MR. HARE'S "WALKS IN LONDON." *

MR. IIARE has made good use of his library, as well as of his eyes,. in the compilation of these pleasantly written volumes. So much of late years has been written about London, that a new work on the subject is not likely to contain much original matter ; but the author has gone over the ground himself, in addition to a careful study of authorities, and personal observation has enabled him to use his book-knowledge effectively-:— • Walks in London. By Augnetaa J. 0. Hare. 2 vols. Loudon Dalcly, Isbister, and.Co. 1878. "In these two volumes," he writes, "I believe that all the objects of interest in London are described consecutively as they may be visited in excursions, taking Cbaring Cross as a centre. The first volume is 'chiefly devoted to the City, the second to the West End and West- minster. I have followed the plan adopted in my books on Italy of introducing quotations from other and better authors, where they apply to my subjects, and while endeavouring to make Walks in London something more interesting than a guide-book, I have tried, especially in Westminster Abbey and the Picture Galleries, to give such details as may suggest new lines of inquiry to those who care to linger and investigate."

The topographer who would describe London thoroughly must possess untiring patience. No dictionary-maker has undertaken a more laborious task. The size of this immense metropolis be- wilders the imagination. We cannot grasp its proportions, we -cannot apprehend the force by which it is bound together. Lord Macaulay, who knew everything, is said to have walked through every street in London ; but as Mr. Hare justly observes, there is little liklihood, considering the ever-growing size of the town, that -any one else will do so, "for more people live in London already than in the whole of Denmark or Switzerland, more than twice as many as in Saxony or Norway, and nearly as many as in Scotland."

If a than be condemned to live the greater part of every year in a city, who would not choose London, which contains within itself every variety of interest and enjoyment ? The hasty judg- ments formed by some foreigners of London are comparatively worthless. This great world, like a great book, must be well -studied before it can be appreciated ; and indeed there are so many Londons, each of which abounds with interest to those who enjoy and understand it, that it would be possible to spend a life-time within the shadow of the Abbey or of St. Paul's, and while always learning something, to know comparatively little of what Cobbett impertinently calls "this great Wen." Our thanks, therefore, are .due to the writers who assist in making the work lighter and pleasanter, and Mr. Hare, the latest labourer in this field, merits no small meed of praise for the mass of interesting details accu- mulated in these pages.

Vast sums have been spent during the last few years in what clay be called the embellishment of London, and while money has been lavishly and often wisely expended in this way, sites that were really beautiful have been deliberately spoilt, and hideous creations that ill deserve the name of " architecture " have been allowed to destroy the very positions which have cost so much money to improve. Mr. Hare deplores the wanton destruction of so many City churches, the towers and steeples of which formed such a characteristic of ancient London. Churches, however, that were often without beauty, and almost always without con- gregations, had perhaps small claims to a longer life in the busi- ness streets of the City. A different and more unanimous judg- ment will be passed on the injuries which, for the sake of pecu- niary advantage, the railroads have been allowed to inffict on the metropolis. The hideous structure that crosses the road at London Bridge has not only entirely destroyed a fine site, but has inflicted irretrievable injury on St. Saviour's, the finest parish church in London. The frightful shed of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway, at Cannon Street, spoils the once noble view of St. Paul's from London Bridge, and if the new bridge of Blackfriars had been, which perhaps fortu- nately it is not, the finest bridge upon the Thames, the close proximity of the railway bridge would have spoilt that also. And what is to be said of the enormous railway shed at Charing Cross, which afflicts the eye from twenty points of view, and is now a hideous blot on "the finest site in Europe?" We remember a noble etching in the Portfolio, from a drawing on the Thames, by Mr. Inchbold, in which the Charing Cross shed is brought into the landscape with considerable effect ; but Mr. Inchbold is a poetical artist, and by his subtle art can transform a thing of ugliness into what on paper may prove a joy for ever. The fact, neverthless remains that this colossal shed is a grievous injury

