IN LONDON AND THE SUBURBS 115 



defined, and which blotted out distant objects and bhirred 

 those nearer at hand/ The influence of London was 

 everywhere. Tlie elms were frequently spoiled by being 

 used as posts for wire-fencing ; sewers carried away the 

 water from some roots, and gas leaking from the pipes 

 could do no good. And he saw foreign shrubs and trees, 

 the emblems of sudden riches, rhododendron and plane 

 especially, taking possession of gardens where he longed 

 to see oaks and filbert-walks. He missed the Downs : 

 ' Hills that purify those who walk on them there were 

 not. Still, I thought my old thoughts.' He could not 

 love the suburb gardens, being countryman thoroughbred, 

 for their artful niceness and luxuriance, their highest 

 achievements in choicely urbane combination of smoothest 

 lawn and ordered beds and borders, sumptuous domes- 

 ticities, and those abrupt boundaries which are not found 

 in the country itself. Still less, probably, could he see 

 the charm of the older suburban houses and gardens, 

 yielding nothing to the tide that has surrounded them on 

 every side, until one day their cedars fall and the air is 

 full of the mortar and plaster flying from ceiling and wall, 

 and settling on the grass and prostrate ivy. The dignity 

 and sweetness of these houses, entrenched behind ha-has, 

 posts and chains, and good split oak fences, with crocuses 

 thick under their elms — their discreet withdrawn windows 

 magical among the trees which they illumine at night 

 — in the midst of the jerry-built haste and huddle of 

 glittering shops and streets, with a thousand senseless eyes 

 that know not what they mean, might move him by their 

 final pathos, but not much by their beauty ; at least, 

 he has not revealed it. 



But with London itself it was different. London is 

 one of the immense things of the world, like the Alps, 

 the Sahara, the Western Sea ; and it has a complexity, 

 a wavering changefulness along with its mere size, 

 which no poets or artists have defined as they have in 

 a sense defined those other things. Huge, labyrinthine, 

 dense, vet airy and plastic to the roving spirit, it troubles 



8—2 



