"IT CAN'T BE DONE."

Tins contrast between our immense pretensions and our puny practice may well strike the foreign visiter with amazement. We English vaunt ourselves the most " practical " people on earth; we boast that we alone can fully estimate substantial reality as contradistinguished from shadowy fancy ; we are also the boldest of races ; and our potency in wealth and strength excels all comparison. In fact, however, our crotchets are as fantastic as those of any people and quite as unsubstantial ; only, in- stead of being. poetical or exalted, they incline to the sordid. Our boldness is mocked by the timid caution which makes us shrink at the bare idea of censure which we. d seise ; and our potency, by the impotent alacrity with which we dispose of the most desirable and easy tasks in such phrases as ' impossible," "it can't be done."

Entering the capital of this mighty nation by the great aquatic

highway, the foreign traveller is struck with one overwhelming oharacteristic—the huddled confusion of the scene. Through the crowded masts he sees nothing but warehouses, wharfs, work- shops, and other buildings that borrow traits from every element of ugliness—disorder crude construction, even poverty of ap- pliances, decay, neglect, an utter recklessness of symmetry or propriety of look. Pursuing the same way into the very heart of the capital, he finds that the view does not mend. The banks of the river are a vast back-yard, where poverty and indecency seem to struggle for supremacy in a contest of exposure. The rubbish of the workshop and the refuse of the wharf adorn the banks. Squalid lanes debouch into the broad stream alternately with filthy drains. The famous Thames, of which he has heard i so much in poem and history, is a sewer. B' a strange inversion, the very entrance to London places you behind the scenes. He contrasts the aspect offered by the greatest and most civilized city in the world with the use to which ancient Florence and Pisa turned the natural opportunity of a river, with its noble walk on either side and unbroken array of palaces, still preserved by the poor and decayed cities. He asks why the English have not set their houses in order along the banks of their river, and secured decency even though they waive magnificence ? fle is told that "they can't," for the wharfingers ! He used to hear, indeed, that

England could do anything ; but now he finds that the owners

of those black sheds and tumble-down quays, loaded with coal, quicklime, old casks, and amphibious sailor-porters, snap their fingers at England—King, Lords, Commons, and all. He is puzzled ; but is silent.

He comes within view of the British rival to St. Peter's at

Rome : but what has happened to it ? the huge pile is as black as a coal-barge. " Is it always so ? " he asks. Oh, yes ; every building in London turns that colour. The new Houses of Par- liament are beginning already, before they are finished. " What is the reason? " It is the coal smoke. ' Well, but it is not im- possible to prevent all this smoke : your newspapers have reported the existence of plans for that very purpose long ago." Yes, that's true. " Why, then, don't you stop it ?" Oh, we can't. It has been tried : Mr. Mackinnon introduces a bill every year, but tome Minister always snubs him. We are a practical people, you know ; and it is thought rather eccentric and fussy to meddle with the smoke, for, after all, it is only a matter of beauty. " Only beauty I No wonder the English are a discontented, drunken, and melancholy people."

The steam-boat has approached the pier, and the traveller must land. What a strange scene now presents itself ! The steamer cannot at once close with the wharf, because a crowd of others interfere, and there is a long delay while those others move off. In the interval he observes the English customs as to the process of landing. He finds that it is, with few exceptions, the English custom to have a beggarly landing-place made of timber. The steamers huddle round it with their living freight. A rude board- ing is made the path to the shore ; steamers rocking and swaying to and fro, while all the passengers, men, women, and children, scramble off and on. To exasperate the turmoil, rough sailor voices incessantly urge the sheeplike flocks of land lubbers with shouts—" Now, Gravesendl"—"Richmond!"—" To the shore!" —" Now, ma'am !" Men with baskets, big boxes, sacks, and bars of iron, bustle in and out, amid the women especially. Each pro- cess of landing and embarkation is a kind of frenzied paroxysm, renewed every time a steamer touches the quay. " Is it always so?" Oh, yes! you answer with some pride ; there is always this traffic. " But the confusion?" Oh, that can't be helped. You see, we are a free people, and we are very jealous of all inter- ference or " regulation." " But it would be so easy to prevent all this, and certainly much pleasanter, with a little expense of 'Ingenuity and outlay. ' Yes, it would be easy enough ; but I don't think it can be done. You see, we are a practical people, and do.not much like fanciful niceties.