,to the Embankment, and to every point from which a view of it is obtained. And how did. it come to pass that a site that might have been turned architecturally to the noblest uses, a site

that faces the Houses of Parliament and is assuredly one of the most prominent in London, has been covered by the frightful row of semi - detached brick buildings" known as St. Thomas's Hospital ? Truly does Mr. Hare say that their chief ornament is thoroughly English,—" a row of bideous urns upon the parapet, which seem waiting for the ashes of the patients inside." The erection of St. Thomas's Hospital cost an enormous sum, and it is certain that the utter failure of the building from the architect's and artist's standing-point was not owing to the lack of funds. Pity that the silly-looking

structure does not occupy a less-important position ! Another grievous eye-sore in London is the ugly bridge across Ludgate Hill, which destroys the once fine view of St. Paul's, and will, it is to be feared, remain for many a year, in proof of the bad taste

of its constructors and the supineness that suffered a picturesque site to be thus woefully injured. And London has suffered by the destruction of interesting buildings, as well as by the erection of deformities. The loss of the portico of Burlington House, termed by Sir William Chambers "one of the finest pieces of architecture in Europe," will not be readily forgotten, and we can scarcely hope that the buildings to be erected on the site of Northumberland House will compensate lovers of art for the loss of that charaeteristic building :—

" Of all the barbarous and ridiculous injuries," says Mr. Hare, "by which London has been wantonly mutilated within the last few years, the destruction of Northumberland House has been the greatest. The removal of some ugly houses on the west, and the sacrifice of a corner of the garden, might have given a better turn to the street now called Northumberland Avenue, and have saved the finest great historical house in London, commenced by a Howard, continued by a Percy, and completed by a Seymour,—the house in which the restoration of the monarchy was successfully planned in 1660, in the secret conferences of General Monk."

Other interesting buildings are, it is to be feared, doomed to destruction, one of them being the gateway of Lincoln's Inn, bearing the date 1518, and adorned with the arms of Sir Thomas Lovell, by whom it was built, in the reign of Henry VIII.

It is ornamented," writes Mr. Hare, "by inlaid brickwork of different colours, in the style of Hampton Court, and is the only ex- ample remaining in London, except the gate of St. James's. Stretching along the front of the Inn, on the interior, are a number of curious towers and gables, with pointed doorways and Tudor windows, form- ing, with the chapel opposite upon its raised arches, one of the most picturesque architectural groups in London. It is upon this gateway that Fuller describes Ben Jenson as working with his Horace in one

hand and a trowel in the other But the generation which can delight in the Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial has no admiration to spare for these grand relies of architects who knew their business, and unless opinion speedily interferes to protect it, the gateway of Lin- coln's Inn will share the fate of Northumberland House, the Burlington Portico, and the Tabard, for it is doomed to be pulled down."

The demolition of another relic of antiquity, adjoining the Abbey of Westminster, is also proposed by enterprising iconoclasts. This is the tower which formerly served as the king's jewel-house, the upper chamber of which is now a small historical museum:— " It will scarcely be credited by those who visit it, that the destruc- tion of this interesting building is in contemplation, and that the present century, for the sake of making a 'regular' street, will perhaps bear the stigma of having destroyed one of the most precious buildings in Westminster, which, if the houses around it were cleared away (and it were preserved as a museum of Westminster antiquities), would be the greatest possible addition to the group of historic buildings to which it belongs."

Trafalgar Square has not much to boast of architecturally, and it alarms one still to think how narrowly its chief ornament, the portico of St. Martin's Church, "the masterpiece of Gibbs, and the only perfect example of a Grecian portico in London," has escaped destruction :— " The regular rectangular plan on which Trafalgar Square was first laid out was abandoned simply to bring it into view, yet in 1877 the Metropolitan Board of Works, for the sake of giving uniformity to a new street, seriously contemplated the destruction of the well-graded basement to which it owes all its beauty of proportion, and which is one of the chief features of a Greek portico. However, Parliament happily interfered, and the portico survives."

One piece of destructive barbarism marks the year 1877 with a black stone. No. 19 York Street, Westminster, was Milton's "pretty garden house," marked on the garden side by a tablet, erected by Jeremy Bentham, inscribed, "Sacred to Milton, Prince of Poets"

"It was here that he became blind, and that Andrew Marvell lived as his secretary. His first wife, Mary Powell, died here, leaving three little girls motherless, and here he married his second wife, Catherine Woodcocke, who died in childbirth a year after, and is commemorated in the beautiful sonnet beginning,— Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave.'

Hazlitt lived here in Milton's house, and here he received Hayden, Charles Lamb, and his poor sister, and all sorts of clever, odd people, in a large room, wainscoted and ancient, where Milton had meditated."

