imbuctoo, or hath taken tea
In small-eyed China's crockery-ware metropolis,
Or sat midst the bricks of Nineveh,
May not think much of London's first appearance;
_But ask him what he thinks of it a year hence!_"

As with society, so with certain localities of London; there are some
features which need not be described; indeed they are not fit to be, and,
while it cannot be said that Dickens ever expressed himself in manner
aught but proper, there are details of the lives and haunts of the lower
classes of which a discussion to any extent should be reserved for those
economic works which treat solely of social questions. The "Hell's
Kitchens" and "Devil's Furnaces," all are found in most every large city
of Europe and America; and it cannot be said that the state of affairs,
with regard thereto, is in any way improving, though an occasional slum is
blotted out entirely.

Not alone from a false, or a prudish, refinement are these questions kept
in the background, but more particularly are they diminished in view in
order to confine the contents of this book to a resume of the facts which
are the most agreeable. Even in those localities where there is little
else but crime and ignorance, suffering and sorrow, there is also, in some
measure, propriety and elegance, comfort and pleasure.

If the old "Tabard" of Chaucer's day has given way to a garish and
execrable modern "Public House," some of the sentiment still hangs over
the locality, and so, too, with the riverside communities of Limehouse and
Wapping. Sentiment as well as other emotions are unmistakably reminiscent,
and the enthusiastic admirer of Dickens, none the less than the general
lover of a historical past, will derive much pleasure from tracing
itineraries for himself among the former sites and scenes of the time, not
far gone, of which he wrote.

Eastcheap has lost some of its old-world atmosphere, and is now given over
to the coster element. Finsbury and Islington are covered with long rows
of dull-looking houses which have existed for a matter of fifty or
seventy-five years, with but little change except an occasional new
shop-front and a new street cut through here and there. Spring Gardens,
near Trafalgar Square, is no longer a garden, and is as dull and gloomy a
place as any flagged courtyard in a less aristocratic neighbourhood.

The old "Fleet Ditch" no longer runs its course across Holborn and into
the Thames at Blackfriars. Churches, p