Another prominent characteristic of his romance was its fondness for London and the suburbs, the beauty of which, he always held, was only half appreciated. “Airy” Brompton and “merry” Kensington, with its young Queen “in a palace in a garden,” touched his fancy; and the Georgian pleasaunces of Roehampton, the antiquer abodes of Sheen dedicated to Swift, Temple, and Stella, and the deer-haunted woodland of Richmond Park still breathing of Anne, and Ormonde, Pope, and Thomson, and Walpole; even, too, the Regency villas of Wimbledon. A few romantic strokes in _Henrietta Temple_ thus etch the Park of London:-- “At the end of a long sunny morning, ... where can we see such beautiful women and gallant cavaliers, such fine horses and such brilliant equipages? The scene, too, is worthy of such agreeable accessories; the groves, the gleaming waters, and the triumphal arches. In the distance the misty heights of Surrey and the bowery glades of Kensington.” And readers of _Lothair_ will remember with what romance he clothes an early June morning in Bond Street, and how, out of the prismatic hues of the fishmonger’s shop, he weaves a garland of gay fancies; nor will he forget St. James’s Street--that “celebrated eminence” in _Endymion_. But it was more serious London that he admired most. The foreign crannies of Soho and the dingy length of Marylebone have both been explored by him. The Strand and the City purlieus, however, were his favourites. The quaint sites, the busy romances of the now grimy riverside, the historic names, the contrast of outside flurry with inside repose, the dwelling-houses of a past age rich with its art but now reserved for musty parchments or massive ledgers, fascinated him. “It is at Charing Cross,” he avers, that “London becomes more interesting.” This is how he limns one of finance’s headquarters:-- “In a long, dark, narrow, crooked street, which is still called a lane, and which runs from the south side of the street of the Lombards towards the river, there is one of these old houses of a century past.... A pair of massy iron gates of elaborate workmanship separates the street from its spacious and airy courtyard, which is formed on either side by a wing of the mansion, itself a building of deep red brick, with a pediment and pilasters and copings of stone; in the middle of the plot there is a small garden plot inclosing a fountain, and a very fine plane tree. The stillness, doubly effective after the tumult just quitted, the lulling voice of the water, the soothing aspect of the quivering foliage, the noble building and the cool and spacious quadrangle--the aspect even of those who enter, and frequently enter, the precincts, and who are generally young men gliding in and out earnest and full of thought--all contribute to give to this locality something of the classic repose of a college, instead of a place agitated with the most urgent interests of the current hour.”