Structurally and visibly, it was a much uglier place than now. The immeasurable wastes of Belgravian stucco; the "Baker Streets and Harley Streets and Wimpole Streets, resembling each other like a large family of plain children, with Portland Place and Portman Square for their respectable parents,"[21] were still unbroken by the red brick and terra-cotta, white stone and green tiles, of our more aesthetic age. The flower-beds in the Parks were less brilliant, for that "Grand old gardener," Mr. Harcourt, to whom we are so much indebted, was still at Eton. Piccadilly had not been widened. The Arches at Hyde Park Corner had not been re-arranged. Glorious Whitehall was half occupied by shabby shops; and labyrinths of slums covered the sites of Kingsway and Shaftesbury Avenue. But, though London is now a much prettier place than it was then, I doubt if it is as socially magnificent. The divinity which hedged Queen Victoria invested her occasional visits to her Capital with a glamour which it is difficult to explain to those who never felt it. Of beauty, stature, splendour, and other fancied attributes of Queenship, there was none; but there was a dignity which can neither be described nor imitated; and, when her subjects knelt to kiss her hand at Drawing Room, or Levee, or Investiture, they felt a kind of sacred awe which no other presence could inspire. It was, of course, one of the elements of Queen Victoria's mysterious power, that she was so seldom seen in London. In the early days of her widowhood she had resigned the command of Society into other hands; and social London, at the time of which I write, was dominated by the Prince of Wales. Just at this moment,[22] when those who knew him well are genuinely mourning the loss of King Edward VII., it would scarcely become me to describe his influence on Society when first I moved in it. So I borrow the words of an anonymous writer, who, at the time at which his book was published, was generally admitted to know the subjects of which he discoursed. "The Social Ruler of the English realm is the Prince of Wales. I call him the Social Ruler, because, in all matters pertaining to society and to ceremonial, he plays vicariously the part of the Sovereign. The English monarchy may be described at the present moment as being in a state of commission. Most of its official duties are performed by the Queen. It is the Prince of Wales who transacts its ceremonial business, and exhibits to the masses the embodiment of the monarchical principle. If there were no Marlborough House, there would be no Court in London. The house of the Prince of Wales may be an unsatisfactory substitute for a Court, but it is the only substitute which exists, and it is the best which, under the circumstances, is attainable.