be well if it could always be left to some one who makes a specialty of
it, as in the case of the real amateur photographer. Then one's faulty
impressions might be so treated as to yield a pictorial result of
interest, or frankly thrown away if they showed hopeless to the
instructed eye. Otherwise, one must do one's own developing, and trust
the result, whatever it is, to the imaginative kindness of the reader,
who will surely, if he is the right sort of reader, be able to sharpen
the blurred details, to soften the harsh lights, and blend the shadows
in a subordination giving due relief to the best meaning of the print.
This is what I fancy myself to be doing now, and if any one shall say
that my little pictures are superficial, I shall not be able to gainsay
him. I can only answer that most pictures represent the surfaces of
things; but at the same time I can fully share the disappointment of
those who would prefer some such result as the employment of the
Roentgen rays would have given, if applied to certain aspects of the
London world.

Of a world so vast, only small parts can be known to a life-long
dweller. To the sojourner scarcely more will vouchsafe itself than to
the passing stranger, and it is chiefly to home-keeping folk who have
never broken their ignorance of London that one can venture to speak
with confidence from the cumulative misgiving which seems to sum the
impressions of many sojourns of differing lengths and dates. One could
have used the authority of a profound observer after the first few days
in 1861 and 1865, but the experience of weeks stretching to months in
1882 and 1883, clouded rather than cleared the air through which one
earliest saw one's London; and the successive pauses in 1894 and 1897,
with the longest and latest stays in 1904, have but served to confirm
one in the diffident inconclusion on all important points to which I
hope the pages following will bear witness.