The good people of the Great City possess but a slight idea of the light in which they and the modern Babylon are regarded by the remote and rustic natives of the provinces. Colin partook largely of the general sentiment respecting that wonderful place, and its, in many respects, scarcely less marvellous people. To him, in common with every other child of village or hamlet, however remote, the name of London had been familiar almost from the cradle. He knew not the time when he knew it first; and the idea presented by it was that of some great, undefined, and unknown place, which had no equal in the world, nor resemblance--(save in that it was composed of buildings and endless streets)--to anything he had ever seen. It was a vast spectre, without shape, and measureless, looming in the misty atmosphere of a doubtful mind, like the ideal pictures of cities and the wonderful palaces of gnomes and genii, after reading some marvellous Arabian tale. Then, with the rustic inhabitants of every remote place, anything uncommon or superior is always presumed to have come from London, and to say that it came thence, is at once to confer upon it a higher ideal value. Many a worthless trinket brought by some wandering pedlar is purchased, and afterwards miraculously preserved from juvenile spoliation amidst the wreck of all other toys, merely because it came from London. The very appearance in a village of an individual of more than usual gentility, startling the bumpkins with a “sight” on some fine summer's morning, is of itself taken as presumptive evidence that he very probably came from London. Any innovation or improvement in dress or manners is promptly and naturally supposed to have had its origin in London. London is the place, in short, where everything is great,--where everything of the best is made,--where all the first people of the world do congregate,--where it is very needful to look sharp about you lest your very eyes get picked out without your knowing it until they are gone,--where the most cunning thieves are always at your elbow,--where everything worth seeing is to be seen, and worth hearing to be heard,--where anybody may chance to succeed, though he could succeed nowhere else,--and where, finally, for some one or other or all of these causes, every man, woman, girl, and boy express a wish to go to before they die.