London is the greatest city in the world. How easy it is to say that
or read it! How very, very hard it is to get the least idea of what it
means! We may talk of millions of people, of thousands of streets, of
hundreds of thousands of houses, but words will give us little grasp of
what London means. And if we go to see for ourselves, we may travel up
and down its highways and byways until we are dizzy with the rush of
its hurrying crowds, its streams of close-packed vehicles, its rows
upon rows of houses, shops, banks, churches, museums, halls, theatres,
and begin to think that at last we have seen London. But alas for our
fancy! We find that all the time we have only been in one small corner
of it, and the great city spreads far and wide around the district we
have learned to know, just as a sea spreads around an islet on its
broad surface.
When we read or hear of London, we are always coming across the terms
West End and East End. West and East of what? Where is the
dividing-line? The dividing-place is the City, the heart of London,
the oldest part of the great town. Once the City was a compact little
town inside a strong wall which kept out its enemies. It was full of
narrow streets, where shops stood thickly together, and over the shops
lived the City merchants in their tall houses. The narrow streets and
the shops are still there, but the merchants have long since gone to
live elsewhere, and the walls have been pulled down.
Now the City is nothing but a business quarter. It is packed with
offices, warehouses, banks and public buildings, and it is the busiest
part of London by day and the quietest by night. It is a wonderful
sight to see the many, many thousands of people who work in the City
pour in with the morning and stream out at evening. Every road, every
bridge, leading to and from the City is packed with men and women, boys
and girls, marching like a huge army, flowing and ebbing like the tides
of the sea.
In the centre of the City there is a famous open space where seven
streets meet. It is famous for the buildings which surround it, and
the traffic which flows through it. All day long an endless stream of
omnibuses, cabs, drays, vans, carts, motor-cars, motor-buses,
carriages, and every kind of vehicle which runs on wheels, pours by.
So great is the crush of traffic that underground passages have now
been built for people to cross from side to side, and that is a very
good thing, for only the very nimble could dodge their way through the
mass of vehicles.
Upon one side of this space there stands a building with blank walls,
not very high nor very striking in appearance. But it is the Bank of
England, where the money matters of half the world are dealt with! If
we went inside we should find that the Bank is built around a
courtyard, into which the windows look. Thus there is no chance for
burglars to break in, and besides, the Bank is guarded very carefully,
for its cellars are filled with great bars of gold, and its drawers are
full of sovereigns and crisp bank-notes.
Upon the other side of the busy space stands the Mansion House, where
the Lord Mayor of London lives during his year of office. Here are
held gay feasts, and splendid processions often march up to the doors;
for if a king or great prince visits London, he is always asked to
visit the City, and he goes in state to a fine banquet.
A third great building is the Royal Exchange, adorned with its great
pillars, and here the merchants meet, and business matters affecting
every corner of the globe are dealt with.
But there are two places which we must glance at before we leave the
City, whatever else we miss, and these are the Tower and St. Paul's
Cathedral. And first of all we will go to the Tower, for it is the
oldest and most famous of all the City's many buildings. Nay, the
Tower is more than that: it is one of the famous buildings of the world.
For many hundreds of years the grey old Tower has raised its walls
beside the Thames, and in its time it has played many parts. It has
been a fortress, a palace, a treasure-house, and a prison. William the
Conqueror began it, William Rufus went on with the work, and the latter
finished the central keep, the famous White Tower, the heart of the
citadel. For many centuries the Tower was the strongest place in the
land, with its thick walls and its deep moat filled with water from the
Thames, and the rulers of England took great care to keep it in their
own hands.
To-day it is a show-place more than anything else, and everyone is free
to visit it, to see the Crown jewels stored there, and to view the
splendid collection of weapons and armour. But after all the place
itself is the finest thing to see--to wander through the rooms where
kings and queens have lived, to stand in the dungeons and
prison-chambers where some of the best and noblest of our race have
been shut up, and to climb the narrow winding stairs from floor to
floor.
Many of the prisoners of the Tower were brought into it by the
Traitor's Gate, a great gloomy archway under which the waters of the
Thames once flowed. In those days the river was the great highway of
London, and when the judges at Westminster had condemned a prisoner to
be sent to the Tower, he was carried down the river in a barge and
landed at the Traitor's Gate. Many and many a poor prisoner saw his
last glimpse of the outer world from the gloomy gate. Before him lay
nothing save a dreadful death at the hands of the headsman.
Outside the White Tower there is a garden, where once stood the block
where the greatest of the prisoners were beheaded. Outside the Tower
is Tower Hill, where those of a lesser rank suffered; we may still see
in the Tower a headsman's block whereon heads have been laid and necks
offered to the sharp, heavy axe. As for the names of those who have
been executed in the Tower, history is full of them--Lady Jane Grey,
Sir Thomas More, Anne Boleyn, Sir Walter Raleigh, Katherine Howard, the
Earl of Essex, to name but a few who have suffered there. An earlier
tragedy than any of these is the murder of the two little princes,
Edward V. and his brother, put to death by command of Richard of
Gloucester, Richard Crookback, their wicked uncle who wanted to seize
the throne.
From the upper windows of the White Tower we can see the river crowded
with ships and steamers and barges, and on a fine day it is a most
beautiful sight. But the most striking thing in the view is the Tower
Bridge. "This is a new bridge, and it has two great towers rising one
on each side, as it seems, to the sky, and the bridge lies across low
down between those towers. But when a big ship comes and wants to get
up the river under the bridge, what is to be done? The bridge is not
high enough! Well, what does happen is this--and I hope that every one
of you will see it one day, for it is one of the grandest things in
London: a man rings a bell, and the cabs, and carriages, and carts, and
people who are on the bridge rush quickly across to the other side, and
when the bridge is quite empty, then the man in the tower touches some
machinery, and slowly the great bridge, which is like a road, remember,
rises up into the air in two pieces, just as you might lift your hands
while the elbows rested on your knees without moving, and the beautiful
ship passes underneath, and the bridge goes back again quite gently to
its place. This bridge has been called the Gate of London, and it is a
good name, for it looks like a giant gate over the river."