London as a whole owes nothing in appearance to the natural configuration of its site. Moreover, the splendid building is nearly always a unit; seldom, unless accidentally, a component part of a broad effect. London has not grown up along formal lines; nor is any large part of it laid out according to the conceptions of a single generation. Yet not a few of the great thoroughfares and buildings are individually worthy of London's preeminence as a city. The most notable of these fall within a circumscribed area, and it is therefore necessary to preface their consideration with a statement of the broader characteristic divisions of the metropolis. _Characteristic Divisions._--In London north of the Thames, the salient distinction lies between West and East. From the western boundary of the City proper, an area covering the greater part of the city of Westminster, and extending into Chelsea, Kensington, Paddington and Marylebone, is exclusively associated with the higher-class life of London. Within the bounds of Westminster are the royal palaces, the government offices and many other of the finest public buildings, and the wider area specified includes the majority of the residences of the wealthier classes, the most beautiful parks and the most fashionable places of recreation. "Mayfair," north of Piccadilly, and "Belgravia," south of Knightsbridge, are common though unofficial names for the richest residential districts. The "City" bears in the great commercial buildings fringing its narrow streets all the marks of a centre of the world's exchanges. East of it there is an abrupt transition to the district commonly known as the "East End," as distinguished from the wealthy "West End," a district of mean streets, roughly coincident with the boroughs of Stepney and Poplar, Shoreditch and Bethnal Green, and primarily (though by no means exclusively) associated with the problems attaching to the life of the poor. On the Thames below London Bridge, London appears in the aspect of one of the world's great ports, with extensive docks and crowded shipping. North London is as a whole residential: Hackney, Islington and St Pancras consist mainly of dwellings of artisans and the middle classes; while in Hampstead, St Marylebone and Paddington are many terraces and squares of handsome houses. Throughout the better residential quarters of London the number of large blocks of flats has greatly increased in modern times. But even in the midst of the richest quarters, in Westminster and elsewhere, small but well-defined areas of the poorest dwellings occur. London south of the Thames has none of the grander characteristics of the wealthy districts to the north. Poor quarters lie adjacent to the river over the whole distance from Battersea to Greenwich, merging southward into residential districts of better class. London has no single well-defined manufacturing quarter.