FRONTISPIECE TRAFALGAR SQUARE, LONDON

Preceding page I
   Westminster abbey
   river front of the houses of Parliament
   st. Paul’s cathedral
   interior of st. Paul’s cathedral
   chapel of Edward the confessor, Westminster abbey
   the tower of London
   Canterbury cathedral
   Tintern abbey
   DRYEURGH abbey
   Windsor castle

Following page 95
   the Albert memorial chapel, Windsor
   the throne room, Windsor castle
   poets’ corner, Westminster abbey
   the great hall at Penshurst
   the entrance hall of Blenheim palace
   guy’s tower and the Clock tower, Warwick castle
   Warwick castle
   the Beauchamp chapel, Warwick
   the ruins of Kenilworth castle Chatsworth
   Alnwick castle
   Holland house
   Eaton hall

I

LONDON

A general sketch [Footnote:  From articles written for the Toronto “Week.”  Afterward (1888) issued by The Macmillan Company in the volume entitled “The Trip to England.”]

BY GOLDWIN SMITH

The huge city perhaps never imprest the imagination more than when approaching it by night on the top of a coach you saw its numberless lights flaring, as Tennyson says, “like a dreary dawn.”  The most impressive approach is now by the river through the infinitude of docks, quays, and shipping.  London is not a city, but a province of brick and stone.  Hardly even from the top of St. Paul’s or of the Monument can anything like a view of the city as a whole be obtained.

It is indispensable, however, to make one or the other of these ascents when a clear day can be found, not so much because the view is fine, as because you will get a sensation of vastness and multitude not easily to be forgotten.  There is, or was not long ago, a point on the ridge which connects Hampstead with Highgate from which, as you looked over London to the Surrey Hills beyond, the modern Babylon presented something like the aspect of a city.  The ancient Babylon may have vied with London in circumference, but the greater part of its area was occupied by open spaces; the modern Babylon is a dense mass of humanity....