habitants to church; and great numbers of crows, the unpoetical harbingers of Canadian spring, were perched on the trees, shewing that the earth would shortly again reveal the treasures hid in her excellent white bosom,' and that we had not been premature in quitting the woods.

Our excursion has since formed the subject of many an evening's talk; and sometimes a scent, a sound,

or some idea, arbitrarily associated with our life in the woods, will bring back to me the old peculiar scenes; and I feel again the strange, indescribable sensation, which I used to experience, walking in the silent, lonely forest,— again the maples blaze and crackle, the surface glistens, the young firs spot the wilderness with green,again all is snow, and wood, and solitude.

'HE has never seen a wonder,'* says the Spanish proverb; and he who has never seen London from the metropolitan church has suffered an equal deprivation-perhaps a much greater. If this be true, keeping in mind the usual station of the spectator, how much more so it must have been in relation to the crow's nest recently taken down, standing as it did on the apex of the cross! A large city, viewed from an eminence, at a considerable angle, is always an object of deep interest; but directly beneath this artificial structure lay the largest and richest city of the civilised world, like a vast carpet of many-coloured embroidery. At eighty feet above the well-known gallery round the foot of the lantern, not only was the elevation of the edifices below much lessened in appearance, but a considerable extent of new horizon became visible.

TE who has never seen Seville,

London streets, between three and four o'clock in a summer morning, impress the mind with an indefinable sensation. There is something wanting to account for that solitude and silence where the passage of crowds, the unceasing hum of men, and the roll of carriages, had never before been observed absent during broad daylight. Still more impressive is the glance thrown at the vacant streets through the loopholes and interstices of the ascent. As the vision after catching the innumerable housetops, lit up with the early sun, penetrated into the nearer streets and then again

passed along the house ridges, we could not avoid remembering how many hundreds of thousands of human beings lay there unconscious of existence, in the embraces of the 'Sister of Death.'

As we still mounted, reflection was not alone confined to those beneath; there was the object above us to be attained - a creation for a scientific end. As far out of the comprehension of the mass of mankind as our feet are above the recumbent hosts below is the science, thought we, that thus works unseen and unknown by those who are to derive the principal advantages from its results. Like Nature herself, this mighty agent for human good accomplishes its objects without the stimulants and petty motives that actuate the great and little multitudes. The magnanimity of science is one of its merited glories. The consciousness of its beneficence is its own reward, where the world is in ignorance of the toil bestowed on its operations, and even of the elements of a power which, under so many aspects, controls human destinies. The result, indeed, is obvious,—a thing of momentary wonder, it is passed over as soon as it has become familiar. Marvellously incurious are the souls of many in whom the capacity for this knowledge exists. To the world, it is true, a Davy or a Faraday would speak in Greek, if they attempted to explain the arcana of their art; to most they can only tender the results of their uncheered

and solitary labours. But this is wandering somewhat from our subject.

The heavens and earth are in harmony, the beams of the luminary of day are gilding fane and monument, tower and temple. The huge tenebrious umbrella that o'ercanopies the metropolis when its denizens are awake, intervenes not yet between the earth and the sun. The hundred thousand hearths are chill whence the sulphurous vapour, holding we know not how many chaldrons of coal in suspension, according to some fanciful calculators, ascends to veil the sky from the vision of the Londoners; but the scene beneath and around comes upon the view in a burst of glory, of which the two millions over whom the sun shines so brilliantly can have no idea. The sight is restless, shifting from one point to another, until it longs to grasp the whole circumference at

once.

The innumerable streets and public buildings, the Thames and its bridges glowing with silver radiance, these were the first objects forced upon our attention. Then came the more distant shipping, docks, basins, villas, hill, heath, and woodland, towards the east; and the same natural objects (for the artificial do not exist in that quarter in a like proportion) towards the west; with Windsor in the distance -proudly crested, imperial Windsor. These objects all stood sharply out in the morning air, in a way perceptible at no other time; and, indeed, from the customary aspect of the same things, hardly to be conceived without being witnessed. The vision, bewildered by the multiplicity and beauty of the scene, tended toward objects which, though usually observed through clouds of smoke in painful dimness, were now accurately defined. The eastern horizon, however, was bathed in the sun's splendour, so that the more distant objects were rendered indistinct by the glare. The circumference of the horizon was greatly extended, and much smiling scenery, forest, field, and mansion, came into view, not to be discovered at an inferior elevation, around what Cobbett called the Great Wen.'

