A countryman who went by water for the first time from London to Greenwich, would be astonished to find that, with the exception of a few yards here and there, the whole five miles, on each side of the Thames, was one continuation of houses, warehouses, docks, and manufactories; that he could not for the life of him tell where London began nor where it ended; that when it ceased to stretch beside the river, it was still continued in a long line behind the marshes and the Isle of Dogs up to the Blackwall pier; and from no height in the neighbourhood could his eye at once glance over this lengthy range of continued streets. Twelve miles would scarcely exceed the almost unbroken link of buildings which extends from Blackwall to far beyond Chelsea, where street still joins to street in apparent endless succession. And all around this vast city lie miles of the most beautiful rural scenery. Highgate and Hornsey and Hampstead on the Middlesex side, hilly, wooded, and watered; and facing these, the vast range called the Hogsback, which hem in the Surrey side, from beyond Norwood, far away to the left, to where we have carried our readers in this chapter; while the valleys on both sides of the river are filled with pleasant fields, parks, and green winding lanes. Were London to extend five miles farther every way, it would still be hemmed in with some of the most beautiful rural scenery in England; and the lowness of fares, together with the rapidity of railway travelling, would render as nothing this extent of streets. Even the very poor are now satisfied, as they can travel from one end of the kingdom to the other by paying one penny per mile. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXII. HOLIDAYS OF THE LONDON POOR.