self, if he be, as Captain Bobadil says, so
generously minded; and I doubt if he or
anybody else would be much the worse
for it.

PIPING DAYS.

THE little English province covered with
houses of which the inhabitants are called
Londoners, is by nature, as most people
know, one of the wholesomest bits of land in
the United Kingdom. I think away the
houses for a minute, and get back the pure
stream of the Thames, and the flocks of swans
disporting themselves near the green slopes
that descend from the line of ground now
covered by the Strand. The traveller whom
I choose to suppose landing from his boat
under a clump of willows at the point now
called Hungerford Stairs, may ascend the
rising ground, and, by a path winding beside
the trunk, here of an oak, there of an elm,
stray to the edge of the wood upon its crest.
Thence let him look over the sparkling river
to the flat meadow- and forest lands of Surrey.
Under trees, through shrubs and over wild-
flowers, suppose him to cross the ground now
covered by the courts surrounding Drury
Lane, and then turn to descend Holborn
Hill, a green declivity. I think of it so,
with its head lighted by a sunbeam that has
slanted over an adjacent hill now covered by
Pentonville, and that has scattered by the
way some of its light over the leaves of the
fresh coppice now replaced by Coldbath
Fields prison and Coppice Row.

From the hill, this exceedingly old English
gentleman can, if he likes, descend into a valley
through which a swift little stream, the river
Fleet, rattled away under its alder-bushes,
hurrying with its gift of pure spring water to
the transparent Thames. Crossing the Fleet by
stepping-stones, or by a rustic bridge, I take
this traveller to ascend the opposite rise of
Snow Hill,— famous in spring for its snowdrops.
Swerving then to the right, and
gathering foxgloves among the old trees on
the site of Paternoster Eow and Newgate
Market, he reaches the crest of the eminence
on which St. Paul's Cathedral is now built.
There we will be cheaply bountiful, and give
him a dinner, which let him eat under the
shade of a wide-spreading beech, with his
eyes still about him. For, he has to relish,
not his dinner only, but also a glimpse
through trees covering unborn Cheapside, of
the glitter of the Thames some where towards
the spot now known as London Bridge.
Descending afterwards for an evening ramble
through the pleasant Spitalfields, he presently
must needs quicken his pace; and,
passing over the meadows now covered by
the butchers' shambles in Whitechapel, or
the Jews' establishments in Petticoat Lane,
grasping a large handful of dog-roses gathered
by the way, let him bring his devious ramble
to an end by the water-side, under the nutcopse
clothing Tower Hill. There, finding
his boat, that we have cautiously dropped
down the stream to meet him, he shall trim
sails, and put from shore into the broad
stream of the Pool. Let us take care that
this happens when the moon is rising among
the trees, and when the lights in a few
cottage windows are beginning to appear
among the darkness of the wood and field
upon each river bank. So, this traveller,
with the whole placid river to himself, may
steer across to sleep for the night at a quiet
country inn, upon the site, perhaps, of
Woolwich Arsenal.

Now, when for grass we have paving-stones;
for wild flowers, lamp-posts; for trees, houses;
and for the swarm of birds nestling among
them, men, women, and children by the
million: now, when the river, stained deep by
dirt, is crossed by bridge after bridge, dotted between
bridges by flocks of steamboats instead
of swans; below bridge paved with ships:
now, when all this is, has the moon a worse
sight to look upon of nights than she had in
the old days before London was? Certainly
not. Man is a work of Nature not less
than the trees or turf—nobler and more
beautiful than they; his works are as much
by nature part of him, as leaves are part of
trees. It is not wholly true, therefore, that God
made the country and man made the town;
scarcely more true than it would be to say,
God made the oak, and the oak made the
acorns. Man has, indeed, reason to work
with; the tree, only sap; but there is the same
source for each power. Nature is not swept
away when a forest of trees gives place to
a forest of men. I do not quit Nature when
I come out of the country into the town, but
I come face to face with her in a new form,
her highest form open to man's perception.
Nature speaks less emphatically from Helvellyn
than from London Bridge. In the
Himalayas, or the Andes, Nature has produced
nothing so sublime as London; in
shady dells through which brooks rustle, in
lilies, roses, rainbows, sunset, clouds, Nature
shows nothing that can so touch the heart
with thoughts of heaven, or so animate the
looker-on with high resolves and holy purposes,
as sounds that are to be heard, and
sights that are to be seen, among the bricks
and mortar. We are apt to deceive ourselves
(and have been most horribly deceived
by other people), by a mere phrase, in talking
about man and nature.

It was in no spirit of regret that I proposed
to think away this great town from
the soil it covers. I meant only, for one
thing, to show that it stands on very wholesome
ground. The countryman who might
have occupied it in its native state would
probably have been a long-lived man. But,
inasmuch as ground well-paved and drained
is better than damp grass; a good roof overhead,
good beds, a plentiful, unfailing, and
handy supply of pure water, a prompt furnishing