What is London? Walk into Lombard Street, and ask the Merchant; he will tell you at once--the Docks and the Custom-House, Lloyd's and the Bank, the Exchange, Royal or Stock. Drive your cab to the Carlton, and learn that it is Pall-mall and the Clubs, St James's and the Parks, Almack's and the Opera. Carry your question and your fee together to legal chambers, and be told that it is Westminster and Chancery Lane, Lincoln's Inn and the Temple. All that remains of mankind, that is not to be numbered in these several categories, will tell you it is a huge agglomeration of houses and shops, churches and theatres, markets and monuments, gas-pipes and paving-stones. Believe none--Yes, believe them all! We make our London, as we make our World, out of what attracts and interests ourselves. Few are they who behold in this vast metropolis a many-paged volume, abounding in instruction, offering to historian and philosopher, poet and antiquary, a luxuriant harvest and never-failing theme. We consider London, with reference to what it is and may become, not to what it has been. The present and the future occupy us to the exclusion of the past. We perambulate the great arteries of the Monster City, from Tyburn to Cornhill, from Whitechapel to the Wellington statue, and our minds receive no impression, save what is directly conveyed through our eyes; we pass, unheeding, a thousand places and objects rich in memories of bygone days, of strange and stirring events--great men long since deceased, and customs now long obsolete. We care not to dive into the narrow lanes and filthy alleys, where, in former centuries, sons of Genius and the Muses dwelt and starved; we seek not the dingy old taverns where the wit of our ancestors sparkled; upon the spot where a hero fell or a martyr perished, we pause not to gaze and to recall the memories of departed virtue and greatness. We are a matter-of-fact generation, too busy in money-getting to speculate upon the past. So crowded has the world become, that there is scarce standing-room; and even the lingering ghosts of olden times are elbowed and jostled aside. It is the triumph of the tangible and positive over the shadowy and poetical.