possession of the portly dames. There is immensity, swinging motion,
collision, dusky richness of colouring, to the sight; and to the mind
idea. London presents it. If we can allow ourselves a moment for not
inquireing scrupulously (you will do it by inhaling the aroma of the ripe
kitchen hour), here is a noble harmony of heaven and the earth of the
works of man, speaking a grander tongue than barren sea or wood or
wilderness. Just a moment; it goes; as, when a well-attuned barrel-organ
in a street has drawn us to recollections of the Opera or Italy, another
harshly crashes, and the postman knocks at doors, and perchance a
costermonger cries his mash of fruit, a beggar woman wails her hymn.
For the pinched are here, the dinnerless, the weedy, the gutter-growths,
the forces repressing them. That grand tongue of the giant City inspires
none human to Bardic eulogy while we let those discords be. An
embittered Muse of Reason prompts her victims to the composition of the
adulatory Essay and of the Leading Article, that she may satiate an angry
irony 'upon those who pay fee for their filling with the stuff. Song of
praise she does not permit. A moment of satisfaction in a striking
picture is accorded, and no more. For this London, this England, Europe,
world, but especially this London, is rather a thing for hospital
operations than for poetic rhapsody; in aspect, too, streaked scarlet
and pock-pitted under the most cumbrous of jewelled tiaras; a Titanic
work of long-tolerated pygmies; of whom the leaders, until sorely
discomforted in body and doubtful in soul, will give gold and labour,
will impose restrictions upon activity, to maintain a conservatism of
diseases. Mind is absent, or somewhere so low down beneath material
accumulations that it is inexpressive, powerless to drive the ponderous
bulk to such excisings, purgeings, purifyings as might--as may, we will
suppose, render it acceptable, for a theme of panegyric, to the Muse of
Reason; ultimately, with her consent, to the Spirit of Song.