A VISIT TO ENGLAND 345 



small anarchy, the members of which do not work 

 together, but scramble against each other.' l Linnaeus 

 felt this : the Swedes do not shove. Yet this saying 

 of Carlyle's is not altogether true. Each individual 

 wheel of the mighty clock keeps its own round. The 

 philosopher himself admits it. ' The baker's boy brings 

 muffins to the window at a fixed hour every day, and 

 that is all the Londoner knows or wishes to know on 

 the subject. But it turned out good men.' 2 London 

 at once elevates and humbles us. Man is not merely 

 an unit : he is subdivided. Carlyle goes on to say, 

 ' All London-born men, without exception, seem to me 

 narrow-built, considerably perverted men, rather frac- 

 tions of a man. Hunt, by nature a very clever man, 

 is one instance ; Mill, in quite another manner, is 

 another.' But it is in their work they are most sub- 

 divided. To make the fraction of a pin perfectly is the 

 aim of modern life. 



In London lies ' that medley of experience of every- 

 thing, great and little, which a man can scarcely have 

 anywhere but in the capital ' : the very opposite of 

 Swedish life, which holds much that we leave out, and 

 knows little of what we most prize art, wealth, &c. 

 Without art our life were one sordid delirium. 



In 1793 Sir J. Smith, first president of the Linnaean 



Society, set out for Holland to expatiate on ruined 



Hartecamp, &c., ' after many an anxious look at the 



lofty plane and cedar trees of Chelsea gardens still 



1 Carlyle. 3 Ibid 



VOL. I. A A 



