I have beheld the great city in many aspects, fair and foul. I have seen St. Paul's pierce with ghostly whiteness through a mist that swathed and wholly hid its lower parts, the great dome rising like a phantom balloon from out a phantom city. I have seen a blue-grey "London particular" transform a dingy, narrow street into a portal of mystery, romance, and enchantment. I have loitered on Waterloo Bridge to gaze on the magic of the river and listen to the eerie music of Time's roaring loom. I have heard the babel of Petticoat Lane on Sunday morning. I have surveyed the huge wen and contrasted it with the pleasant Kentish weald from Leith Hill's summit. And I would not go back from London to any place that I have lived in. I like London. I am bitten as I have seen all bitten that came under its spell—bitten as I vowed I never could be.
London's air is in my lungs and nostrils, its glamour in my eyes, its roar and moan and music in my ears, its fever in my blood, its quintessence in my heart.
I came to scoff and I pray to remain.
LONDON CHARLIE
Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,
Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.
Moore.
The celebrated novelist Ouida has made a general indictment against the "cruel ugliness and dulness" of the streets of London.
The greatest city in the world, according to Mdlle. de la Ramé, has "a curiously provincial appearance, and in many ways the aspect of a third-rate town."