In due time—that is when I was about sixteen years old—I made my way to London, a city as deadly, as dreary as can well be conceived, in spite of the wonderful Cathedral of St. Paul’s, as much a thing of beauty as it ever was, and the Monument, one of the first things the country cousin was taken to see, with the exception of Madame Tussaud’s, then in Baker Street. In the streets where the shops were the houses were mean and low, of dirty red brick, of which the houses in the more aristocratic streets and squares were composed. Belgravia, with its grand houses, was never dreamt of. The hotels were of the stuffiest character; some of them had galleries all round for the sleeping chambers, which, however, as often as not were over the stables, where the coach horses were left to rest after the last gallop into London, and to be ready for the early start at five or six in the morning. Perhaps at that time the best way of coming into London was sailing up the Thames. As there were few steamers then the number of ships of all kinds was much greater than at present, when a steamer comes up with unerring regularity, discharges her cargo, takes in a fresh one, and is off again without a moment’s delay. You saw Greenwich Hospital, as beautiful then as now, the big docks with the foreign produce, the miles of black colliers in the Pool, the Tower of London, the Customs House, and Billingsgate, a very inconvenient hole, more famed for classic language then than now. Yet it was always a pleasure to be landed in the city after sitting all day long on the top of a stage coach. In many ways the railway was but a poor improvement on the stage coach. In the first place you could see the country better; in the second place the chances were you had better company, at any rate people talked more, and were more inclined to be agreeable; and the third place, in case of an accident, you felt yourself safer. As an old Jehu said, contrasting the chances, “If you have an accident on a coach there you are, but if you are in a railway carriage where are you!” And some of the approaches to London were almost dazzling. Of a winter’s night it was quite a treat to come into town by the East Anglian coaches, and to see the glare of the Whitechapel butchers’ shops all lit up with gas, and redolent of beef and mutton. It was wonderful in the eyes of the young man from the country.