1829] ' C 537 ] 



PKOSE BY A VKRSIFIER, AND VERSE BY A PROSER ; A GENTLE- 

 MAN WHOSE TIME HANGS HEAVY ON HIS HANDS : NO. II. A 



RAMBLE IN LONDON. 



-I DO not mean in the Parks, or in Bond Street, or in Bond 



Street's rival — Regent Street ; or to the Cosmorama, or the Diorama, or 

 any other of the thousand-and-one oramas which on every side invite the 

 busy idler ; or to the Tower, or to St. Paul's, or even to Westminster 

 Abbey, with its thrilling recollections, about which so much bad prose 

 and worse verse has been written : — no, I mean in the City of London — 

 in Aldermanbury, and Crutched Friars, and Walbrook, and the ]\Iinories, 

 and Great and Little Eastcheap — (alas for the Boar's Head — the palace 

 of wit and revelry ! where Jack FalstafF reigns for ever : the tavern is no 

 more, but the sign still gi-ins at you in stone) ; — in strange places with 

 fantastic names, where nothing is paid for admittance, but where, for all 

 that, the most wonderful or all arts and mysteries is pi'actised before your 

 eyes — the art of making money by wholesale ; and, after all, money is 

 power — at least in London, let philosophers say what they please about 

 knowledge. 



I warn you, if you are a man of fashion, or of pleasure — if you are 

 an antiquarian, or political economist — to spare yourself unnecessary 

 trouble, and let me take my ramble alone ; but if you can find amuse- 

 ment in the quaint speculations which arise in a man's mind, whether he 

 will or no, as he wanders through the busiest, and most motley, and 

 most incongruous crowd in the world, he himself having nothing on 

 earth to do at the time, except to float unresistingly with the living 

 stream, and wonder, after a desultory fashion, at the ever-changing 

 scene (taking especial heed of the broad-wheeled waggons — for, I can 

 assure you, they ai-e no respecters of philosophers); if so, I have no 

 objection to giving you my arm for an hour or two, while we wander 

 through " the great Wen," or " the miglity Babel," or whatever else 

 you think fit to call what, in law, topography, and common parlance, is 

 termed the City of London. 



I cannot tell whether the thought has ever occurred to you or not ; 

 but, for my own part, I can never, when in " the City," get rid of the 

 idea that I am in a huge prison, doomed never to escape from the laby- 

 rinthine mazes of brick, rising around and hemming me in on every side, 

 moulded into all gi'otesque varieties of form — widened into streets — 

 twisted in capricious corkscrew evolutions — squeezed into aUeys that 

 seem designed for a race of profiles, rather than a generation of beef- 

 eating shopkeepers, but never ending — never expanding into open recti- 

 linear vistas, with the country — the dear country in the distance. I have 

 penetrated into the wilderness of the city, I know not how far ; but I 

 have never, even in my longest and most adventurous journey, perceived 

 the slightest vestige of by-gone pastoralism, the most insignificant relic 

 of nature's sway : I have seen some ignorant, presumptuous books, which 

 affect to fix the era of the foundation of London; but they are all fables. 

 Such as it is, I r.m perfectly satisfied it has been from the beginning of 

 time : its perennial alleys and everlasting mazes are coeval with the 

 foundation of the world. 



Do not imagine, from any thing I have said, that there are no trees in 

 the City ; on the contrary, you will find them in every nook — aye, 



M. M. Nov Series.— Vol.. VIIL No. 47. 3 Z 



