met in our communion, and a
really impressive spokesman of the Church in the House of Lords. The
Northern Primate, Dr. Thomson, was styled "The Archbishop of Society";
and the Deanery at Westminster sheltered the fine flower of grace and
culture in the fragile person of Dean Stanley. G. H. Wilkinson,
afterwards Bishop of Truro and of St. Andrews, had lately been appointed
to St. Peter's, Eaton Square, and had burst like a gunboat into a Dead
Sea of lethargy and formalism.

Of course, the list does not pretend to be exhaustive. It only aims at
commemorating a few of the figures, in different walks of life, which
commanded my attention when I began to know--otherwise than as a
schoolboy can know it--what London is, means, and contains. Five and
thirty years have sped their course. My Home in the country has ceased
to exist; and I find myself numbered among that goodly company who, in
succeeding ages, have loved London and found it their natural
dwelling-place. I fancy that Lord St. Aldwyn is too much of a sportsman
to applaud the sentiment of his ancestor who flourished in the reign of
Charles II., but it is exactly mine.

"London is the only place of England to winter in, whereof many true men
might be put for examples. If the air of the streets be fulsome, then
fields be at hand. If you be weary of the City, you may go to the
Court. If you surfeit of the Court, you may ride into the country; and
so shoot, as it were, at rounds with a roving arrow. You can wish for no
kind of meat, but here is a market; for no kind of pastime, but here is
a companion. If you be solitary, here be friends to sit with you. If you
be sick, and one doctor will not serve your turn, you may have twain.
When you are weary of your lodging, you may walk into St. Paul's ... in
the Middle Aisle you may hear what the Protestants say, and in the
others what the Papists whisper; and, when you have heard both, believe
but one, for but one of both says true you may be assured."

We clear the chasm of a century, and hear Dr. Johnson singing the same
tune as Squire Hicks.

"The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have
been in it. I'll venture to say, there is more learning and science
within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit, than in all
the rest of the kingdom."

"London is nothing to some people; but to a man whose pleasure is
intellectual, London is the place."

"The town is my element; there are my frie