Mr. Hare observes that this precious relic of an immortal poet was destroyed "without a voice being raised to save it,"—a remark which, unless our memory fail us, is not quite correct.

The literary associations of London are innumerable. They meet us at every turn, and recall a thousand interesting memories of the past. Mr. Hare seems to have chronicled every prominent fact respecting the London worthies who have won their fame in literature or in other fields. Prominent among these figures stands Dr. Johnson, who identified himself more with London

than any author of the last century. But he did not love the great city more than Charles Lamb loved it, and it would seem as if all humourists find their chiefest satisfaction in the busy haunts of men. London was a fortune to Dickens, who would have been shorn of three-fourths of his strength had he been confined within the narrow circle of a provincial town ; and the greatest poets, as well as novelists, have found in London the source of much of their inspiration. Heine thought otherwise, but he knew little of the metropolis, and saw only some of its least poetical features. It is very pleasant following Mr. Hare from street to street, and recalling the sad or cheerful memories called forth by the monuments of the past. It reconciles us strangely to the smoke and damp and 'noise of the vast city to remember how full it is of things of fame, and how its streets and houses are hallowed by noble deeds and noble words. No doubt,

there are recollections less attractive. Temple Bar with its human heads, and Tyburn with its gallows, round which vast swarms of rich as well as poor spectators were wont to assemble, waiting for the unhappy victim, who was conveyed in a cart from .Newgate, "the prisoner usually carrying the immense nosegay which, by old custom, was presented to him on the steps of St. Sepulchre's Church, and having been refreshed with a bowl of ale at St. Giles's," remind us, as we are reminded by the pillory, in which so many good men did penance, by the frequent inebriety of statesmen, and by the insecurity of the streets (remember Sir Roger de Coverley's precautions in going to the theatre), how greatly the manners and morals of the last century differ from our own. Stopping for a moment at that notorious place of execution, where boxes were let to aristo- cratic sightseers by the "Tyburn Pewopener," we recall, with Mr. Hare's help, some of the strange scenes that took place there, —how Jack Sheppard was hanged, in the presence of 200,000 spectators ; how Jonathan Wild at his execution "picked the parson's pocket of his cork-screw, which he carried out of the world in his hand ;" how Katherine Hayes, the murderess of her husband, was burnt alive by the fury of the people ; how Earl Ferrers came from Newgate in his carriage with six horses, and was hanged in his wedding-dress with a silken rope ; and how the Rev. Dr. Dodd, for whom Dr. Johnson exerted himself so warmly, suffered there for his forgery on the Earl of Chesterfield. Readers who wish to be familiar with the London of the last century may readily do so from the essayists who describe "the

town" with so much minuteness of detail, from the Trivia of Gay, and from the allusions of many of his poetical contemporaries, especially of Swift. Thackeray reminds us of one characteristic, the darkness of the houses and streets, and Gay recommends his readers to shun the perils of Lincoln's Inn Fields in the night-

hours, and to

"keep the public streets, where oily rays Shot from the crystal lamp o'erspread the ways."

Of another characteristic which marks off the last century very distinctly from our own we are reminded by Mr. Hare. Writing of Temple Bar and the ghastly objects once exposed upon it, he observes :—

"It is difficult to believe that it is scarcely more than a hundred and twenty years since Colonel Francis Townley, George Fletcher, and seven other Jacobites, were so barbarously dealt with,—hanged on Kennington Common, cut down, disembowelled, beheaded, quartered, their hearts tossed into a fire, from which one of them was snatched by a bystander, who devoured it, to show his loyalty. Walpole afterwards saw their heads on Temple Bar, and says that people used to make a trade of letting out spy-glasses to look at them, at a halfpenny a look. The spikes which supported the heads were only removed in the present century."

And he adds that with the removal of Temple Bar an immensity of the associations of the past will be swept away.

Our space, but not our subject, is exhausted. A theme so fruitful suggests a number of topics, all of which are well worthy of discussion. The old customs of London still retained would alone supply material for a paper ; so would the churches, about which Mr. Hare has many interesting particulars to give ; so would the houses, clubs, and taverns frequented by the wits of the town ; so would our parks and gardens. Walks in London is a book for perusal, as well as for reference. Dr. Johnson said of

Jonas Hanway that he acquired some reputation by travelling abroad, but lost it all by travelling at home. There is no fear that a similar judgment will be passed upon Mr. Hare.