I

LONDON

A GENERAL SKETCH [Footnote: From articles written for the Toronto "Week."
Afterward (1888) issued by The Macmillan Company in the volume entitled
"The Trip to England."]

BY GOLDWIN SMITH


The huge city perhaps never imprest the imagination more than when
approaching it by night on the top of a coach you saw its numberless
lights flaring, as Tennyson says, "like a dreary dawn." The most
impressive approach is now by the river through the infinitude of docks,
quays, and shipping. London is not a city, but a province of brick and
stone. Hardly even from the top of St. Paul's or of the Monument can
anything like a view of the city as a whole be obtained.

It is indispensable, however, to make one or the other of these ascents
when a clear day can be found, not so much because the view is fine, as
because you will get a sensation of vastness and multitude not easily to
be forgotten. There is, or was not long ago, a point on the ridge which
connects Hampstead with Highgate from which, as you looked over London to
the Surrey Hills beyond, the modern Babylon presented something like the
aspect of a city. The ancient Babylon may have vied with London in
circumference, but the greater part of its area was occupied by open