But it is not alone in the great Abbey that the rambler in London is impressed by poetic antiquity and touching historic association—always presuming that he has been a reader of English literature and that his reading has sunk into his mind. Little things, equally with great ones, commingled in a medley, luxuriant and delicious, so people the memory of such a pilgrim that all his walks will be haunted. The London of to-day, to be sure (as may be seen in Macaulay's famous third chapter, and in Scott's Fortunes of Nigel), is very little like even the London of Charles the Second, when the great fire had destroyed eighty-nine churches and thirteen thousand houses, and when what is now Regent Street was a rural solitude in which sportsmen sometimes shot the woodcock.
Yet, though much of the old capital has vanished and more of it has been changed, many remnants of its historic past exist, and many of its streets and houses are fraught with a delightful, romantic interest. It is not forgotten that sometimes the charm resides in the eyes that see, quite as much as in the object that is seen. The storied spots of London may not be appreciable by all who look upon them every day. The cab-drivers in the region of Kensington Palace Road may neither regard, nor even notice, the house in which Thackeray lived and died. The shop-keepers of old Bond Street may, perhaps, neither care nor know that in this famous avenue was enacted the woeful death-scene of Laurence Sterne. The Bow Street runners are quite unlikely to think of Will's Coffee House, and Dryden, or Button's, and Addison, as they pass the sites of those vanished haunts of wit and revelry in the days of Queen Anne. The fashionable lounger through Berkeley Square, when perchance he pauses at the corner of Bruton Street, will not discern Colley Cibber, in wig and ruffles, standing at the parlour window and drumming with his hands on the frame. The casual passenger, halting at the Tavistock, will not remember that this was once Macklin's Ordinary, and so conjure up the iron visage and ferocious aspect of the first great Shylock of the British stage, formally obsequious to his guests, or striving to edify them, despite the banter of the volatile Foote, with discourse upon "the Causes of Duelling in Ireland." The Barbican does not to every one summon the austere memory of Milton; nor Holborn raise the melancholy shade of Chatterton; nor Tower Hill arouse the gloomy ghost of Otway; nor Hampstead lure forth the sunny figure of Steele and the passionate face of Keats; nor old Northumberland Street suggest the burly presence of "rare Ben Jonson"; nor opulent Kensington revive the stately head of Addison; nor a certain window in Wellington Street reveal in fancy's picture the rugged lineaments and splendid eyes of Dickens.
Yet London never disappoints; and for him who knows and feels its history these associations, and hundreds like to these, make it populous with noble or strange or pathetic figures, and diversify the aspect of its vital present with pictures of an equally vital past. Such a wanderer discovers that in this vast capital there is literally no end to the themes that are to stir his imagination, touch his heart, and broaden his mind. Soothed already by the equable English climate and the lovely English scenery, he is aware now of an influence in the solid English city that turns his intellectual life to perfect tranquillity. He stands amid achievements that are finished, careers that are consummated, great deeds that are done, great memories that are immortal; he views and comprehends the sum of all that is possible to human thought, passion, and labour; and then,—high over mighty London, above the dome of St. Paul's cathedral, piercing the clouds, greeting the sun, drawing into itself all the tremendous life of the great city and all the meaning of its past and present,—the golden cross of Christ!
