CHAPTER XVIII_Highways and Byways in London

THE STONES OF LONDON

"Let others chaunt a country praise,

Fair river walks and meadow ways;

Dearer to me my sounding days

In London town:

To me the tumult of the street

Is no less music, than the sweet

Surge of the wind among the wheat,

By dale or down."--_Lionel Johnson._

"I pray you, let us satisfy our eyes

With the memorials, and the things of fame,

That do renown this city."--_Shakespeare._

What book has ever been written, nay, has ever attempted to be

written, about the general architecture of London? The largest city in

the world,--the metropolis of many cities in one city,--the aggregate

of a hundred towns, each as big as Oxford, as Cambridge, as

Winchester,--why should its stones be thus neglected? And, except for

a sprinkling of traditional gibes, an annual dole of scornful

references, what attention does the architecture of London receive

from its inhabitants? or, indeed, from outsiders? Every one, on the

contrary, considers himself at liberty to fling a stone at it. Such

titles as "Ugly London," "The Uglification of London," are "stock"

leaders for paragraphs in daily papers. It is a well-known fact that

nothing new can be raised in the city without drawing upon itself the

scathing remarks and innuendoes of a too-critical, and generally

ignorant, public. Londoners are proverbially ungrateful; they also

think it fine, and superior, to cavil at their works of art. Mr.

Gilbert designs a Florentine fountain in Piccadilly Circus; the very

'bus-conductors fling their handful of mud at it as they pass; the new

Gothic Law Courts arise in the Strand, to be freely criticised, and

vituperated not only by every budding architect, but also by every

"man in the street"; the City Powers erect a Temple Bar Memorial

Griffin, and nothing less than their heads, it is felt, should with

propriety go to adorn the monument of their crass Philistinism. A

scheme is proposed for an addition to the cloisters of Westminster,

and a public-spirited citizen offers to carry it out at his own

expense: he is promptly fallen foul of, as a desecrator of the shade

of Edward the Confessor, by the united force of the press. It is hard,

indeed, in these critical days to be a philanthropist!

And not only are we thus critical to works of our own day, but also to

those of the past. Old London, no less than New London, is gibed at

and mocked. "A province in brick," "a squalid village," "a large wen";

such are only a few among the epithets that have from time to time

been hurled at it by men and women of letters. And yet, looking at the

matter calmly and without prejudice,--are London stones, indeed, so

unworthy, so poor, so inglorious?

In respect of its architecture, as in nearly every other respect,

London suffers, primarily, from its vast size. "One cannot see the

forest for the trees." What chance has Italian cupola, Doric portico,

Gothic gable, so crowded and overpowered in the busy mart of men and

of things? And how many people, in the whirl and rush of London, even

_look_ at the surrounding buildings at all? Ask the ordinary person

what the dominating architecture of London is; he or she will very

probably be unable to make a suggestion on the matter, for the simple

reason that the question never occurred to them in all their lives

before. And, indeed, it is in any case a difficult question to answer.

In this vast conglomeration of houses, houses built mainly for utility

and not for beauty, it is difficult to see at first anything but

heterogeneous chaos; all seems "a mighty maze, without a plan"; and

the really noteworthy buildings are apt to be missed. The few Norman

or Saxon antiquities may well be passed over, and even a "gem of

purest ray serene" such as Staple Inn, may be overlooked in the

general bustle of busy Holborn. To the large body of shoppers from the

country and suburbs, "London" is represented satisfactorily, and

finally, by the gay thoroughfares of Regent Street and Oxford Street;

"the part where the shops are." And the white gleaming river, crossed

by its many bridges, encircling the black causeways,--the long line of

the Embankment, the Westminster towers at one end of it, the dome of

St. Paul's on the other,--are, possibly, all that remains of London in

the mind of the average Londoner; his view of it more or less

resembling Byron's:

"A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping,

Dirty and dusky, but as wide as eye

Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping

In sight, then lost among the forestry

Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping

On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy;

A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown

On a fool's head--and there is London Town!"

Why should we, the travellers of the world, who so admire other

cities, so persistently pour obloquy on our own? It is true that

London, on a day of east wind, when the sky is leaden, when suffering

is writ large on the faces of poor humanity, and when dirty tracts of

paper, notwithstanding the Borough Councils, blow about in all

directions, is hardly inspiring; and on a wet day, or a day of fog,

when pedestrians peer vainly through that "light which London takes

the day to be," and suffering 'bus and dray horses slide and stagger,

in the peculiar glutinous composition termed "London mud," through the

murky thoroughfares, it can scarcely be said to be at its best. But

then, neither are Paris nor Berlin prepossessing under like

circumstances.... Paradise itself would be at a discount!

But, on fine days of spring or summer, days when the May sun, with

"heavenly alchemy," transforms the dust in the atmosphere to

gold,--when the slight haze of a London summer but adds to pictorial

charm,--does not the great city seem a very Eldorado? Days such as

these surely inspired Mr. Henley's _London Voluntaries_; soot, fog,

grime are all forgotten; the city sparkles like a many-faceted

diamond, and

"Trafalgar Square

(The fountains volleying golden glaze)

Shines like an angel-market. High aloft

Over his couchant lions in a haze

Shimmering and bland and soft,

A dust of chrysoprase,

Our Sailor takes the golden gaze

Of the saluting sun...."

Yet it is, on the whole, not so much ourselves, as foreigners and

colonials, who are and have been the harshest critics of London

stones. The colonists of Melbourne, accustomed to their own straight,

wide streets, are shocked at our narrow, tortuous, and inconvenient

city thoroughfares; the denizens of New York, fresh from their own

system of regular "blocks," their town of parallelograms, are amazed

at London's want of "plan." The French, recalling their tall, white

palaces of the Place du Louvre and the Rue de Rivoli, are surprised

no less at our prevailing soot and grime, than by the lack of

continuity in our streets, of conformity in our public buildings. So

depressed, indeed, was M. Daudet in our metropolis that he went so far

as to call Englishwomen "ugly"; the kindly and accomplished author

must really have suffered from "the spleen." So, also, must M. Taine,

when he unkindly likened Nelson, on the top of his column, to "a rat

impaled on the top of a pole," and added, further, that a swamp like

London was "a place of exile for the arts of antiquity." Not one of

these critics, be it observed, recognises either the "aesthetic value"

of soot, or the charm of irregularity. And see how, even when we do

try after conformity and classical regularity, they fall foul of us!

For instance, M. Gabriel Mourey, in his charming book on England,

_Passe le Detroit_, while admiring the beauty of Regent's Park, makes

somewhat scornful reference to those too-ambitious stucco terraces,

"The turf of Regent's Park" (he says) "under that misty sun

of the London summer, that gives both a vagueness to the

horizon and an indefinite enlargement to the immense city

... the turf of Regent's Park, with its depths of real

country, notwithstanding the 'new Greek' lines of the big

houses appearing in the distance--Greek lines that harmonise

so badly with that northern sun."

Equally severe is M. Taine, the accomplished and broad-minded critic.

Hear his condemnation of one of our finest palaces:

"A frightful thing is the huge palace in the Strand, which

is called Somerset House. Massive and heavy piece of

architecture, of which the hollows are inked, the porticoes

blackened with soot, where, in the cavity of the empty

court, is a sham fountain without water, pools of water on

the pavement, long rows of closed windows--what can they

possibly do in these catacombs? It seems as if the livid and

sooty fog had even befouled the verdure of the parks. But

what most offends the eyes are the colonnades, peristyles,

Grecian ornaments, mouldings, and wreaths of the houses, all

bathed in soot; poor antique architecture--what is it doing

in such a climate?"

We give up the whole defence of the Regent's Park houses; yet, surely,

poor Somerset House was hardly deserving of all this satire! Somerset

House, though its river frontage is inadequate and lacking in dignity,

yet testifies to the ability of its eighteenth-century architect, Sir

William Chambers. The older palace of Protector Somerset, that English

prison where two poor foreign queens, Henrietta Maria and Catherine of

Braganza, languished in desolate grandeur, has given place to an

imposing structure, a community of Inland Revenue, a Circumlocution

Office on a vast scale. Situated at the Strand end of Waterloo Bridge,

its condemned river facade looms, nevertheless, attractively in

gleaming whiteness, across the water--a whiteness to which the

encroaching soot that the French writers complain of only lends

picturesque setting.

M. Taine, however, had evidently no eye for sooty effects. To him,

that mystic view from the river bridges, that view that inspired his

best sonnet in Wordsworth, a "nocturne" in Mr. Whistler, and immortal

art in the boy Turner, has to him merely "the look of a bad drawing in

charcoal which some one has rubbed with his sleeve."

