Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/344

332  his watch (which had like himself faithfully kept London time during all his tour) with the clock in the station, and observing to his fellow passengers "that there was not a single clock right in Dublin; they were all twenty minutes too slow, and when he went to Galway he found them still worse."

Even if a man sincerely prefer country life and transfer his abode from London to the rural districts, he still retains a latent satisfaction at having lived once in the very centre of human interests, close to the throbbing heart of the world. The old squire who has been too gouty and too indolent to run up to town for twenty years, will still brighten up at the names of the familiar streets and play-houses, and will tell anecdotes whose chief interest seems to lie in the fact that he formerly lodged in Jermyn Street, or bought his seals at the corner of Waterloo Place, or had his hair cut in Bond Street, preparatory to going to Drury Lane.

As volunteers enjoy a field-day and all the manoeuvres and marches, so a Londoner experiences a dim sense of pleasure in forming part of the huge army of four million human beings who are forever moving hither and thither, and yet strangely bringing about not confusion but order. The Greek philosophers and statesmen who thought such a little tiny polis as Athens or Sparta (not an eighth part of one postal district of London) almost a miracle of divine order, would have fallen down and worshipped at the shrine of Gog and Magog for having provided that a whole nation should be fed, housed, clothed, washed, lighted, warmed, taught, and amused for years and generations in a single city eight miles long. It is impossible not to feel an ever fresh interest and even surprise in the solution of so marvellous a problem as the human ant-hill presents, and Londoners themselves, perhaps even more than their visitors, are wont to watch with pleasant wonder each occurrence which brings its magnitude to mind; the long quadruple train of splendid equipages filing through Hyde Park of a summer afternoon; the scene presented by the river at the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race; or the overwhelming spectacle of such crowds as greeted the queen and her son on Thanksgiving-day.

The facility wherewith a busy-minded person, possessed of moderate pecuniary resources, can carry out almost any object in London, is another great source of the pleasure of town life. At every corner a cab, a hansom, an omnibus, an underground station, or a penny steamboat, is ready to convey him rapidly and securely to any part of the vast area, or a post-pillar or post-office, or telegraph-office, to forward his letter or card or telegram. He has acquired the privileges of Briareus for doing the work of a hundred hands, while the scores of penny and halfpenny newspapers give him the benefit of the hundred eyes of Argus to see how to do it.

Not many people seem to notice wherein the last and greatest of London pleasures, that of London society, has its special attraction. It is contrasted with the very best society which the country can ever afford, by always offering the charm of the imprévu. There are always indefinite possibilities of the most delightful and interesting new acquaintances, or of the renewal of old friendships in London; whereas even in the most brilliant circles in the country, we are aware before we enter a house, that our host's choice of our fellow-guests must have lain within a very narrow and restricted circle, and that if a stranger should happily have fallen from the skies into the neighbourhood, his advent would have been proclaimed in our note of invitation. Now it is twice as piquant to meet an agreeable person unexpectedly than by formal rendezvous; and as for that large proportion of mankind who are not particularly agreeable, it is still more essential that they should be presented freshly to our acquaintance. Other things being equal, a Stranger Bore is never half so great a bore as a Familiar Bore, of whose boredom we have already had intimate painful experience. There yet hangs about the Stranger Bore somewhat of the mists of early day, and we are a little while in piercing them and thoroughly deciding that he is a bore and nothing better. Often, indeed, for the first hour, or two, of acquaintanceship he fails to reveal himself in his true colours, and makes remarks and tells anecdotes whose dulness we shall only thoroughly recognize when we have heard them repeated on twenty other occasions. With our own Familiar Bore no illusion is possible. The moment we see him enter the room, we know everything that is going to be said for the rest of the evening, and Hope itself escapes out of Pandora's box. Thus, even if there were proportionally as many bores in London as in the provinces, we should still, in town, 