I may not penetrate, lack

Book of London I seldom find a tedious page. The places where people strove and suffered evoke before me the forms of men and women dead but unforgotten, and if I am
alone I am not aware of loneliness. London is the central wonder, but wonderful also in spirit and suggestion are those old places which ring it round: these I often frequent at every season, and carry their portraits over my heart. Let a man once
learn to know them, and his
memory shall never starve; he will
never forget the hour when first they yielded him up their secret. Many moments of intimate delight do I treasure in remembrance, moments when I was suddenly aware that all previous impressions were the poor gatherings

of purblind eyes; but I will only tell you of one, which may suffice to show what riches lie
ever open to those who roam in solitude. It was mid-April and the close of a cloudless day. I had been

to the Observatory hill at Greenwich to see the sun set over London, looking for such a transfiguration
of the grey city as should reveal its line of warehouses lying along
the horizon in a mist of splendour like the walls of the New Jerusalem. So I had seen it before, marvellous and refined in unearthly fire: but
to-day, in a sadder mood, and hungering more deeply for the vision, I looked out to the west in vain. For the
wind had set in from the east, and driven back upon the town a zone of iron-grey smoke, ragged along its upper edge like a great water blown to spray, but merging below with those gloomy and innumerable buildings. Upo