While London's natural and primitive instinct is perhaps toward

Gothic architecture ("the only style," says M. Taine of Westminster

Abbey, "that is at all adapted to her climate,") yet, no doubt, the

prevailing note of her architecture is its cosmopolitanism. It is

her misfortune, as well as her glory, to show every kind of feverish

architectural craze and style in close juxtaposition--Gothic,

Renaissance, Norman, Greek, and Early English. Ardent spirits have,

at various times, sought to erect in her streets the oriflammes of

other nations, quite regardless of suitability or appropriate

setting. Italian spires and cupolas that would adorn their native

valleys, and shine, gleaming pinnacles of white,--landmarks to the

wandering peasant over the intervening black forest of pines,--are

here crowded, perhaps, between a fashionable "emporium" and a modern

hotel; Doric temples, such as should stand aloof in lonely grandeur

each on its tall Acropolis, here are sandwiched, maybe, between a

model dairy-shop and a fashionable library; Renaissance palaces

that, by the waters of Venice, would reflect their arches and

pillars in a sunny, golden glow, here confront blackened statues of

square-toed nineteenth-century philanthropists,--or, more prosaic

still, a smoke-breathing London terminus!

Yet, while we concede the Gothic style to be more in keeping with

London skies and spirits, it is, nevertheless, difficult to say which

of her styles is most dominant--for all, truly, have been dominant in

their day. For London, in this respect, has been the victim of

succeeding fashions; over her resistless and long-suffering mass have,

in every new age and decade,

"Bards made new poems,

Thinkers new schools,

Statesmen new systems,

Critics new rules."

Nearly every decade of the past two centuries can be traced by the

scholar in London streets and monuments. Nay, from the time of the

Great Fire, when Wren, that master spirit in architecture, rose in his

strength, and undertook to rebuild sixty destroyed churches,--the

progress, or falling off, of London in this art can be generally

traced in the metropolis. Wren, best known to posterity as the builder

of St. Paul's, was a remarkable figure of his robust time. Like the

magician of some old fairy tale, he caused a new and more beautiful

London to rise again from its ashes. Macaulay wrote of him:

"In architecture, an art which is half a science ... our

country could boast at the time of the Revolution of one

truly great man, Sir Christopher Wren; and the fire which

laid London in ruins, destroying 13,000 houses and 89

churches, gave him an opportunity unprecedented in history

of displaying his powers. The austere beauty of the Athenian

portico, the glowing sublimity of the Gothic arcade, he was,

like most of his contemporaries, incapable of emulating, and

perhaps incapable of appreciating; but no man born on our

side of the Alps has imitated with so much success the

magnificence of the palace churches of Italy."

Wren's master-work, it may be said, is after all only imitative; St.

Paul's in London is but an adaptation of St. Peter's in Rome. But it

is a free adaptation, and in the grand style. Nor will any one be

disposed to deny the great architect's wealth of imagination,

originality and resource, who studies Wren's sixty City churches, none

of which, either in spire or church itself, is a duplicate of another.

Perhaps, among them all, it is the spire of St. Mary-le-Bow that, for

grace and beauty of design, bears away the palm.

For forty years no important building was erected in London in which

Wren was not concerned. That his wider plan for the regulating and

straightening of the streets themselves was not adopted we have,

perhaps, reason to be thankful. While nearly all the city spires

recall Wren's master-hand and versatile tastes, the Banqueting House,

that well-known palatial fragment in Whitehall, is the principal

monument left to us by Inigo Jones, Wren's immediate predecessor.

Inigo Jones is principally famous as the designer of that splendid

palace of Whitehall that was never built, that "dream-palace" of

Palladian splendour that was intended to replace the ancient "York

House" of Wolsey, the former "Whitehall" of the Tudors. The

river-front of this imagined palace, as designed by Inigo, would, in

its noble simplicity, have been a thing of beauty for all time; it is

to be regretted that the plan was never carried out. The civil

troubles of the impending Revolution, the want of money for so

grandiose a scheme, prevented the undertaking. The sole realisation of

the dream is now the old Banqueting House that we pass in Whitehall, a

building isolated among its neighbours, intended only as the central

portion of but one wing of the enormous edifice. Cruel, indeed, is the

irony of history, and little did James I., for whose glory this

magnificent palace was planned, think "that he was raising a pile from

which his son was to step from the throne to a scaffold." For this

very Banqueting House served later as Charles's vestibule on his way

to execution. With the final banishment of the Stuarts, Whitehall was

deserted as a Royal residence; and the old palace, destroyed by

successive fires, its picturesque "Gothic" and "Holbein" gateways

removed as obstructions, has in its turn made way for imposing

Government Offices. Yet the Banqueting House, sole and sad relic of a

vanished past, still stands solidly in its place, and is now used as a

Museum.

What, one imagines, would modern London have been had Inigo Jones's

plan found fruition, and the whole of Whitehall, from Westminster to

the Banqueting House, been given up to his palatial splendours? That

the present Buckingham Palace is but a poor substitute for such

imagined magnificence is certain, and the loss of Inigo's fine

Palladian river-frontage is perhaps hardly atoned for by the terrace

of our modern Houses of Parliament; yet these, too, are beautiful, and

Whitehall has not lost its palatial air; for its wide and still

widening streets, its spacious and imposing Government Offices, still

serve to keep up the illusion, and, at any rate, the state of royalty.

Already one of the handsomest streets in London, its buildings are

being yet further improved, and a new War Office of vast proportions

is rising slowly on the long-vacant plot of ground where, it was said,

three hundred different kinds of wild flowers lately grew, whose

yellow and pink blossoms used to wave temptingly before the eyes of

travellers on omnibus-tops.... Now, never more will flowers grow

there; no longer will the picturesque, green gabled roofs of

"Whitehall Court" look across to the fleckered sunlight of the

Admiralty and the Horse Guards. Instead, palatial buildings, something

after the Palladian manner of Inigo Jones's imagined Whitehall Palace,

will form a noble street, in a more or less continuous line of massive

splendour; a road of palaces, to be further dignified by the erection

of new and spacious Government Offices, near the Abbey, on the line of

the destroyed and obstructive King Street. When all the Whitehall

improvements are carried out, the dignity and beauty of London will

gain immensely, and the view down the long street of palaces,--the

Abbey, unobstructed by intervening buildings, shining like a star at

its Parliament Street end,--will be among the very finest sights in

the metropolis.

[Illustration: _The Horse Guards._]

If Inigo Jones, steeped in Italian art, was severely Palladian in

style, Wren, his successor, "a giant in architecture," was a

versatile and original genius. The quantity and the quality of his

work may well overpower a later age. "He paved the way," says

Fergusson, "and smoothed the path"; none of his successors have

surpassed if, indeed, equalled him. During the eighteenth century, the

Renaissance still held sway in architecture; James Gibbs, in 1721,

built the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, of which the Grecian

portico, says Mr. Hare, "is the only perfect example in London"; the

brothers Adam, of "Adelphi" fame, flourished, giving, with their

doorways, their fireplaces, their curves and arches, a new impulse to

the domestic architecture of their day; Sir William Chambers erected

Somerset House; and Sir John Soane, who in 1788 designed the present

Bank of England, was, with others of his contemporaries, a pioneer of

the coming classical revival. With the beginning of the nineteenth

century the change came, and architectural design in England

completely changed. Now the "new Greek lines" that, say the French,

"go so ill with our northern climate," became all the rage; the mild

Gothic of Wren, itself a "last dying echo," completely disappeared,

and Greek temples, "orders," pediments, columns, grew everywhere like

mushrooms. Nash, the architect of the Regency, the "Apostle of

Plaster," planned out Regent Street, a new road to extend from the

Prince's colonnaded mansion Carlton House, to the new Park named after

him: hence arose the Quadrant, and the Regent's Park terraces already

alluded to. All was Greek, everything was colonnaded, at that day:

"Once the fashion was introduced it became a mania. Thirty

or forty years ago no building was complete without a Doric

portico, hexastyle, or octastyle, prostylar, or distyle in

antis; and no educated man dared to confess ignorance of a

great many very hard words which then became fashionable.

Churches were most afflicted in this way: next to these came

gaols and county halls, but even railway stations and

panoramas found their best advertisements in these sacred

adjuncts; and terraces and shop-fronts thought they had

attained the acme of elegance when either a wooden or

plaster caricature of a Grecian order suggested the

classical taste of the builder."

Nash was the chief introducer of "stucco" (the covering of brick with

cement to imitate stone), which has since become so vulgarised

everywhere, and especially in the fashionable West End squares and

streets. Nash's tastes in this respect gave rise to the following

epigram:

"Augustus at Rome was for building renowned,

And of marble he left what of brick he had found;

But is not our Nash, too, a very great master?

He finds us all brick, and he leaves us all plaster."

All the great public buildings of the time shared in the classic

revival. The British Museum, built by the Smirkes in the first half of

the last century, at enormous expense, is the most successful

imitation of Ionic architecture in England. The style of the pediment

is after that of the Athenian Acropolis. Though critics object to it

that it has no suitable base, it is, nevertheless, an imposing

structure. The Greek portico of the London University Buildings, in

Gower Street, erected by Wilkins in 1827, is, says Fergusson, "the

most pleasing specimen of its class ever erected in this country." But

it is so secluded and recessed from the street, as to be hardly seen.

