days are fast disappearing before the march of improvement, which is
driving straight new streets through the antique labyrinth. Some of the
old thoroughfares as well as the old names remain. There is Cheapside,
along which, through the changeful ages, so varied a procession of history
has swept. There is Fleet Street, close to which, in Bolt Court, Johnson
lived, and which he preferred, or affected to prefer, to the finest scenes
of nature. Temple Bar, once grimly garnished with the heads of traitors,
has been numbered with the things of the past, after furnishing Mr.
Bright, by the manner in which the omnibuses were jammed in it, with a
vivid simile for a legislative deadlock....

Society has migrated to the Westward, leaving far behind the ancient
abodes of aristocracy, the Strand, where once stood a long line of
patrician dwellings, Great Queen Street, where Shaftesbury's house may
still be seen; Lincoln's Inn Fields, where, in the time of George II, the
Duke of Newcastle held his levee of office-seekers, and Russell Square,
now reduced to a sort of dowager gentility. Hereditary mansions, too
ancient and magnificent to be deserted, such as Norfolk House, Spencer
House and Lansdowne House, stayed the westward course of aristocracy at
St. James's Square and Street, Piccadilly, and Mayfair; but the general
tide of fashion has swept far beyond.

In that vast realm of wealth and leisure, the West End of London, the eye
is not satisfied with seeing, neither the ear with hearing. There is not,
nor has there ever been, anything like it in the world. Notes of
admiration might be accumulated to any extent without aiding the
impression. In every direction the visitor may walk till he is weary
through streets and squares of houses, all evidently the abodes of wealth,
some of them veritable palaces. The parks are thronged, the streets are
blocked with handsome equipages, filled with the rich and gay. Shops blaze