IN LONDON AND THE SUBURBS 117 



city ; I dislike little towns and villages.' In a crowd 

 there is, too, welcome distraction to one who knows that 

 the hearts of most human beings can stand a longer siege 

 than Troy ; that every word is an arrow or a stone of 

 defence, if not offence ; that families are secret societies 

 against humanity, especially to one who, like Jefferies, 

 asks : ' Has anyone thought for an instant upon the 

 extreme difficulty of knowing a person ?' In one of his 

 essciys in ' Nature near London ' he shows that London 

 fascinated him by itself as well as by its power of such 

 consolation. ' It is the presence of man in his myriads,' 

 he wrote ; ' it is a curious thing that your next-door 

 neighbour may be a stranger, but there are no strangers 

 in a vast crowd. They all seem to have some relation- 

 ship, or rather, perhaps, they do not rouse the sense of 

 reserve which a single unknown person might.' He con- 

 tinues : ' Still, the impulse is not to be analyzed ; these 

 are mere notes acknowledging its power.' The neighbour- 

 hood of the city induced ' a mental, a nerve-restlessness ' 

 out in the Surrey fields ; ' the hills and vales, and meads 

 and woods, are like the ocean upon which Sinbad sailed ; 

 but coming too near the loadstone of London, the ship 

 wends thither, whether or no — at least, it is so with 

 me ; and I often go to London without any object what- 

 ever, but just because I must, and, arriving there, wander 

 whithersoever the hurrying throng carries me.' He tells us 

 of seeing Jupiter and the stars as he came down the Hay- 

 market or from the Strand. He watched the differences 

 of definition in the changing atmosphere with delight ; 

 the exquisite London fleetingness of impressions fortified 

 his keen interest in the weather. He knew the sunsets 

 from Westminster Bridge, ' big with presage, gloom, 

 tragedy,' and the light of winter and spring sunsets 

 shining on the unconscious westward faces in Piccadilly. 

 Once he watched the sunrise from London Bridge, and 

 never forgot it. He dreamed in Trafalgar Square and 

 by the portico of the British Museum. To live fixed in 

 -London was impossible to him ; yet of London, simply 



