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    ness , as they do at all seasons , it is as well to stay while the idle flit , that we may the more quietly ' see this great sight ; evoke the spirits of the dead to hold communion with them , and tax them to tell us more of the mysteries of our nature and our destiny . Whomsoever autumn may drive away from London , London itself is left ; and that is a goodly portion to leave to the deserted .

    A metaphysician talked of the mind ' s containing nothing but itself ; were that the case with London , it would yet bea ( measureless content . ' What the Scotch call self-containing houses ' always let high at Edinburgh , and London can never be despised while it is a self-containing city . Is it not pleasant to stand on Ben Arthur , and tell the old story of some Duke of Argyle ^ who travelled in search of the picturesque , and was told by an Italian that the finest of all views was that from his own forsaken

    mountain ? He knows not what scenery is , who cannot find it in London . Let him hunt where he likes , he will never catch it . * The earth will say , it is not in me ; and the sea will say , it is not in me ; ' and they will both mean that it is not in him . It is the sight and the sense that are wanting . Let him take * Hughson ' s Walks in London' for the guide-book of his next tour , and do them regularly , one every day ; let him go round Regent ' s Park ,

    across to Bayswater , through Kensington Gardens , up Oxfordstreet , along Regent-street to the Quadrant , then by Waterlooplace , and through the Green Park to Hyde Park corner ; let him stand on the bridges , any one of them "; and get into Southward on purpose to come on the iron bridge at that end ; let him look up at St . Paul ' s from the bottom of Ludgate-hill , when there are mountains of black clouds and a bright full moon besides

    him look at the Abbey anywhere and any when ; let him take a boat , and go down the river , and then come up the river . No scenery , indeed ! but there would be , though ; and the stage direction for it should be—Scene , a splendid city with temples , towers , palaces , and a majestic river ; enter a blind Soul , and exit hastily . There are some fine old chestnuts at Kensington , close by the bridge ( stand on that too , and look both ways ) , whose

    embossed and fretted trunks seem wrought by nature as a triumphant challenge to human architect and sculptor . We know what trees are ; we have seen oaks in the New Forest which waved their branches in the Conqueror ' s days , and others whose limbs were clubs for Hercules ; we have seen the ash upon the mountain side , gracefully bending in the blast , and have stretched ourselves in

    the shade and gathered woodnffe beneath the birks of Aberfeldy ; but fitter pillars than these chestnuts for the gates of paradise we never saw . Now do not say all these are fixtures ; we shall find them when we return . These are not what people live in London for , or think to look at ; they are independent of fashion ; they are in addition to the unfathomable stores of art , and history , and science treasured here . We ourselves might not have seen them

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    664 Autumn inn Lodon .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1832, page 664, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1822/page/16/