Let us look back, on passing beneath this triumph of engineering skill, and, seeing with what grace the huddled mass of London is framed by it, conceive the welcome it may seem to extend to the wayfarer (if such there be) coming to the capital to seek his fortunes. It may, however, be readily supposed that the days when ambitious youth resorting by road to London, there to win fortune with the customary half-crown, are done. The roads nowadays have lost all possibilities of that endearing romance of high ambition and courage, coupled with slender resources and an uninstructed belief that London’s streets are paved with gold. The precociously worldly-wise youngsters of to-day, who resort to the Metropolis by rail, have no such illusions. On the fortune-seekers of old, who tramped the weary miles to this gateway of their ambition, the forbidding old Archway must needs have exercised a dispiriting influence. It looked, from its outer side, so like a fortress gate, and was alas! too often a prison-gate when once within. London, lying down below them, vast and unknown; how, they might have thought, would it be possible to conquer _that_; to win a place _there_? Little blame to such of them as may have trembled at the prospect and retraced their steps; and better perhaps had it been for many of those who went forward that their courage had thus failed them at the threshold; rather than that they had gone down into that human whirlpool, to return broken in after days, to leap to death from the footpath above the lofty arch, into that roadway they had trod so hopefully years before. For old Highgate Archway was a veritable Bridge of Sighs; a favourite resort of London suicides to whom a leap from Waterloo Bridge into the river did not offer great attractions. It was not until the Archway was opened toll-free that the iron railings fencing the upper roadway were erected. They were 7 feet in height, cost £700, and were the cause of great disappointment to would-be suicides by leaping, who have an illogical objection to falling one yard more than necessary for the purpose of breaking their necks. This explains the comparative disfavour with which suicides regard the Golden Gallery of St. Paul’s Cathedral and other high places. [Illustration: HIGHGATE ARCHWAY: MAIL COACH NEARING LONDON. _From a Print after J. Pollard._ ]