of the times, showing the process of
transformation which is going on rapidly, sweeping away much that is
beautiful to meet the requirements of modern life.

London is perhaps never to be doomed to the curse of the sky-scraper, as
it is known in America; the results of such an innovation would be too
dire to contemplate, but like every other large city, it is under the
spell of twentieth century ideas of progress, and the results, a score or
more years hence, will, beyond doubt, so change the general aspect and
conditions of life that the spirit of the Victorian era in architecture
and art will have been dissipated in air, or so leavened that it will be a
glorified London that will be known and loved, even better than the rather
depressing atmosphere which has surrounded London and all in it during the
thirty-five rapid years which have passed since Dickens' death.

Such, in brief, is a survey of the more noticeable architectural and
topographical features of London, which are indicating in no mean fashion
the effect of Mr. Whistler's dictum: "Other times, other lines."

Of no place perhaps more true than of London, yet, on the other hand, in
no other place, perhaps, does the tendency make way so slowly.

THE COUNTY OF KENT

The country lying between London and the English Channel is one of the
most varied and diversified in all England. The "men of Kent" and the
"Kentish men" have gone down in history in legendary fashion. The Roman
influences and remains are perhaps more vivid here to-day than elsewhere,
while Chaucer has done perhaps more than all others to give the first
impetus to our acquaintanceship with the pleasures of the road.

"The Pilgrim's Way," the old Roman Watling Street, and the "Dover Road" of
later centuries bring one well on toward the coaching days, which had not
yet departed ere Mr. Pickwick and his friends had set out from the present
"Golden Cross" Hotel at Charing Cross for "The Bull" at Rochester.

One should not think of curtailing a pilgrimage to what may, for the want
of a more expressive title, be termed "Dickens' Kent," without journeying
from London to Gravesend, Cobham, Strood, Rochester, Chatham, Maidstone,
Canterbury, and Broadstairs. Here one is immediately put into direct
contact, from the early works of "Pickwick," "Copperfield," and
"Chuzzlewit," to the last unfinished tale of "Edwin Drood."

No end of absorbing interest is to be found in the footsteps of Pickwick
a