Architecture of the Metropolis, 859 



great merchants or manufactures, and which, nevertheless, in 

 the opinion of many travellers, is actually the finest city in 

 modern Europe. >' 



:. We come next to the article of bridges; and in this parti- 

 cular, it must be admitted that no city in Europe can pretend 

 to any competition with London. No other great capital is 

 indeed so favourably situated in this respect, bisected as it is 

 by a broad and deep river which bears on its current a greater 

 commerce than any yet known in the annals of mankind. The 

 Seine at Paris is very complete in its bridges, both as to qua- 

 lity and number ; but the narrowness of the river is a bar to 

 all magnificence. The bridge over the Garonne at Bordeaux 

 is, perhaps, of greater extent, and that over the Elbe at Dres- 

 den is more finely ornamented than any in London, but no 

 single city can show five such bridges as those of Westminster, 

 Waterloo, Blackfriars, Southwark and London. 

 . In its general public buildings, under which may be included 

 ^very public edifice not comprehended under the heads of 

 churches, palaces, or bridges, London, considering its vast ex- 

 tent, is certainly not pre-eminent, though it is by no means 

 so strikingly deficient as some have supposed. It is a great 

 disadvantage to the English metropolis, that its principal edi- 

 fices are scattered over such a vast extent of surface, that 

 they present an appearance of paucity much beyond the 

 reality. The Custom-house, the New Post-office, the Mint, 

 the Royal Exchange, the Bank, Somerset-house, the New 

 Treasury, the Opera-house, and many others that need not be 

 enumerated, would form a magnificent assemblage, if they were 

 grouped nearly together, and could be viewed with little inter- 

 mission of space and lime. The two national hospitals of 

 Greenwich and Chelsea may also be considered as belonging 

 to London, and they form a noble appendage to its catalogue of 

 public edifices. Greenwich hospital may, perhaps, be pro- 

 nounced, without exception, the finest profane building (using 

 that term in contradistinction to sacred) in modern Europe; 

 and that of Chelsea, though deformed by the barbarous mixture 

 of stone and brick which was so much in fashion in the earlier 

 paxt of the seventeenth century, has an air of sedate grandeur 

 which is very inipressive. 



