The great German geographer, Herr Petermann,—probably the
imost accomplished of living geographers,—has been paying a second visit to London, after a lapse of many years, and in writing his view of London to the Holnische Zeitung, has much pleasanter things to say of us and of our progress—excepting, indeed, of our climate, whose "appalling physical gloom," as some one called it, he evidently appreciates to the full,—than we often hear from foreign critics. He has been also visiting the great cities of the
United States, and while he thinks their progress great, he thinks we have fully maintained our advantage in time, and are as far ahead of them in metropolitan elements of civilisation as ever. He is (very justly) delighted with the great granite embankments of the Thames ; he holds that "public life," for example, in the streets, is "more convenient, more free from danger, more pleasant, more refined, more decorous, than formerly ;" he is pleased with our convenient pavements for foot-passengers, and the wooden pavements for horses, which are so much on the increase ; he ap- proves of the island refuges in the midst of the crossings, and he is even satisfied with the system of illumination. He praises the hansoms, —very justly,—but does not remark on the increasing difficulty of getting one ; he praises the penny steamers, the Metropolitan railways (including even the Underground one), the improved manners of our people, and the promptitude of our nevertheless inadequately educated police. He even likes the eating-houses, and thinks them moderate. He is right, no doubt, in regarding our materials for eating as better than those of any other capital, but surely he is wrong in supposing them anything like as well prepared and cooked as in either Paris or Geneva. On the whole, Herr Petermann's view of London is a very amiable one, but no doubt what really attracted him was the immense resources, —not always half as well organised as in Germany,—which are made available here for his favourite studies, and the general sense of reserve-power of character, of which one is nowhere, perhaps, so conscious as in this dismal, but never dreary, because always vividly energetic, city.
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