Its architect, Wilkins, had the misfortune to be chosen to erect our

much-abused National Gallery building, with its condemned

"pepper-boxes" of cupolas; the designer, however, was so hampered by

conditions and restrictions, as to be almost helpless in the matter.

The National Gallery, nevertheless, still stands on the finest site in

London, an object of scorn to visitors and foreigners.

But the ultra-classic craze, in London, burnt itself out at last in

one final flare. Of the innumerable buildings that still tell of the

extent of the mania, perhaps the most exaggerated is the church of New

St. Pancras, built after not one but several Athenian temples. It is a

strange medley of forms, a real nightmare of Greek art. Its tower is a

double reproduction of the "Temple of the Winds," one temple on the

top of the other: while its interior and its caryatids are modelled

on the Erechtheion. Poor caryatids, designed for the bright sunlight

of the Acropolis, and imprisoned, blackened and ogre-like, in the

dreary and muddy Euston Road! "Calm" you may be, in your

pre-surroundings, but hardly "far-looking"; for your view is

restricted (even if fog does not restrict it yet further) to the

uninspiring buildings of Euston Station opposite! Truly, they who

placed you here must have been somewhat lacking in sense of humour!

The double Tower of the Winds is not so unhappy as the poor caryatids;

it even looks well, in its height and its silvery greyness, seen over

the Tavistock Square trees, which hide its inadequate portico. The

failure of this incongruous church, added to its vast expense, brought

the final reaction from the classical fever; yet, from one extreme,

men directly rushed to the other.

The Gothic revival, as might be expected, set in severely; the classic

sculptors changed their style and became Gothic; new Gothic sculptors,

Pugin, Britton, and others, arose on the artistic firmament. Then, in

1840-59, Sir Charles Barry built the chief modern architectural

feature of London, the New Palace of Westminster, in the mediaeval and

Tudor style. The small chapel of Henry VII. gave the idea for this

vast edifice. The enormous structure, so often criticised, is yet, to

judge by the many photographs and views annually sold of it, the most

popular building in London.

Even M. Taine, who consistently falls foul of all London architecture

that is not Gothic, speaks thus of it:

"The architecture ... has the merit of being neither Grecian

nor Southern; it is Gothic, accommodated to the climate, to

the requirements of the eye. The palace magnificently

mirrors itself in the shining river; in the distance, its

clock-tower, its legions of turrets and of carvings are

vaguely outlined in the mist. Leaping and twisted lines,

complicated mouldings, trefoils and rose windows diversify

the enormous mass which covers four acres, and produces on

the mind the idea of a tangled forest."

The great Exhibition of 1851 gave, naturally, much impetus to the

enlargement, as well as the architecture, of London. And though the

English school of architects became somewhat more catholic in taste,

yet the Gothic style still held the public favour. Butterfield's

severe church of All Saints, Margaret Street, delighted the public

taste, and initiated the fashion for "Butterfield" spires; Scott's

church of St. Mary Abbott's, Kensington, was also popular. Would not

either of these be noticed, if "planted out" in an Italian valley? And

Street's well-known New Law Courts, in the Strand, built 1879-83, are

the latest expression of modern Gothic. Opinion is divided on the

subject of their merits, but undoubtedly they form, viewed from the

Strand, a fine pile of buildings.

What is called the "Queen Anne" building craze has set in strongly of

late years, its chief pioneers being the two architects,--Norman Shaw,

who built the picturesque mansion of Lowther Lodge, solidly fine in

its darkened red-brick, close to the Albert Hall,--and Bodley, who

designed the fine offices of the London School Board on the Thames

Embankment. Lowther Lodge is said to "exhibit very well the merits of

the best order of "Queen Anne" design of the domestic class"; its

successors are much more efflorescent. Everywhere now spring up

so-called "Queen Anne" mansions, streets, houses, public offices; and

red-brick, terra-cotta, nooks, ingles, casement windows are

multiplying _ad libitum_ all over the metropolis. Different styles

prevail at different times, and the "Queen Anne" wave just now

threatens to overwhelm us. Flats, stores, police-stations, hotels, all

are becoming "Queen Anne." Even if walls are still thin, even if the

jerry-builder is still to the fore, new streets are, none the less,

built in the "Queen Anne" manner; and the last stage of every craze is

worse than the first.

What, then, is the prevailing architecture of London? We have perused

its history; we have wandered through its streets, and have gazed on

all and every style of building. Decision ought to be easy. Yet it is

not so easy as it looks. In the Forum at Rome, you have to dig to find

out all the different strata of buildings--republican, monarchical,

imperial. In London, it is even more puzzling, for here you see them

all together, above ground, in close juxtaposition--Tudor, Stuart,

Hanoverian--it needs more than a magician's wand to relegate each to

its proper period in history. Wren's St. Paul's, the enormous Hotel

Cecil, the Whitehall Government Offices, the old timbered mansions in

Bishopsgate Street, Pennethorne's new Tudor Record office, the Railway

Architecture of Charing Cross and of Liverpool Street, the Aquarium

hung gaily with posters, the Savoy Hotel in white and gold--you have

them all, side by side. You pass through the prevailing stucco and

heavy porticoes of Belgrave Square,--the new red-brick and terra-cotta

of the Cadogan and Grosvenor Estates,--the stone dignity of Broad

Sanctuary,--the dull brick uniformity of Bloomsbury;--which style,

think you, suits your ideal London best?

But, while it may reasonably be matter for conjecture as to what

architectural style really suits London best,--or if, indeed, a

wholesome mixture of all styles be not a desideratum,--it seems,

perhaps, safe to say that it is the "dark house," in the "long,

unlovely street" of Tennyson's condemnation, of Madame de Stael's

vituperation,--that, in its dull uniformity, really occupies most of

the area of London. There are, of course, minor differences. In West

London, the "unlovely street" may flower into questionable stucco; in

East London, it may become lower, dingier, and meaner: but in original

intent all are the same. So monotonous, indeed, are they, that, in

secluded squares or corners, one welcomes joyfully an original

door-knocker, even such a door-canopy as that described in _Little

Dorrit_, "a projecting canopy in carved work, of festooned

jack-towels, and children's heads with water-on-the-brain, designed

after a once-popular monumental pattern." In interiors, these same

monotonous houses may all differ widely, though even here no universal

rule of taste can be laid down; and the little School Board boy who

said, naively, "Rich people's houses ain't nice inside; there is

books all round, and no washin'" unconsciously testified to the wide

differences entailed by "the point of view." In Mayfair, Westminster,

or Belgravia,--yes, even in Bloomsbury, one dull brick or stucco

house-front may present the same external gloom as another, and yet,

internally, may differ much from that other in glory. And this fact is

typical of poor as well as of rich London. An Englishman's house is

his castle, and Englishmen's tastes, as we know, are seldom much in

evidence. "Adam" ceilings, "Morris" tapestries, Pompeian courts, leafy

vistas, mediaeval halls, "Queen Anne", "ingleneuks," all these may

surprise the visitor, when once the "Open sesame" has revealed to him

all that lies behind that magic front door that guards the Briton's

household gods from the vulgar glare of the street.

Even some of the treasure-houses of England's magnates,

merchant-princes, and collectors are curiously unsuggestive

externally. In this connection I may quote Mr. Moncure Conway's

description of the late Mr. Alfred Morrison's house in Carlton House

Terrace, adorned by the genius of Mr. Owen Jones:

"The house" (he says) "is one of those large, square,

lead-coloured buildings, of which so many thousands exist in

London, that any one passing by would pronounce

characteristically characterless. It repeats the apparent

determination of ages that there shall be no external

architectural beauty in London. Height, breadth, massiveness

of portal, all declare that he who resides here has not

dispensed with architecture because he could not command it.

In other climes this gentleman is dwelling behind carved

porticoes of marble and pillars of porphyry; but here the

cloud and sky have commanded him to build a blank fortress

and find his marble and porphyry inside of it. Pass through

this heavy doorway, and in an instant every fair clime

surrounds you, every region lavishes its sentiment; you are

the heir of all the ages."

The street that Tennyson really designed in _In Memoriam_ was Wimpole

Street, surely not as ugly or as pretentious a street as many others

of the West End. Gower Street, too, was called unkindly by Mr. Ruskin

"the _nec plus ultra_ of ugliness in British architecture"; yet,

indeed, Bloomsbury houses, unfashionable as they are, seem by their

very plainness and want of adornment to maintain a certain dignity

that is unknown to those long rows of stucco catafalques of Kensington

and Belgravia, where, standing beneath the endless vista of projecting

porches, one's mind naturally turns to tombs and whited sepulchres.

The Bloomsbury houses are, at any rate, simple and inoffensive. Mr.

