risked my life in the great cause. Is there a man here that has a wound? Let him stand forth, for we are comrades." And for the first time, with a proud gesture, he lifted his left arm. Tiro now saw the reason of the start he had given when running the gauntlet in Constitution Square. The sleeve of his coat was torn and soaked with blood, and the linen of his shirt showed crimson through it; his fingers were stiff and smeared all over.

The impression produced was tremendous. The mob, to whom the dramatic always appeals with peculiar force, were also swayed by that sympathy which all men feel for those injured in a common danger. A revulsion took place. A cheer, faint at first, but growing louder, rose; others outside the courtyard, ignorant of the reason, took it up. Savrola

continued.

"Our State, freed from tyranny, must start fair and unsullied. Those who have usurped undue authority, not derived from the people, shall be punished, whether they be presidents or citizens. These military officers must come before the judges of the Republic and answer for their actions. A free trial is the right of all Lauranians. Comrades, much has been done, but we have not finished yet. We have exalted Liberty; it remains to preserve her. These

of the under-officers in the rebel army, a simple honest man whom Savrola had known slightly for several months. "I entrust a high duty to you. Conduct these officers and soldiers to the State prison; I will send full instructions by a mounted Where can you find an

messenger.

escort?" There was no lack of volunteers. "To the prison then, and remember that the faith of the Republic depends on their safety. Forward, Gentlemen," he added, turning to the surviving defenders of the palace; "your lives are safe, upon my honour."

"The honour of a conspirator," sneered Sorrento.

"As you like, Sir, but obey."

The party, Tiro alone remaining with Savrola, moved off, surrounded and followed by many of the crowd. While they did so a dull heavy boom came up from the sea-front; another and another followed in quick succession. The fleet had returned at last.

14

He who lives always within the walls of his native city esteems its qualities as little as he recognises its defects. He is apt to take for granted its rare merits as well as its superfluous follies, and he should prove a less judicious critic than the casual foreigner who, passing through a strange land on a hasty visit, is at a loss neither for new facts nor fresh theories. It is not merely that the home-keeping man misses a standard of comparison; familiarity has bred in him, not contempt but, unconsciousness. Habit, which dims the sun and pierces the shapeless fog with light, closes our eyes to beauty and to common-place alike, till a sunrise in Piccadilly seems no more wonderful to the Londoner than does an Alpine dawn to the guides of Zermatt. In brief, he who would understand London must accustom his sight to Paris; and who knows but that a Russian would find Madrid an excellent preface to a study of St. Petersburg? Now, I have wandered so long in France, that at last I feel myself imperfectly equipped for the criticism of London; and though it may seem an affectation for an Englishman to look at his own land with a half-strange eye, it is an affectation in semblance only. One impression momentarily effaces another, and absence, while it makes the heart more fond, has also made the vision sharper.

As the returned traveller emerges from the train, and wanders into the familiar streets, he is instantly possessed with an affectionate enthusiasm. The reflection that the old landmarks are still unremoved gives

him an odd and wholly irrational sense of proprietorship. "There is Buckingham Palace," says he to himself, "and the British Museum, and the Athenæum Club just where I left them;" and the fact that they have not betrayed his trust inclines the wanderer's heart so kindly towards them that he instantly thinks of them as his own. But the sense of proprietorship soon dwindles, till he finds himself looking at the houses with a calm amazement. They are the same, yet strangely altered, and the traveller asks himself in surprise whether it is his eye that is foreign or his native town. In truth it is neither; the eye no doubt is tempered by the long absence; it is knowing, but less partial; it detects the ancient beauties with the same delight as heretofore, but it must also reckon in its own despite with the new vulgarities. The city, though it be not foreign, is yet transformed, and not even the honoured landmarks can render it wholly familiar. Wherefore the traveller walks forth an enchanted mixture of marvel of marvel and intimacy, and he is flattered, no doubt, by the reflection that he has as good a right to discourse of London as the intelligent tourist who lands at Dover for the first time.

