486 Ups and Downs of London. [MAY, 



and when the latter gives it you as a study "from nature," at Somerset 

 House, or in Suffolk-street, he says truth it is from nature far from 

 it and therefore it pleases. You admire the ultramarine, and the 

 amber, and the bistre, and the king's yellow ; and you do so, because you 

 (fancy you) see the country, and (in fact) do not smell it. Even the 

 sight, without the odour, could not delight you, if there were nothing in 

 the show-room but what had been produced by the brush. Calcott, or 

 Collins, or Constable (it is curious that the names of so many country 

 copyists should commence with C) might beat Capability himself. 

 Ward might leave Phalaris twenty generations behind, in the matter 

 of brazen bulls ; but, if it were not for the living pictures the some- 

 thing more than mere eye-servants that move there rats and mice 

 might hold undivided sway at least for me. When Major Heels (or 

 what is it you call him?) galloped eighteen hundred miles across the 

 country, Los Pampas, under the southern cross, and burst out into 

 heroics at the sight of the sun setting over the Cordillera of the Andes, 

 that was a fine answer which he got from the Cornish miner. " What 

 can be more delightful than that ?" said the Major, leaning forward on 

 the pommel of his saddle, and gaping wide at the great lump of cold 

 rock. " Them things as wears aprons," replied the miner ; and the Major 

 galloped on, without another word. Take ' ' them things as wears aprons" 

 away from the exhibition, and even Lawrence himself might go to St. 

 James's Park, and play at ducks-and-drakes with his palette upon the 

 newly-twisted Serpentine. 



The eye that always welcomes you with a gleam of intellectual light, 

 the lips which ever wear a smile, the hand that is ever ready with its 

 equivalent these, these so long as you can give the quid pro quo are 

 the genuine sources of pleasure. And where are these to be found in 

 such perfection, uniformity, or abundance as in London ? Who ever 

 heard of a man being balked of his wish there, so long as he could put 

 money in his purse ? Who that has health and a heavy wallet need 

 trouble himself about private friendships and obligations there ? The 

 world is around you Europe, Africa, America, Asia, in all their people, 

 and in all their productions ; and when you have journeyed from Brixton 

 to Hampstead, and from Bow to Brentford, you have seen as much, and 

 enjoyed ten times more, than if you had circum-tramped and circum- 

 navigated the globe, and crossed the line of your cincture upon fifty- 

 meridians. Peep into the hells or the Stock Exchange, and there you 

 have 



" Th' Anthropophagi, that each other eat." 



Look in at the Mansion House or Guildhall, and there you will find 

 plenty of the 



" Men, whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders." 



Go into the courts of law, and you will find plenty of 

 " Antres vast." 



Get your estate fairly into Chancery, and you will soon find it 

 " A desart idle." 



Read the news of the day, and your hair will stand on end at the 

 tale 



" Of moving accidents, by flood and field/' 



