In early life I had always promised myself a first view of London, either approaching the Tower by water, and taking in the survey of steeples, bridges, and docks, or else descending from Hampstead, on the top of a rapid coach, and beholding the great dome of St. Paul’s, arising amid a world of subordinate roofs, and looming up through their common canopy of cloud-like smoke. Alas! for all such visions, we have reached the age of the rail: and, consequently, I found myself, one afternoon, set down in a busy, bustling station-house, with a confused sensation of having been dragged through a long ditch, and a succession of dark tunnels, and with a scarcely less confused conception of the fact, that I was in London. A few policemen loitering about, and a line of cabs and ’busses of truly English look, confirmed the conviction, however, that I was really in the Metropolis, and I soon found myself looking up my luggage, in the business way of one accustomed to the place, and without a single rapture or emotion of the marvellous. Some things were very different from an American station-house; as, for example, the dignity of an ecclesiastical gentleman emerging from the first-class carriages in cocked-hat, and solemn cravat and surtout, his short-clothes eked into pantaloons by ponderous leggings, buttoned about his black stockings, and his whole deportment evincing a reverend care of his health and personal convenience—the inevitable umbrella especially, neatly enveloped in varnished leather, and tucked under the consequential arm; or again, the careful avoidance of the crowd evinced by a dignified lady, accompanied by her maid, and watching with an eye-glass the anxious manipulations of a footman, in showy livery, piling up a stack of trunks, hat-boxes, and what not, all inscribed, “Lady Dashey, Eaton Place, Belgrave Square.” Getting into a cab, with my very democratic luggage safely rescued from the vans, and forcing an exit through vehicles of all ranks, from the dog-cart up to the lumbering coach, with footman behind, and my lord inside, I emerge at length into London streets from the Euston Square Station, and begin to make my way towards the focus of the world. How mechanically I jog along, just as if I had lived here all my life, and without the least conformity to the fact that my pulse is quickening, and mine eye straining to realize a long ideal, which in a few minutes will be substantial fact! Every street-sign arrests my eye, “Paddington New Road,” “Gower Place,” “Torrington Square,” “Keppell Street,” “Bedford Square,” “Great Russell Street,” “Bloomsbury,” “Bond Street,” “Seven Dials,” “St. Martin’s Lane,” and now I begin to know where I am. There is St. Martin’s—there the lion with a long tail on Northumberland House—here is Trafalgar Square—I see Charles First on horseback, at Charing Cross—and here old George Third, with his queue, at the head of Cockspur Street—and here the Haymarket and Pall Mall, and here I am set