distance of the central spot of all the world,
(which, as Americans have at present no centre of their own, we may
allow to be somewhere in the vicinity, we will say, of St. Paul's
Cathedral,) it might have seemed natural that I should be tossed about
by the turbulence of the vast London-whirlpool. But I had drifted into a
still eddy, where conflicting movements made a repose, and, wearied with
a good deal of uncongenial activity, I found the quiet of my temporary
haven more attractive than anything that the great town could offer. I
already knew London well; that is to say, I had long ago satisfied (so
far as it was capable of satisfaction) that mysterious yearning--the
magnetism of millions of hearts operating upon one--which impels every
man's individuality to mingle itself with the immensest mass of human
life within his scope. Day after day, at an earlier period, I had
trodden the thronged thoroughfares, the broad, lonely squares, the
lanes, alleys, and strange labyrinthine courts, the parks, the gardens
and inclosures of ancient studious societies, so retired and silent amid
the city-uproar, the markets, the foggy streets along the river-side,
the bridges,--I had sought all parts of the metropolis, in short, with
an unweariable and indiscriminating curiosity; until few of the native
inhabitants, I fancy, had turned so many of its corners as myself. These
aimless wanderings (in which my prime purpose and achievement were to
lose my way, and so to find it the more surely) had brought me, at one
time or another, to the sight and actual presence of almost all the
objects and renowned localities that I had read about, and which had
made London the dream-city of my youth. I had found it better than my
dream; for there is nothing else in life comparable (in that species of
enjoyment, I mean) to the thick, heavy, oppressive, sombre delight which
an American is sensible of, hardly knowing whether to call it a pleasure
or a pain, in the atmosphere of London. The result was, that I acquired
a home-feeling there, as nowhere else in the world,--though afterwards I
came to have a somewhat similar sentiment in regard to Rome; and as long
as either of those two great cities shall exist, the cities of the Past
and of the Present, a man's native soil may crumble beneath his feet
without leaving him altogether homeless upon earth.

Thus, having once fully yielded to its influence, I was in a manner free
of the city, and could approa