"Rain in the measureless street,
Vistas of orange and blue....
Blue of wet road, of wet sky,
(Grey in the depths and the heights),
Orange of numberless lights,
Shapes fleeting on, going by...."
The cold pearly greyness of winter, the blue mist of spring, the silvery haze of summer, the orange sunsets of autumn, when the dim sun sinks in the fog like a gigantic red fireball, all, in turn, have their charm. The artist's fault is that he nearly always paints London scenes too cold, too joyless. Mr. Herbert Marshall, the water-colour painter, to whom we are indebted for so many charming impressions of the London streets, leans, if anything, somewhat to the other side, and hardly allows for the æsthetic value of smoke. Painting, in London, is always a difficulty; but Mr. Marshall, it is said, used to station himself and his paraphernalia securely inside some road-mending enclosure, and thus pursue his calling undeterred by the persecution of the idle.
Rotten Row.
The faint blue-grey mist of the great city often gives to London scenes something of the quality of dissolving views. Seldom is a vista perfectly clear; rather does it often suggest a vague intensity of misty glory. Does not that lovely glimpse of the Whitehall palaces from St. James's Park, seen, on fine days in summer, from the little bridge over the "ornamental water," gain an added charm from distance? Do not the more or less prosaic Government buildings appear to be the
"cloud-capt towers and gorgeous palaces"
of some dream of Oriental splendour? In such guise, one might imagine, would the deceiving visions of a "Fata Morgana,"—a fairy palace, shaded by just such branching, feathery trees,—appear to the thirsting traveller over the desert sands.
Even M. Max O'Rell, who allows himself to scoff at most things English, has a word of admiration for the peculiar misty beauty of the London parks.
"Nothing" (he says) "is more imposing than the exuberant beauty of the parks. Take a walk across them in the early morning when there is no one stirring, and the nightingale is singing high up in some gigantic tree; it is one of the rare pleasures that you will find within your reach in London. If the morning be fine, you will not fail to be struck with a lovely pearl-grey haze, soft and subdued, that I never saw in such perfection as in the London parks."