"London," says a French writer, "resembles, in its size and luxury, Ancient Rome." But, if Ancient Rome, he adds, weighed heavily upon its toiling slaves, "how heavily does not our modern Rome weigh, also, upon the labouring class!" The hanging gardens of Park Lane are in as great, and greater contrast to the Somers Town, Drury Lane, and Deptford slums, as were ever the Palaces of the Palatine to the slaves' quarters. London is the best city in the world to be rich in, the worst to be very poor in; as it is the best city for happiness, the worst for misery. It is the Temple of Midas, where everything,--from a coffin to a hired guest,--from the _entrée_ to an "exclusive" mansion to a peer's status,--can be bought with money. Here, more than anywhere else, money is imperatively needed. Even the poor hawkers who live in unspeakable slums, lined with cats and cabbages, in Lisson Grove, might, if they lived in the country, at least have clean cottages, gardens, and pure air. With the same income on which you are poor in town, you will be well-to-do, nay, rich in the country. House-rent,--indirect taxation,--the vicinity of tempting shops,--and amusements take the surplus. The attractions of town must indeed be great to the poor; for, if their wages be higher, their life is infinitely lower. But it is the same in all classes. It is often said that the rich, who own so many large and luxurious country estates, houses, and gardens, are ill-advised to come up to town and spend hot Mays and Junes in baking Belgravia or Mayfair; but, after all, they only share the tastes of the majority. Man is a gregarious animal, and loves his kind. Similarly, if you were to make a "house-to-house visitation" in some wretched Lisson Grove or East End slum, and inquire diligently of every inhabitant, whether they would prefer to "go back and live in the lovely country," their answer, I am convinced, would be firmly in the negative. East and West are alike in this. But the key-note of the East End of London, apart from its big thoroughfares, is not so much squalor or poverty, as desperate, commonplace monotony, such as is described by Mrs. Humphry Ward in _Sir George Tressady_, "long lines of low houses,--two storeys always, or two storeys and a basement,--all of the same yellowish brick, all begrimed by the same smoke, every door-knocker of the same pattern, every window-blind hung in the same way, and the same corner 'public' on either side, flaming in the hazy distance." The East End is very conservative, and in its better houses there is a conservatism even in the blinds, which are, almost invariably, of cheap red rep or cloth, alternated by dirty "lace." With the poorest tenants, of course, blinds are at a discount; and grimy paper fills the frequent holes in the panes.