Page:Judging from the past and present, what are the prospects for good architecture in London?.djvu/29

 runs a gnawing stream. In spite of most costly precautions, ever and anon, the earth yields, and down rushes an avalanche of buildings, fortunately cleared of their forewarned inhabitants. When I was there, some years ago, a church and convent were, apparently and literally, on the brink of destruction. It reminded one of ancient fables, where the natives of a country have periodically to propitiate a marine monster, by some precious human offering.

And so, in some sort, it is with us. We have no security that the commerce of the City may not decline one day, or migrate; and what becomes of the lines of handsome store-houses which now occupy entire streets? Other uses must be found for them, probably less remunerative; or they may be left untenanted. In either case, a change will come over them: they may share eventually the fate of Tyre and Syracuse.

This, however, may be, and I trust will be, a very remote, or even an impossible event. But in another way, London is ever changing its condition, and .needing reparation. It appears to me sometimes like one of those immense overgrown shrubs in a garden, which, after some years, begins to die out in the middle, and leaves there a painful hollow. There are many streets, once inhabited by wealthy families, now gradually devoted to offices for business. There are many others in the centre of London, which the daily increase of legal demands is converting from abodes to chambers.

And, when the learned profession of the law throws its meshes over any district, architecturally