in a striking picture is
accorded, and no more. For this London, this England, Europe, world, but
especially this London, is rather a thing for hospital operations than
for poetic rhapsody; in aspect, too, streaked scarlet and pock-pitted
under the most cumbrous of jewelled tiaras; a Titanic work of
long-tolerated pygmies; of whom the leaders, until sorely discomforted in
body and doubtful in soul, will give gold and labour, will impose
restrictions upon activity, to maintain a conservatism of diseases. Mind
is absent, or somewhere so low down beneath material accumulations that
it is inexpressive, powerless to drive the ponderous bulk to such
excisings, purgeings, purifyings as might--as may, we will suppose,
render it acceptable, for a theme of panegyric, to the Muse of Reason;
ultimately, with her consent, to the Spirit of Song.

But first there must be the cleansing. When Night has fallen upon London,
the Rajah remarks:

Monogamic Societies present
A decent visage and a hideous rear.

His Minister (satirically, or in sympathetic Conservatism) would have
them not to move on, that they may preserve among beholders the
impression of their handsome frontage. Night, however, will come; and
they, adoreing the decent face, are moved on, made to expose what the
Rajah sees. Behind his courteousness, he is an antagonistic observer of
his conquerors; he pushes his questions farther than the need f