A number of the Victorians acknowledged that they lived from choice in London. Christina Rossetti admitted frankly that she preferred London to the country, and defended herself with Bacon's statement, "The souls of the living are the beauty of the world." [Footnote: See E. L. Gary, _The Rossettis_, p. 236.] Mrs. Browning made Aurora outgrow pastoral verse, and not only reside in London, but find her inspiration there. Francis Thompson and William Henley were not ashamed to admit that they were inspired by London. James Thomson, B.V., belongs with them in this regard, for though he depicted the horror of visions conjured up in the city streets in a way unparalleled in English verse, [Footnote: See _The City of Dreadful Night_.] this is not the same thing as the romantic poet's repudiation of the city as an unimaginative environment. Coming to more recent verse, we find Austin Dobson still feeling it an anomaly that his muse should prefer the city to the country. [Footnote: See _On London Stones_.] John Davidson, also, was very self-conscious about his city poets. [Footnote: See _Fleet Street Eclogues_.] But as landscape painters are beginning to see and record the beauty in the most congested city districts, so poets have been making their muse more and more at home there, until our contemporary poets scarcely stop to take their residence in the city otherwise than as a matter of course. Alan Seeger cries out for Paris as the ideal habitat of the singer. [Footnote: See _Paris_.] Even New York and Chicago [Footnote: See Carl Sandburg, _Chicago Poems_; Edgar Lee Masters, _The Loop_; William Griffith, _City Pastorals_; Charles H. Towne, _The City_.] are beginning to serve as backgrounds for the poet figure. A poem called _A Winter Night_ reveals Sara Teasdale as thoroughly at home in Manhattan as the most bucolic shepherd among his flocks. To poets' minds the only unaesthetic habitat nowadays seems to be the country town. Although Edgar Lee Masters writes what he calls poetry inspired by it, the reader of the _Spoon River Anthology_ is still disposed to sympathize with Benjamin Fraser of Spoon River, the artist whose genius was crushed by his ghastly environment.