Our bane and physic the same earth bestows,
And near the noisome nettle blooms the rose.
Our seat taken in the railway carriage, we are on our way to great London. We think over our roundabout way to the place, which most Americans reach the first or second day from Liverpool. A can't wait condition takes possession of them, and they hurry on. We landed at Queenstown twenty days ago. How long a time to get to London,—twice as long as a passage across the Atlantic Ocean! Yet what a vast experience in the three weeks! What sights we have seen, what thoughts conceived! What seeds of thought have been sown to bear fruit in the future! Into how many new channels has thought been turned! We ride in meditation thus over miles of this good country.
CHAPTER VIII.
LONDON.
At 3.30 p. m. we are in Paddington Station at the West End of London, feeling much at home, for the trainhouse is like the Lowell and Providence depots at Boston, though larger. Our impressions of London are not as anticipated. There is less crowding of the buildings and narrowness of the streets. The houses are neither new nor old. Our older western cities well represent this part of London. Half of Cincinnati and Cleveland, or a quarter-section of Buffalo, typifies this part of London better than do our eastern cities. A native of those cities would feel at home in the vicinity of this railway station, and would hardly imagine, from buildings, streets, teams, or people, that he was not amid scenes familiar from his youth up. By recommendation of a railway companion we took rooms at a lodging-house near the station. After dinner we began our tour. The map was brought into requisition, and—after passing through a few streets, and being yet more impressed with the American Westernish look of everything—we at length, in a half-hour's walk, arrived at Hyde Park. It is "a fine old Common," as Bostonians would call it, containing four hundred acres. It has long been used for public purposes, for it became public property in 1535. It was sold by Parliament in 1652, but was recovered by the Crown after the Restoration in 1660. Like our Common, it was for years a pasture ground; but it was improved, and became a resort for thousands of pleasure-seekers. In 1730-33 a body of water was introduced, arranged in curvilinear outline, and therefore named the Serpentine. Now there are gravelled avenues and groups of trees. While not presenting the uniformity of the trees bounding the principal avenues on Boston Common, it is still an admirable park; and its vast extent, in the very heart of London, makes it a resort for hundreds of thousands. On this fine Sunday afternoon a great number were enjoying it. What struck us forcibly was the general uniformity in the appearance of the people; none were representatives either of a very poor class or of a very rich one.
Parts of the grounds are cultivated with flowers, like Boston Common and Public Garden combined. Near this is Kensington Garden, and other similar places, making the West End of London remarkably favored in these respects. A long walk over one of the principal avenues of this place, and we were in the neighborhood of Buckingham Palace, the Queen's winter residence. It is a large, oblong building, of brown freestone, four stories high, and hotel-like in appearance. Back some hundred or more feet from the square, made by the junction of two or three great thoroughfares, it has a high but open iron fence enclosing the grounds. There are two principal gateways, and an amplitude of rear grounds and gardens. Many shops are within a minute's walk of the premises. Some portions of the vicinity are very aristocratic, like Grosvenor Square and its radiating streets, in which are palatial residences in close blocks. Contiguous to parks, and having the public thoroughfares about it, one hardly feels that this is the famed Buckingham Palace.
We are aware that we have began to talk about London. We will, however, not promise anything like a formal description,—certainly, no complete one. London is great beyond description. All that will be undertaken is a statement of what we saw, with the addition of any fact that history may suggest as immediately interesting. Very clean are the streets. Never were better pavements, especially on the sidewalks. There is no look of the London we had pictured. We had expected too much of a frivolous Parisian look in London's West End. A few avenues were up to our anticipation; but all, even here, is not up to this high mark. There is nothing ancient in appearance; and yet nothing looks entirely new. We should judge that everything had been finished twenty years before, and left untouched. Some shade-trees, some flower-yards, a garden here and there, are to be seen; but generally all is solid and rich. A generous number of carriages and people are in the thoroughfares, but no great crowd. Imagine these things, and you have the aristocratic West End of London. We walked on, and soon in the distance caught a view of the towers of Westminster Abbey. We went through street after street, out of right-angles with each other, but not crooked nor very narrow; light and airy was the atmosphere, at this season free from smoke or the London fog. There was a Boston May-day look about everything. It was cool enough to make overcoats useful every day till the first of June. At 6 p. m. we had reached the abbey, and were a mile or more from our lodgings. The roads, or avenues, in the vicinity of the edifice are very wide, and form squares about its venerable grounds, the focus of a business centre. Nowhere, though, was there an over-crowded condition. At times there were crowds,—much more so than at others; but never what might be expected in the neighborhood of the Abbey, Parliament Houses, Westminster Bridge, and other noted places that centre here.
We are really seeing New London. Streets are newly finished, widened, and everything is modern; and yet few things exist that appear to be very new. The smoke subdues all freshness.