My first impression, when I found myself in the cab that was to carry me to the Brompton Road, where lodgings had been engaged for me, was one of bewilderment at the length of the streets. I had studied a plan of London, and thought from it that I could, in case of need, find my way easily on foot from King's Cross to Brompton. Now I discovered, to my dismay, that streets which had seemed no longer than those with which I was familiar at Newcastle stretched to a length that was apparently interminable; whilst instead of one unbroken thoroughfare I was rattled in my cab through squares and streets innumerable, the names of none of which had I been able to read upon my plan. My next impression was one of delight at the fidelity with which little bits of street scenery had been portrayed by John Leech in _Punch_. In Newcastle we knew nothing of the kitchen area and the portico. I was filled with joy when, in passing through the Bloomsbury squares, I recognised, as I thought, the very houses, porticoes, and areas that Leech had made the background for his magnificent flunkeys and neat parlour-maids. The streets of London were a good deal dingier and dirtier in 1862 than they are to-day, and they were certainly vastly noisier. The wooden pavement was unknown, and the roar of traffic in crowded thoroughfares was positively deafening. The window-boxes filled with the flowers that are now so common and so pretty a feature of the London summer were rare, as also were the coloured awnings and outside blinds now almost universal in the better-class of thoroughfares. Hyde Park was untidy and neglected, flower-beds being practically unknown. The fine open space at Hyde Park Corner did not exist, and Piccadilly Circus was a circus really, and one of very narrow extent. But though far from possessing the magnificence of which it can now boast, London forty years ago had certain advantages over the city of to-day. There were no enormous piles of flats shutting out air and light from the streets, where both are so much needed. Few of the houses were more than four storeys in height, and the irregular architecture which then prevailed in Piccadilly--that most delightful of all the streets of the world--added to its attractiveness. But I must not be led into a digression upon London, a city so great and wonderful that a volume might easily be filled with the story of the associations it holds in my memory.