ances have again and again changed the entire face of London.
Whatever the mood or the occasion, London is behind it. I can never say
that I am happy or downcast. London and I are happy, London and I are
having a good time, or are lost in the deeps. Always she has fallen to
my mood, caught the temper of the hour; always is waiting, the fond
mother or the gracious mistress, with stretched hand, to succour and
sympathize in sorrow, to rejoice in good fortune.

And always it is London by lamplight which I vision when I think of her,
for it was the London of lamplight that first called to me, as a child.
She hardly exists for me in any other mood or dress. It was London by
night that awoke me to a sense of that terrible spirit which we call
Beauty, to be possessed by which is as unsettling and as sweetly
frightful as to be possessed by Love. London, of course, is always
calling us, if we have ears to hear, sometimes in a soft, caressing
voice, as difficult to hear as the fairies' song, sometimes in a deep,
impelling chant. Open your window when you will in the gloating evening,
whether you live in town, in the near suburbs, or in the far
suburbs--open your window and listen. You will hear London singing to
you; and if you are one of her chosen you will have no sleep that night
until you have answered her. There is nothing for it but to slip out and
be abroad in the grey, furtive streets, or in the streets loud with
lamps and loafers, and jostle the gay men and girls, or mingle with the
chaste silences.

It is the Call not only of London, but of Beauty, of Life. Beauty calls
in many voices; but to me and to six million others she calls in the
voice of Cockaigne, and it shall go hard with any man who hears the Call
and does not answer. To every man, young or old, comes, once in his
life, this Call of Beauty. At that moment he awakens to a realization of
better things than himself and his foolish little life. To that vague
abstraction which we call the average man it comes mostly with first
love or religion, sometimes with last love. But come it does to each one
of us, and it behoves us all to hearken. So many of us hear, and let it
pass. The gleam pauses in our path for an instant, but we turn our backs
and plod the road of materialism, and we fade and grow old and die
without ever having lived. Only in the pursuit of beauty is youth
retained; and beauty is no respecter of person, place, or time.
Everywhere it manifests itse