he
torn waste of tiles, and the subtle tones of dawn and dark in lurking
court and alley. Was there ever a lovelier piece of colour than Cannon
Street Station at night? Entering by train, you see it as a huge vault
of lilac shadow, pierced by innumerable pallid arclights. The roof
flings itself against the sky, a mountain of glass and interlacing
girders, and about it play a hundred indefinite and ever-changing tones.
Each platform seems a lane through a dim forest, where the trees are of
iron and steel and the leaves are sullen windows. Or where shall you
find a sweeter pastoral than that field of lights that thrills the
midnight sojourner in lower Piccadilly? Or where a more rapturous
river-piece than that to be glimpsed from Hungerford footbridge as the
Embankment lights and stones surge east and west towards Blackfriars and
Chelsea? Or where a panorama like those that sweep before you from
Highgate Archway or the Islington Angel?

But your good Cockney finds his joy not merely in the opulent masses of
gloom and glare. For him London holds infinite delicacies. There is a
short street in Walworth Road--East Street--which is as perfect as any
nightscape ever conceived by any artist. At day or dark it is
incomparably subtle. By day it is a lane of crazy meat and vegetable
stalls and tumbling houses, whose colours chime softly with their
background. By night it is a dainty riot of flame and tousled stone, the
gentle dusk of the near distance deepening imperceptibly to purple, and
finally to haunting chaos. And--it is a beautiful thought--there are
thousands and thousands of streets in London where similar ecstasy
awaits the evening wanderer. There is Edgware Road, with its clamorous
by-streets, alluring at all times, but strangely so at twilight. To dash
down the great road on a motor-'bus is to take a joy-ride through a
fairyland of common things newly revealed, and to look back from Dollis
Hill is to look back, not on Kilburn or Paddington or Marylebone, but on
the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

Moreover, London wears always new beauties for the faithful--new
aspects, sudden revelations. What was beautiful yesterday is gone, and a
new splendour is presented. Building operations are begun here,
house-breaking is in progress there, the gaunt scaffolding making its
own beauty against the night sky. Always, throughout the seasons, her
townscapes are there to cheer, to entrance, to satisfy. At dawn or noon
or dusk she stand