Moncure Conway, in a further passage, pleads the cause of London's

ugly residential streets:

"Much is said from time to time about the ugliness of London

street architecture ... the miles and miles of yellow-gray

and sooty brick houses, each as much like the other as if so

many miles of hollow block were chopped at regular

intervals. And yet there is something so pleasant to think

of in these interminable rows of brick blocks, that they are

not altogether unpleasant to the eye. For they are houses of

good size, comfortable houses; and their sameness, only

noticeable through their vast number, means that the average

of well-to-do-people in London is also vast. It implies a

distribution of wealth, an equality of conditions, which

make the best feature of a solid civilisation. There is much

beauty inside these orange-tawny walls. Before any house in

that league of sooty brick you may pause and say with fair

security: In that house are industrious, educated people ...

they have made there, within their mass of burnt clay, a

true cosmos, where love and thought dwell with them: and

between all that and a fine outside they have chosen the

better part."

But, according to Edward Gibbon, the historian, the excuse for

London's ugly "exteriors" is not so much because the inhabitants have

"chosen the better part," as because the average Englishman mostly

keeps his show and his magnificence for his country seat. Comparing

London and Paris, Gibbon said (in 1763):

"I devoted many hours of the morning to the circuit of Paris

and the neighbourhood, to the visit of churches and palaces

conspicuous by their architecture.... An Englishman may hear

without reluctance that in these.... Paris is superior to

London, since the opulence of the French capital arises from

the defects of its government and religion. In the absence

of Louis XIV. and his successors the Louvre has been left

unfinished; but the millions which have been lavished on the

sands of Versailles and the morass of Marli could not be

supplied by the legal allowance of a British king. The

splendour of the French nobles is confined to their town

residence; that of the English is more usefully distributed

in their country seats; and we should be astonished at our

own riches if the labours of architecture, the spoils of

Italy and Greece, which are now scattered from Inverary to

Wilton, were accumulated in a few streets between Marylebone

and Westminster."

In some parts of Bloomsbury,--Great Ormond Street, for instance, or

Queen Square,--some of the old houses are charming in their darkened

red-brick and plain casements neatly outlined with white paint. But

then most of these are, like old Kensington Palace, really of Queen's

Anne's time, and the original is ever better than the imitation. No

doubt, to the inhabitant, there are accompanying drawbacks to some of

these; beetles of long standing may infest their grimy kitchens, and

their ancient oak panelling may be prolific in those large rats which

are so unpleasantly suggestive, to the nervous, of ghosts.

Queen Square is the oldest of all the Bloomsbury Squares; for in 1746

London hardly extended further than the northern end of Southampton

Row, all beyond being more or less open country. Queen Square is so

named in honour of Queen Anne, and her statue, as its presiding

genius, adorns its further end, which was left open, as already

mentioned, on account of the beautiful view it afforded of the heights

of Highgate and Hampstead. Of the same solidity and almost mediaeval

suggestion as Queen Square are the picturesque Charterhouse Square

(now mainly hotels and business precincts), Trinity Square, near the

Tower (with the same tendency), and other unsuspected haunts of old

time. And in the charming "old Court suburb" of Kensington, several

such squares, delightful in greenery and mellowed red-brick, are to be

found. How refreshing, for instance, is Kensington Square, a square

that still keeps its old-world look, and suggests Miss Thackeray's

pleasant touches, despite the sad encroachments of modernity at one

end, in the shape of tall and very prosaic blocks of "model

dwellings." There is, as stand, a great modern craze for red-brick,

and the many new and often quaintly designed houses, when darkened by

years, will no doubt improve residential London vastly. And despite

the enormous recent growth of London, and the incessant crowding of

bricks and mortar, there yet remains an almost suburban charm about

Kensington, Chelsea, and Fulham--in Kensington especially--where a few

old-world corners are still untouched, where Kensington Palace still,

in its Dutch solidity, "maintains all the best traditions of Queen

Anne's time," and where the pretty modern dwelling-houses abound,

described so sympathetically by M. Gabriel Mourey in _Passe le

Detroit_:

"In front of the pretty little facades of the little

red-brick houses, the style which Philip Webb, the

architect, invented, and which is so happily appropriate

alike to the requirements of English life and to the colour

and movements of the atmosphere, it is pleasant to dream of

an existence in which all is calm, intimate, and gravely

happy. The windows are guillotine-like, half hidden by

balconies with trailing plants, and through them one catches

sight of neat, bright furniture, designed at once for

utility and decoration. A woman is seated at the window,

working or reading, of quiet and placid beauty. The children

come in from playing in some neighbouring park. They are

supple and vigorous, like young animals, frank and direct of

aspect, not spoilt by any unhealthy precocity. The husband

comes in from the City, his bag in hand, after his hours on

feverish business, the joy of the same horizon found every

evening, the sweetness of home; happiness composed of

simple, various elements, a sensation of prosperity in all

the little houses, all alike the same comfortable

contentment. And as before a camera or in reading a book one

likes to imagine or evoke the soul of the artist, so here

the personality of this Philip Webb claims me, the soul of

the architect who, like Solness, the master builder, has

passed his life in building not palaces or churches, but

simple houses."

Such modern houses are, at any rate, a great relief from the

monotonous and too-predominating fever of Georgian and Early Victorian

stucco. A new city of red brick has arisen on the Cadogan Estate, and

in the remodelled purlieus of Sloane Street big mansions of red flats

tower skywards, and blossom into oriels, gables, dormer-windows, and

such like excrescences. Originality is a new thing in London domestic

architecture, and the Cadogan Estate is, on the whole, vastly

improved. The Bedford Estate of Bloomsbury might, no doubt, be rebuilt

to equal advantage but for two potent reasons, the one being that its

house walls, built strongly in last century's beginning, show no signs

of decay; the other, that the fitful tide of fashion has so deserted

the locality as to make the expense hardly worth incurring. Therefore,

Bloomsbury houses are merely "tinkered" up in places, and adorned here

and there with facings and mouldings of terra-cotta; a half-hearted

proceeding at best, and no more successful than such half-measures

usually are.

But, while the plain, nondescript brick houses of Gower Street and

Baker Street still remain the prevailing type of London architecture,

there is everywhere noticeable a tendency to improve and embellish the

streets of the metropolis, to rebuild in a better or, at any rate, a

more ambitious way. Travelling along the highway of Oxford Street,

from ancient Tyburn to Tottenham Court Road, how many tall, new, and

ornate house-fronts rise along the line on each side of us! There is a

warehouse in Oxford Street by Collcutt, which, say architectural

authorities, "has probably the most showy facade in England for the

money." The lease of a small, mean house expires; it is promptly

destroyed--to rise again in dazzling red-brick, terra-cotta, and wide

casements. Everywhere else it is the same; everywhere is red-brick,

and red or buff terra-cotta, adorning alike shop-front, warehouse,

"Tube" station, and palatial mansion, till, indeed, you hardly know

which is which. Very good indeed is the effect of some of this new

street-architecture. Sometimes the new houses are even rebuilt in "old

English" style, or on old models, with all the latest improvements;

as, for instance, "Short's" famous wine-tavern in the Strand, lately

re-erected as a semi-mediaeval building, with white and green

adornments, sloping roof, and the projecting "sign" of old times.

Could we "dip into the future far as human eye can see"; were it given

to us, but for one moment, to behold the architectural glories and

wonders of the London of, say, the year A.D. 2000; well, we should, at

any rate, comprehend better whither our present efforts tend. Then

will the public buildings of the Victorian Age, as of the Elizabethan

Age, be pointed out proudly to the wondering sightseer; the golden

glitter of the "Anno Victoriae" on the Royal Exchange Pediment will

prove no less inspiring than the "Anno Elizabethae"; and while such

ancient monuments as St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey must ever command

the primal reverence of every Englishman worthy the name, no less will

such landmarks as the Albert Hall, the Albert Memorial, the Natural

History Museum, or the Imperial Institute, speak to the ages of the

famous "sixty years of ever widening Empire." For, surely, the

greatest power of architecture is that it leaves the memorial, in

turn, of every age. Therefore, all the more, should

"You, the Patriot Architect,

You that shape for Eternity,

Raise a stately memorial,

Make it regally gorgeous, ...

Rich in symbol, in ornament,

Which may speak to the centuries,

All the centuries after us...."

Architecture, like literature, needs time to orb it "into the perfect

star," to give it its right place and setting in history. And yet, it

should be of every age. "We could name," said the late Mr. Walter

Pater, "certain modern churches in London ... to which posterity may

well look back puzzled. Could these exquisitely pondered buildings

have been, indeed, works of the nineteenth century? Were they not the

subtlest creations of the age in which Gothic art was spontaneous? In

truth, we have had instances of workmen, who, through long, large

devoted study of the handiwork of the past, have done the thing

better, with a more fully enlightened consciousness, with full

intelligence of what those early workmen only guessed at."

