"To Newton and to Newton's Dog Diamond," says Carlyle, "what a different pair of Universes; while the painting on the optical retina of both was, most likely, the same." "A distinct Universe," adds Thackeray in the same spirit, "walks about under your Hat, and under mine." This latter reflection occurs to me often as I walk about London, and note all its many "sorts and conditions" of men. There is here, especially, everything in the "point of view." From the West to the East is a wide difference; yet, between the two, how many minor differences? London, indeed, is hardly like a single city; it is rather like many cities rolled into one. Here, more than anywhere else, you realize that "it takes all sorts to make a world"; for the inhabitants vary quite as widely as do those of foreign countries. It was Disraeli who said, with much cynical truth: "The courts of two cities do not so differ from one another as the court and the city in their peculiar ways of life and conversation. In short, the inhabitants of St. James's, notwithstanding they live under the same laws, and speak the same language, are a distinct people from those of Cheapside." [Illustration: _A Railway Bookstall._] Between the people of the East, and those of the West, it is not merely a question of distance; for, as a matter of fact, the two types are often closely interwoven. Thus, there is an "East in the West," where, not infrequently, slums and mean streets lie in near juxtaposition to squares of lordly pleasure-houses, and where recently erected "model dwellings" for workmen flourish in the very hearts of the Grosvenor and Cadogan Estates; and there is a "West in the East," as testified by the pleasant wide streets of comfortable roomy houses that abound in the near suburbs of East and South London. Yet, it may be broadly stated that every part of London has manners peculiar to itself, as unvarying, in their way, as were the laws of the Medes and Persians; with, also, one principal dividing-line,--that intangible line separating the East End from the West End. Here are a few of the differences between the two: