But the day darkens, and reminds me that I have wandered long enough in these City closes. Farewell, old Inns! haunts of ancient peace, goodnight! You will, surely, not always remain as you have been in the past. For some of you, that all-invading iconoclast, the builder, will alter and destroy old landmarks; for others, but few springs, maybe, will return to awake and gladden you into green beauty of plane and elm. Yet, even then, the memories of past glories will haunt the sacred place, and fill it with "a diviner air"; even then, will surely never wholly be abolished or destroyed those traditions of former greatness that
"—like the actions of the just,
Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust."
CHAPTER VIII
THE EAST AND THE WEST
"Behold how far the East is from the West!"
"A forest of houses, between which ebbs and flows a stream of human faces, with all their varied passions—an awful rush of love, hunger, and hate—for such is London."—Heine.
"To Newton and to Newton's Dog Diamond," says Carlyle, "what a different pair of Universes; while the painting on the optical retina of both was, most likely, the same." "A distinct Universe," adds Thackeray in the same spirit, "walks about under your Hat, and under mine." This latter reflection occurs to me often as I walk about London, and note all its many "sorts and conditions" of men. There is here, especially, everything in the "point of view." From the West to the East is a wide difference; yet, between the two, how many minor differences?
London, indeed, is hardly like a single city; it is rather like many cities rolled into one. Here, more than anywhere else, you realize that "it takes all sorts to make a world"; for the inhabitants vary quite as widely as do those of foreign countries. It was Disraeli who said, with much cynical truth:
"The courts of two cities do not so differ from one another as the court and the city in their peculiar ways of life and conversation. In short, the inhabitants of St. James's, notwithstanding they live under the same laws, and speak the same language, are a distinct people from those of Cheapside."