The Albert Hall, so much abused for its acoustic defects, is, from its

impressive size at least, a well-known London landmark. "That

monstrous caricature of the Colosseum," some one has called it; but

critics of London's modern buildings generally err on the side of

severity, and the vast elliptical mass is certainly imposing. In the

Albert Hall, the new style of terra-cotta decorations, already

referred to, is largely prominent; the Pantheon-like dome has a

pleasing solidity, and the glow of smoke-darkened red, in spring, is

delightfully contrasted with the green trees of the neighbouring Park.

Enormous "mansions," also red-brick, but hardly attractive, have

arisen, in Babel-like height, beside the Albert Hall, painfully

dwarfing and overshadowing the charming building of "Lowther Lodge"

adjacent. These "mansions" and "flats" have increased of late years

enormously in London, are, indeed, still increasing. From "model

lodging-houses" to elaborate and expensive palaces, every kind of

income and taste is, in this respect, catered for; and these enormous

dwelling-houses,--cities, or at least villages, in themselves,--attain

terrific proportions of height and size. In them live "all sorts and

conditions of men." Thus, in the "blocks" of model dwellings, ladies

in eternal "Hinde's curlers" quarrel vociferously, with arms akimbo,

from across their railed-in outer landing-places; while, in more

elaborate dwellings, tubs of "yuccas" and other evergreen trees greet

the visitor cheerfully from the glazed-in Nuremberg-like courtyards,

and elaborate flower-boxes adorn the balconies. Indeed, the modern

"flats" already form no inconsiderable factor in London's street

architecture; and sometimes, as in Bedford Court Mansions, Bedford

Square, they are of considerable artistic merit. The new hotels, also,

are another leading feature of modern London. Fifty years ago London

had but few hotels, and those that did exist, often left much to be

desired in the way of comfort, cleanliness, and reliability. Now

enormous palaces have arisen everywhere, not only in the West End, but

in Bayswater, Bloomsbury, and other less modish quarters; sumptuous

mansions, still of ornate red brick and terra-cotta, springing up with

the promptitude of an Aladdin's palace, and dominating, as it may be,

their respective street or square. It was not long since that I

chanced to meet two queens in a cart filled with straw--unregal state

for a queen! going along, smiling placidly, to their final resting

place. The queens were of terra-cotta, and their last, sad journey was

presumably only from Doulton's factories in Lambeth to their destined

abode on the Russell Hotel facade; nevertheless, I sympathised with

the poor things in their patient submission, led thus, in an open

cart, to execution, roped and hung amid the jeers of the populace.

In the "Venetian Gothic" style is the modern Crown Insurance Office,

in New Bridge Street, built by Woodward. Of this edifice, D. G.

Rossetti, who lived at one time close by it, says: "It seems to me the

most perfect piece of civil architecture of the new school that I have

seen in London. I never cease to look at it with delight." Of what is

called the "Secular Gothic" order, is the large terra-cotta "Natural

History Museum," at South Kensington, an ambitious building by

Waterhouse, about which much difference of opinion rages. While Mr.

Hare has no doubt at all but that it is "an embodiment of pretentious

ugliness, a huge pile of mongrel Lombardic architecture," other

authorities have seen in its originality "many evidences of anxious

and skilful pains." Its general effect is, it must be confessed, at

present somewhat bizarre and striped. The "Prudential Assurance

Offices," also by Waterhouse, built close to the site of old

Furnival's Inn, in Holborn, is a more generally popular edifice, sober

and solid in its unrelieved, dark-red terra-cotta.

Many other notable buildings might, of course, be mentioned, but space

is limited. Enough, however, has been said to show that Londoners are

still slaves to architectural fashion, and that the now prevailing

mode is for red-brick and terra-cotta. Indeed, the London of the close

of the nineteenth and the opening of the twentieth century, will

surely be "picked out" by future antiquaries by lines and "holdings"

of red, just as the limits of the Georgian and early-Victorian

classical fever are now shown by white Doric and Ionic pediments and

columns, gleaming from beneath their invading mantle of soot. Some

people say, by the way, that the present love of terra-cotta as

building material, partly arises from the fact that it can be

_washed_. If this be true, then it only shows that the Londoner of

to-day is wanting in appreciation of the before-mentioned "artistic

value" of soot. It may be, that, like the tailless fox of the fable,

we admire what we must perforce put up with, or what we are accustomed

to. Yet, it has always seemed to me that London's chief beauty lies in

this all-pervading grime, mellowing, softening, harmonizing. M. Taine,

we know, did not hold this view; is it, indeed, to be expected from

any one but a true, a born Londoner? St. Paul's blackened festoons of

sculptured roses; the grimy cupids, nestling on the pedestals of the

Russell family's statues in the Bloomsbury squares; the mournful Greek

frieze on the Athenaeeum Club, in Pall Mall;--yes, even the sooty

resignation of the St. Pancras caryatids; does not the pall of soot,

which so afflicts the Southerner, seem to convey something of London's

spirit, humanity, Ego, in fact? Who, for instance, will maintain that

the blackness of St. Paul's itself does not immeasurably add to the

grandeur of its effect? As G. A. Sala said:

"It is really the better for all the incense which all the

chimneys since the time of Wren have offered at its shrine;

and are still flinging up every day from their foul and

grimy censers."

Who, also, will not own that the new Tate Gallery, erected at such

expense by Sir Henry Tate's munificence on the old site of Millbank

Prison, is not improving, year by year, by the combined action of

London's river, fogs, and soot? It already looks less incongruously

white amid its murky surrounding wharves; less like a frosted

wedding-cake, less aggressively Greek near the grey Gothic pile of

neighbouring Westminster. And what of that picturesque railway station

of St. Pancras, picturesque with the combined glamour of blue London

mist and distance, towering like some shadowy mediaeval fortress over

the murky modernity of the Euston Road! (Even the Euston Road, saddest

and least inspiring of thoroughfares, can, on occasion, be glorified.)

In one of London's lurid autumn sunsets, the large red sun, obscured

through fog and mist, sinks slowly behind the embattled towers of St.

Pancras, lending it such an appearance of romance that even a French

writer (not, however, M. Taine!) has called it:

"A monumental railway-station, like a cathedral with its

arched windows, its turrets, and enormous belfry, all of

red-brick, which the weather darkens so prettily."

And has not the misty glory of soot and river fog appealed to Turner,

the artist; appealed, in turn, to all the painters who have at all

penetrated to the spirit of the beauty and the mystery of London? Even

M. Taine, so severe otherwise upon London's sooty palaces, is

compelled to admit, reluctantly, some charm, after all, in this "huge

conglomeration of human creation," and to confess that "the shimmering

of river-waves, the scattering of the light imprisoned in vapour, the

soft whitish or pink tints which cover these vastnesses, diffuse a

sort of grace over the prodigious city, having the effect of a smile

upon the face of a shaggy and blackened Cyclops."

The "Cyclops" is maligned and traduced by tradition, and the smile on

his blackened face is often beautiful. We call London ugly, mostly

from mere custom, but very few among us trouble to look and judge for

ourselves. "I wonder," once said Archbishop Benson, "who out of the

many thousands who daily pass St. Paul's, ever look up at it." And it

is so with all London's great and historic buildings. Church spires

and towers were supposed, in the simple days of old, to carry the eye

and the mind up to Heaven; but what chance have they, poor things,

when, even on one of London's delightful grey-blue skies of summer, no

one heeds them, or their message? Like Bunyan's "Man with the

Muckrake," we fix our eyes ever steadily on the ground; the only

London stones that attract our notice being its jutting kerb-stones,

its sounding asphalt and macadamized pavements ... we fix our

attention on the dull, dead levels; we lose "the fair illuminated

letters, and have no eye for the gilding." Yet we still scoff at our

own historic city, not because we ever look at it on our own account,

but because we have always been taught that it is the right thing to

do so.

It is a curious fact that the fine passages which everybody knows and

quotes about the Stones of London, all refer to them in ruins.

Macaulay placed his New Zealander on a broken arch of London Bridge,

to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's. Shelley pictured London as "an

habitation of bitterns," and the piers of Waterloo Bridge as "the

nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers." Rossetti overthrew the British

Museum in order to leave the archaeologists of some future race in

confusion as to the ruins of London and Nineveh. Ruskin, who had so

much that is bright and beautiful to say of the Stones of Venice,

dismissed London with a warning of prophetic doom; saw her stones

crumbling "through prouder eminence to less pitied destruction." It is

surely time that some new and ardent spirit--some twentieth-century

Ruskin--with eyes no longer set upon the dear dead past, should fix

his gaze on what is grand and significant in the Stones of London,

while still they stand the one upon the other; and, seeing, should

reveal to the world something of the sombre glory of its greatest

city.