The first impression is an impression of silence. This seeming paradox has more than once been noted by Parisians, and with perfect justice. London, the busy workshop of the world, is silent. No cobbles persuade the cart-wheels to a restless rattle; the tyres of the cabs roll tranquilly over wood or asphalte; the

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foot-passengers hustle by in businesslike quietude, or they greet one another without gesture and without effusion. In Paris all is movement, bustle, and joyousness; nobody is in a hurry, yet everybody flashes his hands and his tongue at the same rate. The one city is silent with haste, the other is noisy with a nonchalant leisure. And then the horses of London! Are they not masterful and superb? Are they not driven with a certainty and calm, which make the hazardous blundering of the French coachman a hideous memory The hansom, moreover, has more character than any chariot of the world : its rare apparition on the Boulevards gives you a touch of homesickness; but in London it belongs to the landscape, and harmonises perfectly not only with the tall hat, but with the height of the houses under whose shadow it passes. There they rush, the fleet-wheeled hansoms of Piccadilly, as though they were parts of an elegant monumental frieze. And thus London reveals her true grandeur. Hardly in Madrid, whose streets are valiant with the sturdy horses of Cordova or with careless, be-tasselled mules, will you match the miracle that draws our hansoms. The spavined cab-horse, familiar to Paris, is with us seen only in the intermittent four-wheeler. Why is it, by the way, that four wheels should so often have a disastrous effect on the horse that runs in front ?1

But if the horses come as a happy surprise, the streets themselves have strangely altered, and even the Strand has changed its old complexion. The

There have been more changes in London during Mr. Whibley's absence than he wots of. The best of our four-wheeled cabs are every whit as well-horsed and welldriven as our best hansoms and infinitely more comfortable to horse, driver, and passenger. The mischief is that there are so few of them.-EDITOR.

unaccustomed eye is conscious of a new glitter, and divines not whence it comes. At night the problem is easily solved. The hideous sky-signs, which applaud in changing colours the merits of some intolerable drug, or implore you to buy some sustaining compound for your stomach's sake, might transform the face of a prairie. They wink, they shift, they scintillate, they go out. Now yellow plays on red; now darkness pockets all the colours; and the passer-by is not only distressed by these sudden apparitions, he is even prompted to the cultivation of a new vice. As his cab rushes by the illuminated spot, he will hazard all the money in one pocket against all the money in another that the red light will not flash again until he is swept off out of sight. But while this kaleidoscope of advertisement makes night hideous, it does not pervert the visage of the day. Why is it, then, that at noon the shops have a curious aspect? Why do they shine with a flat and tiresome brilliance? The reason is simple; the plate-glass window of America has everywhere ousted the trim square and modest sash. Years ago, when the casement was still with us, we did not realise how admirable and sober a pattern it was that the draught-board of window-panes put upon our shops. Here and there the old fashion lingers, and the contrast may yet be measured; but most of our shops are so wofully disturbed by a set of cross-reflections that the worried eye can hardly look through the superficial glitter to the wares displayed within.

Moreover the posters of London are a constant shock to the returned cockney. That the streets should be regarded as something better than a thoroughfare is right and proper; all the world is not in a desperate hurry to go from one spot to another

by the shortest route. The idler may be happy in threading the byways, or in gazing upon the pictures which decorate the wider avenues. There is no reason, in brief, why a street should not in one of its aspects appear a gallery of art. But in London the mural decorator is more anxious to inform than to amuse. His legend will tell you where you may admire the talent of an actor or purchase a patent medicine, and his legend is so aggressively important that it cannot be subdued to the general design. Thus, having discharged the function of a directory, the poster is generally content. gives no liveliness to our streets; it lights up no dull corner with an unexpected gaiety. Ten years ago the advertisement was sternly practical. It appealed merely to the literary instincts of such persons as would rather read match-boxes than nothing at all, and when it limited itself to information it gave the less offence. But now its ambition is higher than its performance, and while it easily drives into our brain an unnecessary address, it distresses our nerves by repellent colour or imbecile design.

It

Far otherwise does Paris decorate her streets. Even the little round towers, lit within and covered with many-coloured play-bills, are not without a certain elegance; while the posters which adorn the boulevards are often miracles of fancy. They at any rate are composed with another object than to serve as sign-posts to shop or theatre. The artists who design them forget neither the space which they will occupy nor the light that will envelope them. They are neither pictures turned to an illegitimate purpose nor printed announcements obscured by pictorial commentary. They are merely posters; that is all, and they are an intimate part of the Parisian landscape.

