Where will "she" be a hundred years hence?
Where when "she" is finished?
I wonder.
James I. predicted that London would shortly be England and England would be London. Yet London in his time was literally the village that modern facetiousness calls it.
Little more than fifty years ago a magazine writer, bewailing London's vastness, declared that it must on no account be permitted to grow larger. The population was then less than a million and a half.
WHITEHALL IN THE REIGN OF JAMES I.
The monstrous growth which has taken place since then and the stupendous rate of present increase fill the thoughtful observer with dread. The problems of communication and distribution grow year by year more complicated and difficult. The congestion of clever men attracted from all parts of the country by the glitter of the capital, impoverishes the provinces, and fills London with starving unemployed talent, much of which gradually degenerates into hopeless drunkenness, or still more degraded flunkeyism. The surplus artists, sculptors, writers, and actors stagnating and rotting in London would, and should, set up throughout the counties living, healthy, beneficial schools of art, culture, and general enlightenment.