INDEX

"Adam" decorations, 246, 462

Addison, 80, 179, 383

Adelaide Gallery, the, 290

Advertisement, art of, in London, 320

Aggas's Map, 5, 187

Ainger, Canon, 146

Albany, the, 380

Albert Bridge, 26, 224

Albert Embankment, the, 32

Albert Hall, 213, 468

Albert Memorial, 397

All Hallows Staining, tower of, 55, 81

"Almack's," 181

Amen Court, 97

American Tourists in London, 299

Ancient Tomb-portraits, 348

Anne Askew, burning of, 65

Antiquarian zeal, 55

Appian Way, our, 193

Apsley House, 378

Arnold, Sir Edwin, on a mummy-case, 336

Arnold, Matthew, on Kensington Gardens, 395;

on the legend of Westminster Abbey, 188;

lecture at Toynbee Hall, 174

Artists in Kensington, 217

Ashbee, C. R., 176

"Asia Minor," 295

Asiatics in the East End, 295

Astor Estate Office, 42

"Augusta," 2, 21

Baby-farms, 431

Bacon, Francis, 139, 160

Bank Holiday, 434

Bankside theatres, 128

Barclay and Perkins's brewery, 129

Barnard's Inn, 159

Barnett, Canon, 173

Barry, Sir Charles, 205

Bartholomew Fair, 64

Battersea Park, 27, 224, 400

Beauchamp Tower, 106

Beaumont, Sir George, 354

Bedford Court, 246

Bedford House, 242

Ben Jonson, 153

Benson, Archbishop, 471

Berkeley Square, 379

Berners Street hoax, 370

Besant, Sir Walter, 8, 13, 24

Bevis Marks, 80

Billingsgate, 43, 316

Birds in London, 400, 410

Birkbeck Bank, 156

Bishopsgate Street, 76

Blackfriars, 13, 42

Blake, William, 26, 251, 349, 380, 384

"Bleak House," 144, 148, 154, 159, 261

"Blenheim Raphael," 344

Bloody Tower, 104

Bloomsbury, 238, 247

Bloomsbury Square, 243, 245

Blue mist, 23, 27, 388, 471

Boarding-houses, 263, 427

Bolt Court, 364

Bond Street, 176

Book-shops, 305

Booth, Charles, 446

Borough High Street, 126

Botanical Gardens, 406

Botticelli, 351

Bridge of Sighs, English, 40

British Museum, 333

Broad Sanctuary, 204

"Brompton Boilers," the, 341

Brompton Oratory, 215

Brontes, the, 97

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 380

Browning, Robert, on view from the dome of St. Paul's, 51

Buckland, Frank, 230

Burglars in London, 442

Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 252, 369

Butler, Samuel, 42

Byron's view of London, 449

Cabs in London, 423

Cabmen, wages of, 425

Calverley's "Savoyard," 289

Campden Hill, 217

Canova, 40

Canterbury Pilgrims, the, 126

Carlton House, 181

Carlton House Terrace, 181

Carlton Restaurant, 322

Carlyle, on the Press, 14;

on Westminster Abbey, 193;

on Cheyne Row, 225;

on the Leigh Hunts, 226;

his London homes, 261;

on the British Museum reading-room, 268;

and the omnibus conductor, 422

Carlyle House, the, 224

Carlyle, statue of, 226

Carlyle, Mrs., 225, 260, 392, 442

Carpaccio, 352

Caryatids on St. Pancras Church, 409, 459

Casual wards, 441

Catherine of Braganza, 36, 228

Cats in London, 409

Chained books at Chelsea Old Church, 234

Chancery Lane, 148

Chapter Coffee House, 97, 183

Charles I., 205

Charles II., 201, 400

Charterhouse, 9, 68

Charterhouse Square, 67, 464

Chatham, Lord, 192

Chatterton, 183, 427

Chaucer's Inns, 126

Cheapside, 81

Chelsea, 26, 222, 235

Chelsea Bun-house, 222, 236

Chelsea Embankment, 235

Chelsea Ferry, 235

Chelsea Hospital, 236

Chelsea Old Church, 231, 233

"Cheshire Cheese," the, 366

Chesterfield House, 378

Cheyne Row, 224

Cheyne Walk, 26, 227

Chichester Rents, 148

Christina of Denmark, 351

Christ's Hospital, 9

Churches:--

All Hallows, Barking, 115

Great St. Helen's, 77

Holy Trinity, Minories, 114

St. Alphage, London Wall, 82

St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield, 56

St. Botolph, 114

St. Dunstan-in-the-West, 151

St. Edmund the King and Martyr, 80

St. Ethelburga, 79

St. Giles, Cripplegate, 12, 81

St. John's Chapel (in the White Tower), 108

St. John's, Clerkenwell, 73

St. Magnus, 27, 44

St. Margaret's, Westminster, 202

St. Mary, Aldermanbury, 81

St. Mary, Lambeth, 31

St. Mary Overy, 122

St. Michael's, Cornhill, 75

St. Olave's, Hart Street, 117

St. Pancras, 265, 458

St. Paul, Covent Garden, 318

St. Peter-ad-Vincula, 105

St. Peter-upon-Cornhill, 75

St. Saviour's, Southwark, 122

St. Swithin's, 82

Church House, Kensington, 220

Church House, Westminster, 204

"Church of Humanity," 260

"Church Parade," 390, 401

City Companies, the, 14

Classical Fever in London, 457

Clement's Inn, 148

"Cleopatra's Needle," 36

Clifford's Inn, 150

"Clink," the, 129

Clive, Lord, 379

Cloth Fair, 58, 64

Clothworkers' Hall, 55

Coal Exchange, the, 316

Cobbett, 23

Cock Lane Ghost, the, 73

"Cockney," derivation of, 436

Cole, Vicat, 49

Coleridge, 158

Collins, Wilkie, 261

Comedy Restaurant, Panton Street, 322

Common lodging-houses, 441

Constable, 347, 355

Conway, Moncure D., 462, 463

Coronation Chairs, 200

Costermongers, 437

County Council, the, 400

Court of Pie Powdre, 64

Covent Garden Market, 317

Covent Garden, old taverns of, 318

Cromwell, 153, 199

Crosby Hall, 55, 77

Curzon Street, 373, 380

Darwin, Charles, 258

Davidson, John, on "The Loafer," 186

Dean's Yard, 202

Defoe, on Pall Mall, 183

Detectives in shops, 309

Dickens, on waterside scenes, 50;

the Marshalsea, 130, 134;

City churches, 115;

as the chronicler of London, 136;

on the Borough, 128;

Fountain Court, 143;

Staple Inn, 155;

Barnard's Inn, 159;

his social satires, 177;

his grave, 193;

on decaying houses, 240;

Bloomsbury types, 262;

his private theatricals, 261;

Cockney types, 312;

on London houses, 362

Dining, the art of, 322

Disappearing landmarks, 361

Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), on Regent's Park, 17;

on class differences in London, 162;

his death in Curzon Street, 373;

on Kensington Gardens, 395

D'Israeli, Isaac, 243

Docks, the, 47

"Doggett" badge, 235

"Domesday Book," 151

Downing Street, 374

Drama, popular tastes with regard to, 282

Dress of the poor, conventionalities in, 312

Earl's Court, 220

Earl's Terrace, 218

Eastcheap, 81, 118

East End, the, 168

Edward the Confessor, 189

Edwardes Square, 217

"Edwin Drood," 155, 295

Eighteenth Century, London in, 179

Elgin Marbles, the, 340

Eliot, George, 227

"Esmond," 220, 228, 392

Evelyn's Diary, 242

Eyre Street Hill, 292

Factory-girls, 437

Farm Street Roman Catholic Church, 177

Fetter Lane, 159

Fiction stronger than reality, 10, 363, 381

"First nights," 280

Fleet Street, 364

Fleur-de-Lis Court, 156

Flowers, London children's love for, 321, 402

Flowers, in Regent's Park, 402

Flower-girls, 318, 437

Folly Ditch, 51

Fore Street, 81

Foreign waiters, 288

Foundling hospital, 263

"Fountain Court," 143

"Four-in-hand Club," 390

"Fremdenindustrie" in London, 290

French furniture at Hertford House, 331

French School of Painting at Hertford House, 331

Frith's reminiscences, 258

Frost Fairs, 44

Froude, J. A., on ancient tombs, 196;

the dissolution of the Carthusian monastery, 68;

Anne Boleyn, 105

Furnival's Inn, 159

Gainsborough, 353

"Gallery of Instruction," 338

"Gandish's," 252, 258

Gardens, making of, in London, 408

Gardens, private, in London houses, 406

"Gatti's," 290

"Gaunt House" of "Vanity Fair," 378

Gibbon, 463

Gladstone, W. E., on Bloomsbury, 247;

his London residences, 373;

on the way to see London, 414

Godfrey, Sir Edmondsbury, 36

Goldsmith, Oliver, 147, 367

Gordon Riots, 243

Gordon Square, 260

Gothic style in London, 452-459

Gough House, Chelsea, 236

Gough Square (Dr. Johnson's house), 364

Gower Street, 258

Gower's tomb, 123

Grant Allen, 23, 337

Gray's Inn, 139, 159

"Grange," the, North End, 368

Great Coram Street, 263

"Great Expectations," 159

Great Fire, the, 7, 86

Great Ormond Street, 254, 464

Great Tower Hill, 113

Greenwich, 51

Greuze's Pictures, 332

Grosvenor Road, 28

"Grub Street," 64

"Guild and School of Handicraft," 176

Guy's Hospital, 133

Gwynne, Nell, 232, 236

Hair-Dressing, Ethics of, 286

"Hand of Ethelberta, The," 12

Hare, A. J. C., on St. Thomas's Hospital, 29;

