to Edgeware, as formerly Oxford Street was
but the high-road to Oxford.  Portland,
Somers, Camden, and Kentish Towns were
no more integral portions of London, as they
now are, than is Footscray in Kent, or Patcham
in Sussex. The New Road was dangerous
to walk in at night, and the open
fields about St. Pancras Church  (catch any
open fields about there now)  a favourite
rendezvous for body-snatchers and burkers to
hide their  " shots "  (so the bodies they had
rifled from graves, were called).  Clerkenwell,
it is true, was thickly populated;  but Pentonville,
about where the Model Prison is
now  (and there was no Model Prison then),
was quite rural.  Islington, as far as concerns
the High Street and the neighbourhood of
the  "Angel,"  was suburbanly Londonified, but
Holloway was still a journey.  As to Highgate
and Hornsey, they were nowhere—terrae
incognitæ,  almost,  or at best as difficult of
access as Windsor or Reading.  Touching
the irregular cube, bounded at the base by
the Whitechapel and Mile End Roads, on
the east and west by Hackney and by the
Dalston and Kingsland Roads, and on the
north by the London and North-Western
branch line  (from Camden Town to Blackwall)
—which irregular cube comprises within
its limits, Hackney, Globe Town, Bethnal
Green, Dalston, Kingsland, and the crowded
districts known as the Tower Hamlets—I have
no hesitation in saying, that, swarming with
houses and inhabitants as it is now, it was
in 1822 very little better than a waste.
Goodman's Fields and the entourage of the
London Docks had even then their tens of
thousands;  but where the Commercial Road
stretches now, through Stepney, Bow, and
down towards Limehouse, it stretches through
strongholds of the real invaders of London
—the brick-and-mortar warriors, who are
compassing the city round about.

In  '22, where was Chelsea?  Rurally aquatic.
Chiswick, Hammersmith, Kew?  All
plainly and distinguishably separated from
London;  but where are they now?  Millbank
was far off;  Pimlico was in the country;  no
man had yet heard of Belgrave Square.
Crossing Vauxhall Bridge, what were
Newington, Kennington, Vauxhall, Lambeth,
Walworth, Camberwell, Brixton, in the year
1822?   What sort of road was the Old
Kent Road in those days?  And were not
Deptford and Greenwich separated from
London by miles of green fields?
Bermondsey and the Borough were always,
within my recollection, integral London;  but
how about Rotherhithe?  How about Blue
Anchor Road, Spa Road, the neighbourhood
of the Commercial Docks,  Millpond Fields,
the Saltpetre Works, the Halfpenny Hatch,
the——

I am out of breath!   Here is the real
invasion!   Don't tell me that the old
London, the grim old kernel, far away
over the water yonder, has done all this
—has simply outgrown herself?   It is an
invasion, I tell you—stalwart provincials
marching upon a devoted metropolis. Brighton,
I know, will be bursting into the station at
London Bridge very shortly;  Greenwich is
London already;  so is Brentford;  so are
Clapham, Wandsworth, and Brixton;  so are
Kilburn, Cricklewood, and Crouch End.  I
am looking out for the arrival of Liverpool
daily;  and I should not be in the least
surprised to meet, at no very distant period,
Manchester,  all clad in cotton, smoking an
enormous chimney, arm-in-arm with Salford,
marching gravely along the Great North
Road,  to make a juncture with London at
Highgate.

To have a complete and comprehensive view
of the progress of the invaders and the plight of
the invaded;  to form anything like a just view
of the astonishing growth of London since the
year  '22;  to see it as it is, monstrous,
magnificent, the largest city in the world, and its
capital, you should, properly, be a bird: say
an eagle, or at least the gentle lark.  Soaring
on high, you should pause a moment on the
wing, and drink in at a glance the wonders
that lie beneath you.  You can't be a bird,
you say.  Professors of metempsychosis are
not so plentiful as those of mesmerism,
clairvoyance, or the discernment of character
from handwriting.  Besides, you don't believe in
the transmigration of souls.  Very well!
You believe in balloons?  Here is one, just
ready to ascend from the Royal Gardens,
no matter where.  The "aërostat" is inflated;
the last bottle of champagne imbibed;
the amateur aëronauts try to look
easy and unembarrassed, and fail dismally in
the attempt;  the signal gun is fired;  the
aëronaut vociferates  "Let go!"   A cheer!
Two cheers!   Some ridiculously inappropriate
music is played by a brass band. More
cheers!  fainter and fainter, as the earth, in
a most, uncalled-for and inconsistent manner,
appears to sink from beneath you.  You do
rise;  for anon is silence, stillness, in the calm
air, through which the occasional remarks of
your companions ring sharp and clear like
rifle cracks.  There: never mind the neck of
the balloon; that is the aëronaut's business,
not yours. Take a firm grip of the side of
the car, and look down.  Look down with
wonder, admiration, gratitude.

The City is all burnished gold;  for the setting
sun of a September day has put it into
a warm bath—a  "bath of beauty,"  as
pantomime poets say. The river is all silver;
save what are spangles and diamonds. It winds,
and twists, and writhes, like a beautiful serpent,
as it is magnificently beautiful without,
and foully poisonous  (bless the scarlet kernel!)
within. Those black lines crossing the river
are the bridges. That fleeting, evanescent
darkness, tarnishing the gold on the houses
and the silver on the river, is the shadow of
a cloud. That transparent blue haze hanging
quite over the City, like a gauze drapery to