Our traveller lands, and passes, with augmenting wonder, through the narrow streets. " I thought that after the.-fire .of London your streets were widened?" So they were; but what was wide in Charles the Second's time we think narrow now: we are never contented. " I think you have no reason to be con- tented with these streets : they are so narrow that you cannot see the public buildings in them." Ground is very expensive, and it would waste money to make them needlessly wide. " But they are not wide enough for the purpose : see how we keep on wait- ing because the street is too narrow for the traffic : do not your hurried men of business grumble at that ?" Yes, they grumble. " Well, and are you not wealthy enough to pay for widening t" I should think so : I believe everybody would like it ; but I doubt whether it can be done.

" What is this pleasant smoothness of motion?" It is the

wooden pavement that we are riding over. " How quiet it is,

too : the din of London appears to have ceased." Yes, it is de-

lightful : everybody is quite sorry that it is all going to be pulled

up. " Pulled up ! what for ? " It is so slippery for the horses;

it quite wears them out ; and they are always falling. "But

cannot you make it not slippery ? " We have tried various ways of grooving, for instance ; but none of them answer : they do not alter the nature of the surface of the wood, which, you know, is always slimy when wet. They say, indeed—that is, Mr. Leitch

Ritchie says—that iii-St.,-Petersburg they put pitch and grit,9A---- the wooden pavement, which is used dirougho -tliot_gzeat-city,

and that it quite prevents the slipperiness. " Have you ever tried that plan?" I don't know ; I believe not. I ,think the companies have only tried the grooving; because, you see, if the

pitch and grit succeeded, all the companies could use it, and no

one of them would get any peculiar and private advantage from it. " But the public ? has any one tried it on behalf of the pub- lic ?" I believe not: we leave all those things to practical men. You are at Charing Cross. " What building is that? " The

National Gallery. " Gallery of what ?" The National Gallery

of Arts. "Of arts ! what! that thing? Where do you put your ancient pictures ?" There. " Where, then, do you put your mo-

dern pictures ? " There too. " What ! both in that little place

Where is your ancient sculpture?" That is in the Museum : that we do not class as art, but as curiosities. And some of our best pictures are not here, but at Hampton Court, twelve miles

off. "What a strange building that is ! " Yes, it is rather bad:

but we are a practical people, and have not time for the arts. " I should have thought that when the arts were in question, the most practical people would have paid most concentrated atten- tion to the subject." Hyde Park Corner. " What is that scaffolding ?" It is for hoisting up the Wellington Statue. " Oh—ah I but I thought

that was given up, as it would look so bad ? " It is only going to

be tried : it will be set there for three weeks, to see how-it looks. " But can't you tell how it will look beforehand ? surely any com- petent architect or artist could tell that." So they say, but Sir

Frederick Trench says not; and he says that Punch has no in-

fluence on the public mind. " So the British people must suc- cumb to Sir Frederick Trench ! Who is he ? " Oh, he has paid great attention to wax-lights, park-trees, statues, and so forth. You take your foreign friend to Buckingham Palace. At first he thinks it is " Pimlico Square," a triple row of small houses eligible for gentlemen having business in town : but you un- deceive him. He presumes that it is a model of comfort inside? Quite the reverse. It is planned on the principle of thorough mixture : the Lord Chamberlain is always boiling glue and ham- mering under Queen Victoria's private rooms,—though what can

be done with all the furniture thus made, hot and hot, pro re nata,

nobody can guess. The kitchen is painfully obvious. Royal guests have to be mixed up with the common household for want of sleeping-room. Moreover, the site is about the worst in London. We are about to spend a hundred and fifty thousand pounds or more in tinkering the Palace. Why not build a new one, every- body asks, in a fit situation—on the site of Kensington Palace, for instance ? Nobody can tell, unless it is because we are such a practical people. It seems that to be practical consists in doing nothing because we wish it, nothing because it is decorous, but only what we can't help.