Chelsea Embankment, 32;

Gray's Inn Garden, 139;

Thames Street, 316;

Holland House, 382

Hatton Garden, 292, 439

Haunted Houses, 379

Haydon, 395

Haweis, Rev. H. R., 229

Hawthorne, 90, 155, 160

Herschel, 257

Hertford House, 327

"Hiring-Fair," Jewish, 297

Hogarth, 63, 265, 368

Holbein, 351

Holborn Restaurant, 322

Holland House, 382

Holly Lodge, 383

Holman Hunt, W., 252

Holywell Street, 147

"Homes for the People," 465

Hood, Thomas, 40

Hook, Theodore, 370

Hotel Cecil, 33

Hotels, palatial, 32

Houndsditch, 79

Houses, historic, 358

Houses, humanity of, 245

Houses of Parliament, 29, 205

"Humphry Clinker" (and Covent Garden), 319

Humphry Ward, Mrs., 257

Hunter Street, Bloomsbury, 262

Hyde Park, 386

Ice-Cream Trade, 292

Inchbald, Elizabeth, 218

Inigo Jones, 454

Inland Revenue Office, 36

Inns of Court, the, 137

Iron-work, old, on houses, 379

Irving, Edward, 260

Irvingite Church, 260

Italian Colony in London, the, 292

Jack Cade, 44

"Jacob's Island," 51

Jersey, Lady, 181, 380

Jerusalem Chamber, 203

Johnson, Dr., 73, 91, 138, 147, 363

Katherine Howard, 105, 129

Kensington, 210

Kensington Gardens, 394

"Kensington House," 219

Kensington Palace, 382, 394, 465

Kensington Square, 220, 464

King's Bench Walk, Temple, 147

Kingsley, Charles, 47

Kingsley, Henry, 233

King's Road, Chelsea, 232

Knightsbridge Road, 212

Lady Jane Grey, 107

Lady lecturers, 330, 333, 342

Lamb, Charles, 139, 147, 160

Lamb's Conduit Street, 260, 265

Lambeth Palace, 29

Lang, Andrew, 37, 320

Lant Street, 130

Laud, Archbishop, 31

Law Courts, 460

Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 245

Lawson, Cecil, 227

Leadenhall Market, 3

Lear, Edward, 259

Leech, John, 263, 439

Leicester Square, 285

Leigh Hunt, 217, 226

Leighton House, the, 377

Lennox, Sarah, 382

Levy, Miss Amy, on plane trees in London, 408;

on London isolation, 426

Liddon, Canon, 97

Life of London, the, 285

Lincoln's Inn, 152

Lincoln's Inn Fields, 154

Little Britain, 64

"Little Dorrit," 132, 177, 264

"Little Midshipman, the," 115

Lollard's Tower, the, 30

Lombard Street, 80

London: atmospheric effects, 388, 412, 450;

approach to, 23;

architecture, 460;

the cult of, 20;

charm of, in early summer, 385, 400;

cosmopolitanism of, 285;

crowds, 282;

classes in, 162;

contrasts in, 19, 54, 151, 167, 175;

crazes, 445;

colouring of, 388, 412;

feeding of, 48;

houses, characteristics of, 359, 462;

isolation in, 426;

liberty in, 429;

opportunities in, 327;

phoenix-like, 24, 95, 181;

picturesqueness of, 49, 388, 411;

primarily a seaport, 24;

resources in, 17;

rebuilding of, 466;

suffering in, 427, 429;

as a tourist haunt, 33;

unexpectedness of, 10, 18, 54;

wealth of, 47

London Bridge, 43, 121

Londoners, ways of, 414, 416, 462

London Stone, 82

London Wall, 81, 82

Lost children, 442

Lowther Lodge, 213, 460

Ludgate Hill, 93

Lyon's Inn, 159

Macaulay, on the tombs of Chatham and Pitt, 192;

Westminster Hall, 205;

his residence at Holly Lodge, 217, 383;

in Powis Place, 255;

on Holland House, 383;

the New Zealander, 472

Maclise, Daniel, 227

Mall, the, 397

Manning, Cardinal, 177

Mansfield, Lord, 243

Mansions and Flats, 468

Marchmont Street, Bloomsbury, 262

Marco Marziale, 349

Marshall, Herbert, 388

Marshalsea, the, 130

Marshalsea Court, 150

"Martin Chuzzlewit," 118, 143

Matinee Hat, 282

Maurice, F. D., 245, 256

Mausolus, car of (in British Museum), 270, 338

"May-Day Sweeps," 259

Mecklenburgh Square, 265

Mercers' School, 159

Meredith, George, 228

Michael Angelo, 354

Middle Temple Hall, 143

Middle Temple Lane, 144

Millais, Sir John, 259

Millbank Penitentiary, Old, 28

Millionaires, Uses of, 327

Milton, 63, 371

Mincing Lane, 81

Minories, the, 113

Mitford, Mary Russell, 245

Model lodging-houses, 468

Monasteries, the fall of, 13

Montague House, 269, 333, 379

Monument, the, 43, 118

Monumental Brasses, 115

Monumental Sculpture, 91, 193

More, Sir Thomas, 110, 233

Morley, Charles, quoted, 131

Morris, William, 252

Mother Shipton, 387

Mourey, Gabriel, on the view from Charing Cross Bridge, 38;

the Tower Bridge, 45;

the Pool of London, 46;

character in hair-dressing, 286;

street markets, 312;

Sunday in London, 440;

London fog, 445;

Regent's Park terraces, 451;

Philip Webb's houses, 465

Mudie's Library, 305

Mudlarks, 28

Mummy-room at the British Museum, 335

"Murdstone and Grinby's," 50, 134

Museum Habitues, 268

"Museum Headache," 337

Nando's Coffee House, 145

Nash, 457

National Gallery, 344;

romance of, 346, 354

Natural History Museum, 342, 469

"Newcomes," The, 69

New Inn, 148

Newsboys, 443

Newton Hall, 158

Newton, Sir Isaac, 158

New War Office, 455

Nithsdale, Lord (escape from the Tower), 111

Norman London, 4

Old Clothes Markets, 315

"Old Curiosity Shop," 50, 80, 135

Old Palace Yard, 207

Old St. Paul's, 88

Old Swan Tavern, 235

"Oliver Twist," 51

Omnibuses, character in, 420

Omnibus Conductors, 418

Omnibus travelling, 417

Open air services, 98

Opium Dens, 296

O'Rell, Max, on the Parks, 390;

London omnibuses, 417;

London fog, 444

Organ-grinders, 263, 439

Ornithological Society, 399

"Our Mutual Friend," 50

Oxford Street, 18

Pall Mall, 183

Panizzi, 247

"Pan-opticon" of Leicester Square, 326

Pantomimes, 277

Panyer Alley, 97

Paradise Row, 232

"Paris Garden," 128

Park Orators, 392, 403

Parmigiano, 350

Passmore Edwards Settlement, 256

Patent Office, 156

Paternoster Row, 95

Pater, Walter, 218, 467

Paul's Cross, 98

Paul Pindar's House, 55, 342

"Paul's Walkers," 88

Pavement Artists, 248

Penny Steamers, 25

Pepys, Samuel, 116, 139

Philanthropists, treatment of, in London, 448

Physick Garden, the, 234

Picture-galleries, 330, 343

Picture Stories, 346

Pitman's Shorthand Institute, 246

Pictures, vicissitudes of, 346, 351, 353

Picturesqueness of Railways, 23, 95

Pigeon-fanciers, 315

Plane-trees in London, 408

Plantagenets, cuts of, 198

Poet's Corner, 202

Point of View, the, 164, 169, 172

Policemen, 425, 442

Pool of London, the, 44, 46

Popular "lines" in shops, 301

"Portland Vase," 336

Positivist Society, 138

Press, the, 369

Primrose Hill, view from, 413

Prince of Wales's Theatre, old, 284

Printing-House Square, 14

Prior Bolton, 62

Prior Houghton, 68

Protector Somerset, 35, 73

Prudential Assurance Company's Offices, 154, 159, 469

Pyx, Chapel of, 190, 203

Quality Court, 156

Queen Anne, 201

Queen Anne Craze, the, 460

Queen Anne's Gate, 397

Queen Anne's Statue, Ludgate Hill, 95;

