But it is only upon this ambiguous road of the river that any human motion is perceptible in this distant view. Barges are seen to float heavy and flat, and at certain points there is the vague suggestion of some stir at wharf or pier. Otherwise the scene keeps all its hurry out of sight and hearing. But for the vague shifting and alteration of the light, London might be a painted city. The little figure of man is so quenched, incredibly. His town keeps the black crowds and their voices out of reach, and it is difficult to believe in the noise, so deaf is the distance. London is at the mercy of her roads, and it is no wonder the fancy should give them life. And now it is for their coming, not their going, that they seem in haste. The town has covered up the original and all-fruitful earth; her pavements seal up all the springs of earthly life, and her roads are loaded with the fruits of earth unsealed. It is upon her, then, that the roads are turned with boat, train, and cart charged with her bread. What flocks and herds are daily hunted into the unproductive town, the town wherefrom nothing, nothing--for all its factories--takes birth; the town that visibly burns up, with never-ceasing reek of the never-ceasing burning, the substance of the world. The flame of life is fed fully in a thousand forms, and the flame of fire, smouldering in the furnaces at the foot of these chimneys, is the sign of the enormous sacrifice. [Illustration: VICTORIA TOWER, WESTMINSTER.] THE SMOULDERING CITY Because the town covers her fires, sits darkling in her daily and nightly burning, and sequesters flame from flame in a thousand thousand little chambers of their own, there is but small show of the perpetual devouring whereby fire abides among men as a long companion. Ariel of a hotter name and of a wilder element, willing and brief, delicate and eager, quick to finish and be gone, a hasty servant, is fire the mere visitant, unused to these long hours. But fire in London never escapes. It is bound in perpetual business, and if it flashes away for a moment it is recaptured in another flash, and if it slips away under cover of ashes it is overtaken and bound to the task again. Man, then, willingly pays the wages of such a wildness in servitude, and spends mines and forests to keep the mobile creature close within his gates. [Illustration: _Rain, Smoke and Traffic._]