6

The buildings standing at a small

angle with the cathedral appeared proportionably reduced in elevation, and the same thing was, of course, perceptible, though in a less degree, in relation to those situated further off. Bow Church was greatly lessened, and the Monument equally humbled, in comparison with what they both appear to be when seen from the gallery. A hundred or two feet higher would have reduced a large proportion of the buildings nearest the church, as far as vision is concerned, to a perfectly plane surface. The absence of the dome expanding immediately beneath the spectator's feet, generated, moreover, that feeling of insecurity which is well known to those who have stood on the brink of a cliff exactly perpendicular, and sensibly overhanging its base. Not that the feeling was reasonable, for the crow's nest was inclosed the mind, not the sense, created the apprehension-the consciousness of insecurity was an effect of having eaten of the Tree of Knowledge.

But there was another feeling generated by the view along the streets, more particularly those commanded by the eye through their entire length, which was very striking. They who visit the gallery of the lantern in the day time, see and hear London still. The mighty city lives, and rolls along its tide of population; the stream of human bipeds flows continuously over the flags, and the snaky lines of vehicles keep up their never-ending continuity on the rougher pavement. Where was all this now? Had the lungs of the modern Babylon ceased to expand? When the extended horizon and its innumerable objects, and the beautiful purpose for which the crow's nest was elevated, had for an instant ceased to occupy the observer's mind, this question forced itself upon his notice. The streets were desolate, or rather the shallow ditches with bricked and windowed sides—for so they now appeared,—all were manless and lifeless. A crawling insect, indeed, in the shape of a policeman-a speck amid the vacuum between the brick walls-seemed to move along, like the mite of a creature that is just moving across our paper while we write. Is this vast

aggregate of human dwellings deserted? Has the plague once more returned and annihilated every breathing thing? We demand with Professor Wilson,

'Art thou dead,

Queen of the world?' I ask my awestruck heart,

And not one breath of life amidst the place

Disturbs the empire of mortality!

There was the empire of living mortality; there were two millions of sleepers on whom we were looking down, unconscious of that existence they were renovating. There, too, were many others, sleepless from disease, sorrow, want, anxiety, and guilt. Many were in the arms of death, of all ages and degrees, and new births were replenishing them; rioting and felony were busy; perhaps murder's arm was actually uplifted: but of all this varied incident of human history, we saw and heard nothing, however sensible we were that our eyes looked upon the spot where such a variety of good and evil was at that moment in full activity. What a universe of slumber, of waking pain, and heart-rending misery, was under the accumulation of roofs, that to us were confounded in one universal chaos of dwellings, concealed only by a slate or tile from the gaze of recognition! From whence we stood, fearful secrets might be revealed; but we could not aid in arresting the murderer's arm, dragging the felon to the light, removing want from damp and pestilential sojourns far below our new world; nor could we assist others in staying the effect of the evils which the darkness of the preceding night had enabled the vicious of all complexions to consummate. Could we unroof the houses and bare to the morning sun the vast congregated population beneath, what a motley, what a painful scene, would be developed! The impress of the misery we should then behold would be certain first to engross the attention even of the most callous-The human heart is not all bad. A solitary calamity at a festival arrests the attention of all, though it may be but for a moment, because the heart that knows not habitual kindness will sometimes be errant towards duty.

Awful, gigantic, is the sleep of a vast city, where repose, waveless to the vision, speaks from its very silence to the mind unutterable things. The idea of a slumbering volcano imaged what was beneath us; mystery or insensibility seemed to have paralysed the mass of activity that would soon, being disenchanted, again pour into street and square, redolent of renewed vigour, and busy, for good or ill, throughout the countless ramifications of honest employ and profligate indulgence, of rank, wealth, and the multiplied appliances of modern civilisation.