Queen Square, 241

Queen Caroline (wife of George II.), 394, 399

Queen Caroline (of Brunswick), 202, 370

Queen Charlotte, 36

Queen Elizabeth, 25, 51, 201

Queen Mary (of Modena), 31

Queen Mary II., 201

Queen Victoria, visit to St. Paul's, 93;

at Kensington Palace, 395

Queen's House, Chelsea, 227

Queen Square, 241, 254, 264

Ragged Children, erudition of, 234, 433

Ragged Schools, 432

Rahere, 58

Raleigh, 107

"Ranelagh," 222

Reading-room, British Museum, 266

"Reconciliation," Temple of, 192-199

Record Office, 151

Red Lion Square, 253, 254

Reformation, the, 8, 62

"Reformer's Tree," the, 392

Regalia, 109

Regent's Park, 401

Restaurants, cheap, 287, 322

"Restorers," sins of, 125

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 354

Richardson, Samuel, 367

Richmond's Mosaics in St. Paul's, 93

"Ring, The," 391

Rocques', Map of, 1746, 241

Rogers, Samuel, 181

Rolls Chapel, 151

Roman City Wall, 81

Roman London, 24

Roman Remains, 3, 82, 97, 103

"Rosamond's Pond," 399

Rosebery, Lord, on St. James's Square, 184

"Rosetta Stone," the, 339

Rossetti, Christina, 251

Rossetti, D. G., at Queen's House, Chelsea, 227;

at Red Lion Square, 252;

at the Working Men's College, 256;

on the British Museum, 270;

on Venetian Gothic in London, 469

Rotten Row, 390

Royal Exchange, 74, 75

Royal Mint, 113

Royal Society, 158

Rubens, 351

Ruskin, on the Houses of Parliament, 32;

Victoria Embankment, 41;

the Pool of London, 49;

Social Contrasts, 185;

South Kensington Museum, 341;

born in Hunter Street, 262;

at the Working Men's College, 256;

at Denmark Hill, 371

Russell, Lady Rachel, 242

Russell, Lord William, 154, 242

Russell Hotel, 247

Russell Square, 244

Rye House Plot, 242

"Sailors' Town," the, 49

St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 66

St. James's Park, 397

St. James's Place, 179

St. James's Square, 184

St. James's Street, 178

St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, 72

St. Pancras Station, 27, 265, 471

St. Paul's Cathedral, 42, 51, 84

St. Paul's Churchyard, 95

St. Paul's School, 98

St. Thomas's Hospital, 29

Sala, G. A., 265

Sale-Days, 311

Saleswomen, trials of, 302

Sandford Manor House, 232

Sass's School, 258

Savoy Hotel, 33

Saxon London, 4

Scents, in London districts, 420

Scotland Yard, 33

Scott, W. B., 256

Sea-gulls in London, 35, 121

Seamy Side, the, 185, 248, 441

Sebert, King of the East Saxons, 188

Second-hand Book-shops, 266, 305

"Secular Gothic," 469

Seething Lane, 116

Serjeants' Inn, 149

Shaw, Norman, 33, 235, 460

Shelley, in Marchmont Street, 262;

in Half Moon Street, 361;

in Poland Street, 381;

on Hell and London, 297;

in the Highgate omnibus, 417

Shelley, Harriet, 394

Shelley, Mary, 262

Ships' figure-heads, 29

Shops of London, 299

Shoppers, ways of, 301

Shop-lifters, 309

Siddons, Mrs., 371

"Sixpenny Days," drawbacks of, 195

"Sketches by Boz," 240, 259, 262

Sloane, Sir Hans, 228, 234, 243, 333

Slum children, 430

Smart Society in London, 179, 390

Smetham, James, 355

Smithfield Martyrs, 64

Soane Museum, 375

Soane, Sir John, 376, 457

Somerset House, 35, 451-452

Soot as a beautifier, 23, 27, 90, 388, 452, 470

South Kensington, 222

South Kensington Museum, 341

South Sea Bubble, 76, 133

Southwark, 121

Sparrows in London, 410

Spinello Aretino, 348

Spitalfields, 314

"Spleen," the, 444

Squares of Queen Anne's Time, 464

Squares, Old London, charm of, 244

Stael, Madame de, 23

Stage Door, the, 284

Stage Neophytes, 275

Stage rehearsals, 279

Stanley, Dean, 187, 233

Staple Inn, 55, 154

Steele, Sir Richard, 243

"Steyne, Lord," 327

Stones of London, the, 447-472

Street Arabs, 434

Street games, 432

Street markets, 311

Stuart, Arabella, 111, 197

Stuart, La Belle, 201

Submerged, the, 170, 185

Sunday in London, 440

Sunday markets, 314

"Sunday opening," 326-335

Sunsets in London, 250

Sutherland House, 378

Sutton, Thomas, 69

"Sweating" dens, 297, 302

Swift, Dean, 177

Swinburne, A. C., 228, 369

Swindles in London, 443

Swiss Waiters, 287

Taine, Henri, on Greek Architecture in London, 32;

the docks, 48;

the ways of "good society," 279;

Englishwomen, 286;

the London Sunday, 326;

British seriousness, 392;

Somerset House, 451;

the Houses of Parliament, 459

Tanagra figurines (in British Museum), 339

Tanfield Court, Temple, 147

Tate Gallery, the, 27, 343

Tate, Sir Henry, 28, 343

Tavistock House, 258, 261

Temple, the, 149;

Gardens, 141;

Church, 145

Tennant, Miss Dorothy (Lady Stanley), 431

Tennyson, Alfred Lord, on Cleopatra's Needle, 39;

"London's central roar," 95

Terburg's "Peace of Muenster," 332, 350

Terra-cotta, in building, 470

Terriss, William, 284

Thackeray, in Cornhill, 76;

in Great Coram Street, 263;

in Kensington, 216, 220, 382;

on old Carlton House, 181;

Russell Square, 246;

Denmark Hill, 371;

the "Zoo," 405

Thackeray, Miss ("Old Kensington"), 213

Thames, influence on history of London, 2, 24

Thames, Enchantment of, 49

Thames Street, 43, 316

Thavies' Inn, 159

Theatrical Profession, the, 274

Thompson, Henry Yates, 344

"Thorney Island," 188

"Time Machine," the, 20

Tite Street, 236

"Tom-All-Alone's," 58

Tomb of Gordon, 92;

Lord Leighton, 92;

Duke of Wellington, 92

Tooley Street, 43, 126

Torch Extinguishers, 379

"Totencourt," Manor of, 18, 242, 387

Tottenham Court Road, 18

Tourists in London, 247, 424

Tower, the, 46, 100

Tower Bridge, 44

Tower Green, 105

Tower Lions, the, 112

Tower Victims, 105

Toynbee, Arnold, 173

Toynbee Hall, 173

Trades, special districts for, 308

"Traitor's Gate," 104, 110

Treasure-houses of London, 326

Trinity Square, 113, 464

Turner, J. M. W., R.A., 26, 49, 347, 355, 357, 380

Tyburn, 113

Unrevealing Exteriors, 359

Valhalla, national, 191

Vandyck, 351-354

Van Eyck, 353

Vanishing London, 360

"Vanity Fair," 246

"Vauxhall," 222

"Venetian Gothic," 469

Vergers, ways of, 105

Veronese, Paolo, 353, 355

Victoria Embankment, 32, 41

Views in London, 29, 35, 38, 42, 46, 49, 51, 265, 389, 394, 411-412

"Virginians," the, 381

Visitors to London, 424

Waifs and Strays, 429, 440

Wallace, Sir Richard, 65, 328, 332

Wallace Collection, 327

Wallace, Lady, 329

Walworth, Sir William, 65

"Wanderlust," the, 289

Warwick Square, 97

Watling Street, 3

Waterloo Bridge, 40

Wat Tyler, 65

Webb, Aston, 60

Webb, Philip, 465

Weller, Sam, 128

Wellington, Duke of, 378

Westminster Abbey, 187;

chapel of Henry VII., 190, 197;

chantry of Henry V., 194;

cloisters, 203;

wax effigies, 200

Westminster Bridge, 207

Westminster Hall, 205

Where to shop, 303

Whistler, J. McN., 23, 236

Whitechapel Road, 18, 172

Whitefield's Tabernacle, 242, 261

Whitefriars, 13

Whitehall, 455

Whitehall Court, 33

"White Tower," 108

Whittington, 9

Wimpole Street, 380

Winchester House (old), 129

"Window gardens," 407

"Wittenagemot" Club, 97

Wood Street plane tree, 10, 81

"Working Men's College, The," 255

Working Classes, 168

Wren, Sir Christopher, 7, 86

Wych Street, 148

Yiddish colony in London, the, 295

York House, old, 35

York Stairs, 35

Zoological Gardens, 405

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End of Project Gutenberg's Highways and Byways in London, by E. T. Cook