Elia seems to touch a more sympathetic note. He was, indeed, an idolater of the city. “London,” he cried, “whose dirtiest Arab-frequented alley, and her lowest-bowing tradesman I would not exchange for Skiddaw, Helvellyn, James, Walter, and the parson into the bargain. Oh! her lamps of a night, her rich goldsmiths, print shops, toy shops, mercers, hardwaremen, pastrycooks, St. Paul’s Churchyard, the Strand, Exeter Change, Charing Cross, and the man upon a black horse. These are thy gods, O London! All her streets and pavements are pure gold, I warrant you. At least I know an alchemist that turns her mud into that metal--_a mind that loves to be at home in crowds_.” This is pleasant rapture. In another place he grows almost wanton over what he calls “the furniture of his world,” that is, “streets, streets, streets, markets, theatres, churches, Covent Gardens, shops sparkling with pretty faces of industrious milliners, neat seamstresses, ladies cheapening, gentlemen behind counters lying, authors in the streets with spectacles ... lamps lit at night, pastrycooks’ and silversmiths’ shops, beautiful Quakers of Pentonville, noise of coaches, drowsy cry of mechanic watchmen at night, with bucks reeling home drunk. If you happen to wake at midnight, cries of ‘Fire!’ and ‘Stop thief!’ Inns of Court with their learned air, and halls and butteries, just like Cambridge colleges; old bookstalls ‘Jeremy Taylors,’ ‘Burtons on Melancholy,’ on every stall. These are the pleasures of London ... for these may Keswick and the giant brood go hang.” And his humorous _penchant_ for the city was so strong that he would call aloud, “_Give me Old London at fire and plague times_,” rather than “healthy country air” and “purposeless exercise.” The mutations in the aspect of London are taking place with an almost alarming rapidity, so that it becomes difficult even to note them. Hardly a week passes without some old street or mansion being menaced, and marked for destruction. Of a morning we see the new and significant “hoarding” set up: in a week or two we pass again, and the “housebreakers,” as they are called, are hard at work with their pickaxes, shovelling down the old Queen Anne bricks in showers of dust. From year’s end to year’s end this goes on. The hungry eyes of the speculator, or of the thriving man of business, are often fixed upon the old Wren churches, which, in his view, so idly cumber space that might be covered with useful warehouses at enormous rents. It is sad to think that eventually it will be found impossible to resist this never-relaxing pressure, and that within a few years the clearing away of these venerable memorials will have set in. The recent clamour about St. Mary’s in the Strand is truly significant, the spoilers knowing well that if they can insert their wedge or pickaxe here, a happy beginning will have been made. These old buildings have few authorized friends or guardians beyond the amiable amateur.