"Therein I hear the Parcæ reel
The threads of life at the spinning-wheel,
The threads of life and power and pain."
Coal-smoke and river-fog are kind to the humanist. They build his priory cell, where he can sit and work on his illuminations, and know that he lays his colors true. "The man, sir, who is tired of London," said the great Doctor, in one of his profound generalities, "is tired of life."
At certain hours, the City is tenantless, and sunrise or sunset, touching the vidual tower of All Hallows Staining, gives it the pearl and carmine tints of a shell. At such a time you may wander in the very luxury of loneliness, from London Bridge to Lambeth, watching the long yards swing at their moorings by the palace wall, and Thames running tiger-coated to sea; and from the Gray's Inn limes pass on to an unvisited and noble old bronze of an inconsiderable Stuart, lustrous from the late shower, beyond whom are the forgotten water-stairs of Whitehall, above whom is his own starlit weather-vane, with "the Protestant wind still blowing." Where the Boar's Head was, where the Roman Baths are, in strange exchanges of chronology, where, in a twinkle, the merchants and journalists shall be, are the depopulated presence-halls in which you are
"In dreams a king, but waking, no such matter."
All that was temporal in them has been swallowed by the wave of the generations of men who are no more. Poet by poet, from the beginning, has known the look of London's void heart at night, and has had, next it, his keenest gust of sovereignty, on jealous marches when his own footfall is soft as a forest creature's, for fear of man and of mortal interruption. The living are gone for the moment: the dead and their greatness are "nearer than hands and feet." The divinest quality of this colossal calm, "mirk miles broad," is that, to the sensitive mind, it is a magic glass for musings. In such a mysterious private depth Narcissus saw himself, and died of his own beauty. The few who have had eternity most in mind, have worshipped London most; and their passion, read of in biographies, has expanded, insensibly, the imagination of the many. The terror of the vast town lies on any thoughtful spirit; but without some touch or other of golden casuistry, of neo-Platonism, none can sincerely adore her. For the adorable in her is man's old adoration itself, breathed forth and crystallized. That indeed, is the everlasting delight: London has nothing so simple in her bosom as instinctive charm. She is the dear echo, the dear mirror, of humanity. The Charles Lamb who was wont to relieve his tender overburdened spirit by a plunge in the surging crowd, and who was not ashamed that he had wept there, "for fulness of joy at so much life," might be the first to apply to the majestic and bitter mother who bred him, the illumining line of Alfred de Musset:
"Car sa beauté pour nous, c'est notre amour pour elle."
She gives us freedom, recollection, reverence; and we attribute to her the sweetness of our own dispositions at her knee. Blessing us with her silence, the glad incredible thing, she lets us believe we have discovered it, as a fresh secret between lover and lover.
On Sundays, too, the dreary English Sundays of old complaint, what idyllic opportunity wastes itself at the door! Hampstead and Blackheath are efflorescent with the populace, but dark London wears her troth-plight ring of meditation. Her church-bells, indeed, speak: there is a new one at every turning, like the succession of perfumes as you cross a conservatory, and felt as a discord no more than these. Good to hear are the chimes of S. Giles Cripplegate, the aged bells of S. Helen, with their grace-notes and falling thirds, the great octave-clash of Wren's cathedral, which booms and sprays like the sea on the chalk-cliffs almost within its sight. And the ghosts are out again under the eaves of Little Britain and Soho. It is usually on Sundays, or at night, that you may view the young Cowley (curled up, among the geraniums, on the window-ledge of the Elizabethan house next S. Dunstan's-in-the-West) reading Spenser, his light bronze curls curtaining the folio page; and a figure of uncontemporaneous look, coming heavily from the Temple gateway, almost opposite, with a black band on his sleeve, is saying brokenly to himself: "Poor Goldy was wild, very wild; but he is so no more."
The elective London of choicest companionship, of invited sights and sounds, of imperial privacy, is always open to the explorer: "London small and white and clean," walled and moated, fairer than she ever was at any one time, warless, religious, pastoral, where hares may course along the friendly highway, and swans breast the unpolluted Fleet. Like the gods, you may, if you will, apprehend all that has ever been, at a glance, and out of that all, seize the little which is perfect and durable, and live in it: "in the central calm at the heart of agitation." By so much as London and her draggled outer precincts are bulging and vile, and her mood stupid, cruel, and senseless, victory is the larger for having found here a spiritual parterre of perpetual green. And it is, perhaps, owing to respect towards those who yet believe in her, whose presence imposes upon her, in romantic tyranny, the remembrance of what she has been to her saints, that she does, in reality, walk softly, speak low, as if her life-long orgies were fabulous, and wear, to her faithful lover, the happy innocent look becoming the young Republic of Selected Peace. Donne's subtly beautiful cry is ever in his ear:
"O stay heere! for to thee
England is only a worthy gallerie
To walk in Expectation: till from thence
Our greatest King call thee to His presènce."