But we did not find that the current of our thoughts was to be cribbed within the bounded circle of vision. There was the humanity that had been; there were the ashes of nineteen centuries looking up to us from the arena of so many recollections. The soil blended amidst its particles sixty generations or more of mankind, since the bald first Cæsar' visited our shores. Churches had succeeded temples; fane and kindred cemetery had renewed their generations, and disappeared to make way for others in changed situations. The Roman London had been replaced by another, and another. As we looked along the northern bank of the Thames, the conflagration of 1666 and a hundred storied events came back to the crow's nest. The past and present blended before the 'mind's eye,' discrimination being impossible. The old sites were covered and obliterated by modern erections; it was only here and there that a landmark arose to point out where some perished fabric had stood in its vicinity, or some name, yet floating above the tide of oblivion, had conferred renown upon the relic itself; as in the case of St. Saviour's church-that church of which we once took a survey with that shrewd antiquary Crofton Croker, who knew almost every stone in the edifice, and first pointed out to us the tomb of honest old Gower the poet.

But the crow's nest itself, now so extending the horizon of view, was far below the height of the spire of old St. Paul's, which rose to six hundred and ninety feet, in place of three hundred and seventy-five. The

extent of horizon then must have afforded a fine view of the sea, and yet we are marvelling at the prospect from an elevation so much less. A great city like London should have a proportionate stature -a head to be crowned, worthy of its lateral extent; for although Wren called the St. Paul's of William Rufus' time a spit,' and his own 'a mountain,' there is something beautiful, as well as grand, in a lofty building, even if it be graceful Ionic in place of substantial Tuscan.

But we are getting out of the crow's nesta perilous adventure and must needs draw back into it again. We have alluded to the slumberers beneath us, to the visible cessation of life and activity, as far as our senses could observe it. The

busy and idle, the waker and sleeper, the sick and the well, the agonised, the famished, the well-fed, the healthy, the apoplectic, and the restless on the couch of luxury-all certainly exist, but veiled from our eyes, and their precise localities strange to us. Their existence near us is alone a fact. In the hospital of St. Bartholomew close to us, and in that of St. Thomas a little more remote, large edifices and well-defined, there is sleeplessness and suffering enough. There is Newgate, too, with its criminals to be tried,-some, perhaps, to be put to death in four or five hours hence. The glorious sun of this day is shining over them for the last time. Hundreds sleeping now I will arise to commit newc rimes, or awaken to feelings of renewed sorrow, -to grieve over hopes deferred and friendships severed,-to sustain and combat with all the unforeseen disappointments of humanity. How many were there beneath our gaze impervious to the voice of commiseration, because no ear of man ever listened to a complaint issuing from them! Pride makes its own despair as secret as the tomb. It suffers, sickens, and dies, but cannot wound itself. The better and nobler manhoods are suicidal. The heart may canker and corrode into death, but even then there remains the consolation that it has disguised its own anguish and lessened pain by successful resistance to the sympathies of others, or, haply, to their insults.

But was man, even at that early hour, when called by the desire of profit or moved by self-interest, wholly dead to the call? It was far otherwise; the sons of gain never slumber or sleep. The trade, or profession, that demands watchfulness in its career was in full activity. On the south-west, a few hundred feet distant, but as much out of our observation as the dead in the vaults underneath the cathedral, the busy press was at work to satisfy the early appetite for news which in a few hours would hunger and thirst for its wonted gratification. There was the colossal Times, with its enormous train of dependents, busy in closing their nocturnal labours, and handing the fruits over to the press that would soon deliver them to the newsmen, that the newsmen might transfer them to the railway trains, and so disperse them in all directions with the swiftness of the wind to the remotest parts of the kingdom. Yet of the fabrication of that wonderful vehicle of political, commercial, and legal intelligence, - of that instrument of pleasure and of pain to millions, of that unexampled effort of capital and activity, which circulates so far, and extorts its correspondence alike from the frozen north and the burning zone, we observe nothing at only a few feet of elevation. tidings it communicates will not reach us in our tranquillity; the enormous magnitude of its relations is to us as nothing. We have nothing to do, at least for the moment, with what is of the earth earthy. We are equally above the wisdom and the vanity of mankind,-alas, for how short a term! Yet, for a moment, it is no false position. What has become of the noisy, thronging, bustling, care-worn denizens of Cheapside? Not one of the cadaverous faces which yesterday distinguished that great thoroughfare is passing now. Has the Bank paid away all its gold? Are the three per cent consols at length left to find their own dividends out of the principal? Is the heavy, aldermanlike Exchange, unvisited and untenanted? And has bankruptcy closed the shops from Lombard Street to St. Paul's Churchyard? A moment's reflection sets us right here. Time, that kills or cures every thing, a very