A return to London, then, is a return to sombre walls and ugly hoardings, which makes the regret for Paris all the sharper. Nor is it only on her walls that London exhibits her dinginess. She is duskier than of yore, and the thickening darkness is due neither to more frequent fogs, nor to a heavier fall of that black snow which covers books and furniture alike. The truth is that the houses of London are growing loftier and are casting longer shadows. The passion for flats, combined with the greed of landlords, is more resolutely excluding the sun from our streets. The extravagance which once gave even the poor man a cottage to himself in the midst of a great city was not merely a declaration of independence. True, the Englishman's house is his castle, and it was his castle in London not that the accuracy of a proverb might be demonstrated, but because, where every ray of sunlight must be caught, the roofs should not touch the sky. London, in fact, ought always to remain a city of low houses. A southern town delights in many storeys and a narrow street, for it provides a shelter from the sun as well as a path for the traveller. But London is not too rich in light, and it is forced, moreover, to fight the fog from November to March. Three or four storeys, then, and a wide road are London's reasonable necessity, which is clean forgotten by those who, sacrificing amenity to gold, would build their blocks as high as those insula which darkened the sunlit spaces of ancient Rome.

And not only are the new blocks, which cleave the clouds in every corner of London, tall enough to ensure darkness; they are composed of a red brick and a black mortar which would darken the gaiety of a Southern capital. After an hour spent in the neighbourhood of Victoria Street,

cross the Park, and contrast the gloomy mansions which have depressed your sight with the well-built, finely-proportioned houses of Mayfair. For in this quarter you may still discover many a house perfectly harmonised to its environment. Whatever decoration relieves its uniform front is simple and appropriate. Its mouldings are at once strong and elegant. If pillars support the doorway, they are light and taper, while the fanlights are often masterpieces of their kind. But above all, if the sky be cloudless, the sun may shine down over the housetops in the street, and time was when, not only in the neighbourhood of Park Lane but even in far distant Whitechapel, the architects remembered that London was a city of the dark North, and built their houses upon a properly modest scale. Moreover, the Englishman can (or could) build houses; he cannot (though he could) build palaces. There are many streets in London which need not fear comparison with the miracles of domestic architecture which distinguish the Hague or Amsterdam. But, having admired Somerset House from the river, you will seek in vain a single lofty block which would not appear mean and inelegant by the side of the tall, well-designed masterpieces which were built when Louis the Fifteenth and his grandson sat upon the throne of France.

The tall flats of London, then, exclude the sun, and being built of materials which absorb rather than reflect the light increase the gloom of city and suburb alike. But the folly of councils and architects cannot abolish the immemorial grandeur of our capital. While Paris is touched by the finger of beauty, London preserves intact her ancient character. Perhaps characters would better represent the truth, since there is no corner of London which is not stamped inNo. 481.-vOL. LXXXI.

So it is

delibly with its own mark. Blindfold a lover of London, and remove his bandage in any street you please, and a quick glance at the houses, a halflook at the passers-by, will tell him where he is. And this character, which is always interesting, even though it be not beautiful, is due to the gradual and wayward growth of London. For London is not a carefully planned city like Paris or Berlin; it was not designed and built with a definite plan, or by one consistent intellect. It assumed the shape it wears to-day as the waste spaces were covered which yawned between country town and country town. that certain corners of Westminster and of Kensington, of Chelsea and of Mile End, have preserved through all improvements the air of the provinces. Now you come upon a remote square, a hundred yards from bustle and smoke, where only a rare footfall is heard; now the mast of a ship is suddenly visible at a street-end, and a mob of long-shoreman surprises you with its rolling gait and strange habit of speech. Cross Westminster Bridge and watch the crowd hustling to find a place on the tram-car, and you will find a people which neither in type nor costume resembles that which rides in omnibuses on the other side of the river. It is true that while one parish differs widely from another, they all share certain qualities which distinguish the whole from any other city in Europe; yet they differ so violently among themselves, that it is idle to find a formula which will express them all. Not even the gaiety of Paris is so remarkable as London's stern and sometimes forbidding variety; the virtues and vices of Havre, Bordeaux, Lyons, Marseilles, and Paris itself are all packed together on the banks of the Thames. Factories, docks, markets, warehouses, theatres, hovels, mansions are jumbled

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