I have beheld the great city in many aspects, fair and foul. I have seen St. Paul's pierce with ghostly whiteness through a mist that swathed and wholly hid its lower parts, the great dome rising like a phantom balloon from out a phantom city. I have seen a blue-grey "London particular" transform a dingy, narrow street into a portal of mystery, romance, and enchantment. I have loitered on Waterloo Bridge to gaze on the magic of the river and listen to the eerie music of Time's roaring loom. I have heard the babel of Petticoat Lane on Sunday morning. I have surveyed the huge wen and contrasted it with the pleasant Kentish weald from Leith Hill's summit. And I would not go back from London to any place that I have lived in. I like London. I am bitten as I have seen all bitten that came under its spell--bitten as I vowed I never could be. London's air is in my lungs and nostrils, its glamour in my eyes, its roar and moan and music in my ears, its fever in my blood, its quintessence in my heart. I came to scoff and I pray to remain. LONDON CHARLIE Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood, Our greatest evil, or our greatest good. MOORE. The celebrated novelist Ouida has made a general indictment against the "_cruel ugliness and dulness_" of the streets of London. The greatest city in the world, according to Mdlle. de la Ramé, has "a curiously provincial appearance, and in many ways the aspect of a third-rate town." Even the aristocratic quarters are "absolutely and terribly depressing and tedious"; and as for _decorative beauty_, this is all she can find of it in London:-- An ugly cucumber frame like Battersea Park Hall, gaudily coloured; a waggon drawn by poor, suffering horses, and laden with shrieking children, going to Epping Forest; open-air preachers ranting hideously of hell and the devil; gin-palaces, music-halls, and the flaring gas-jets on barrows full of rotting fruit, are all that London provides in the way of enjoyment or decoration for its multitudes! Instead of which, I am free to maintain that no town of my acquaintance has such diversity of entertainment. Paris has the bulge in the trifling, foolish matter of theatrical plays and players. But London has more and finer playhouses; as good opportunities of hearing great music; and infinitely larger and better-appointed music-halls. London has now the finest libraries, museums, and picture-galleries; and as for out-door entertainment, no town possesses such remarkable variety as is offered at the Imperial Institute, the Crystal and Alexandra Palaces, Olympia, and Earl's Court. Thereby hangs a tale.