"The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it. I'll venture to say, there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit, than in all the rest of the kingdom."

"London is nothing to some people; but to a man whose pleasure is intellectual, London is the place."

"The town is my element; there are my friends, there are my books, to which I have not yet bid farewell, and there are my amusements."

But even Johnson, who is always quoted as the typical lover of London, was not more enthusiastic in its praise than Gibbon. To him "London was never dull, there at least he could keep the monster Ennui at a respectful distance." For him its heat was always tempered; even its solitude was "delicious." In "the soft retirement of my bocage de Bentinck Street" the dog-days pass unheeded. "Charming hot weather! I am just going to dine alone. Afterwards I shall walk till dark in my gardens at Kensington, and shall then return to a frugal supper and early bed in Bentinck Street. I lead the life of a philosopher, without any regard to the world or to fashion."

So much for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; we now return to the nineteenth and are listening to Sydney Smith. "I look forward anxiously to the return of the bad weather, coal fires, and good society in a crowded city." "The country is bad enough in summer, but in winter it is a fit residence only for beings doomed to such misery for misdeeds in another state of existence." "You may depend upon it, all lives lived out of London are mistakes, more or less grievous—but mistakes." "I shall not be sorry to be in town. I am rather tired of simple pleasures, bad reasoning, and worse cookery."

Let Lord Beaconsfield have the last word, as is his due; for truly did he know and love his London.

"It was a mild winter evening, a little fog still hanging about, but vanquished by the cheerful lamps, and the voice of the muffin-bell was heard at intervals; a genial sound that calls up visions of trim and happy hearths. If we could only so contrive our lives as to go into the country for the first note of the nightingale, and return to town for the first note of the muffin-bell, existence, it is humbly presumed, might be more enjoyable."

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Lord Beaconsfield, Tancred.

[22] Written in May, 1910.