The

little of that time will reveal to us this mystery, so no more need be Isaid about it. The aspect is not novel either, for there are few who have not, of necessity, pleasure, or business, passed, at some period of their lives, through London streets a little after a summer sunrise. But there is this difference between their position and ours, that we are in no sense partakers, as they have been, in the site where the vacuum in hu

manity appears. We retain also, a feeling of our own isolation,—of being, as it were, 6 the last man,' in a huge, voiceless city, where all beside ourselves is dumb and dead : our selfishness comes in here. How feeble, in comparison with the realisation of such an impression, would be the loneliness of an Arabian desert or a Russian steppe! The manless dwelling, neither emptied nor injured; the accompaniments of the tenant all present; the chambers garnished; the damasks bright; the gilded furniture, purple hangings, and embroidery, all fresh; the goblets on the social table;-all present but man, and he not existent, even as a robber; the desolation extending only to the owner and creator of all that had once greeted the senses.

These thoughts are present with us now, and what a strange power they exercise over our very volitions! For in days not very far remote, scenes somewhat akin were shadowed forth from the various quarters of the city that lay almost beneath the crow's nest. In 1665 the plague made the City like a desert, a very few people going up and down, so that the town is like a place distressed and forsaken,' says old Pepys. 'No boats on the river, and grass grows all up and down Whitehall Court. That week 7165 died, and only a poor wretch or two to be seen in the streets.' Again, in the following year the fire made a chasm nearly from Tower Hill to Temple Bar, when the same Pepys went up to the top of Barking steeple, and there saw the saddest sight of desolation he ever witnessed." The Monument recalled that event to the mind now, though the gap then made in the houses, including half of all the buildings of the City, and valued at a rental of 600,000l., would, so to speak, attract but little notice now.

While looking round, we chanced to recall the site in Southwark where we had once seen some ruins of the Bishop of Winchester's old palace. Not far from that palace there existed some houses of ill-fame that belonged to Sir William Walworth, the lord-mayor of London in the reign of Richard II. His killing Wat Tyler, and the indignant loyalty to which that action was attributed, is another instance of the unfaithfulness of history. It would appear that Tyler and his rebel band had pulled down the houses above mentioned, and hence his worship's stalwart arm was steeled with a mo

tive for vengeance, which may be expected to be quite as potent as loyalty in those thrifty functionaries, who are My Lords for a twelvemonth, and · Mr. Thingumbobs' afterwards.

6

We cannot place on paper-it would be tedious for the reader if we did the numberless recollections that were recalled by the different objects that came most conspicuously before us. The reminiscences of cities buried under other cities are painful evidences of the course of time. To stand on the Palatine Hill and think of the Cæsars could not be more saddening to Roman feelings than for an Englishman to regard his own capital from such a position as we occupied. For the modern Roman bears no relation to the conquerors of the world, either by descent or character. The Goth destroyed the old Roman's Rome, and scattered its inhabitants; but the Englishman is the same in descent with those who built up the renown of his capital two thousand years ago; and he sees buried-not beneath ruins, but under nobler streets and edifices-the London of his forefathers, and all that is connected with their history. What a source of consolation has he in the extent, and the vastness, and imposing aspect of modern London!

The level of the Jack Straw's Castle inn at Hampstead appears to be about that of the top of St. Paul's. Fair and bright looked the sister hills on that morning, though in some degree lessening the circle of vision and breaking its continuity. One of the further marks set up for the purpose of the survey was placed just under Severndroog Tower, on Shooter's Hill, on the right side of the road to