the golden houses, cut exactly to the shape of
the City, thinner, and almost ragged where
parks, or squares, or open places are, is the
smoke—the smoke of London, hanging over
it, shrouding it, blackening its edifices,
poisoning its inhabitants.

Keep looking down, and look towards where
my finger points. That thing, like a golden
pine-apple much foreshortened  (the sun is
strong upon it), is St. Paul's.  Those crowds
of small black ants toiling through that
narrow lane, are men, women, and children,
in carriages, on horses, on foot; driving,
riding, or walking, eastward or westward.
The Monument is a Christmas Candlestick;
the Tower is a Doll's House. There
is not a man in London as large as Shem,
Ham, or Japhet, in the toy Noah's Ark.
Where is the roar of London, and the rattle of
wheels;  the speechifying, the bargain-driving,
the laughing and the weeping?   Faster and
faster we rise into space.  And the silence is
more intense, and the City below us is no
bigger than a man's hand.

Now, if you had ascended with M.M. Garnerin,
Blanchard, or Pilatre de Rosier; had you
taken a flight with old Mr. Sadler, the
aëronaut in 1822, when George the Gentleman
was King, you would be sore astonished
now, gazing at London, under the auspices
of a  "gallant and intrepid aëronaut"  in 1852.
Where all was green before, you would find
long lines of compact masses of houses.  The
crowds of black ants would have increased
an hundred-fold;  the blue, gauzy, ragged
smoke blanket would have stretched
marvellously;  you would have appreciated and
acknowledged the effects of the Bricklayers'
Invasion.

On ascending at night  (which, by-the-bye,
cautious old Mr. Sadler never did),  you would
be struck with pleasurable astonishment at
the aspect of London by night, as compared
with London as it was thirty years ago. In
the place of a Cimmerian darkness, through
which vainly endeavoured to pierce a few
blinking, sputtering, feeble-minded lamps—
you would have an elaborate and exquisitely
beautiful network of gas spangles—a delicate
tracery of glow-worm lights, of brilliant
pin-holes, sparkling dots, clearly defining the
outline of every street, square, and alley of
the world City; stretching out less thickly
towards where the brick invasion had relaxed
its vigour, dotting long lines of suburban
roads, where the metropolitan constabulary
drops off, and the horse patrol begin to be
visible, getting small by degrees and beautifully
less till they end in the blue blackness
of the far-off country, twenty or thirty miles
away on either side of you.

In no part of London is the invasion of
bricks and mortar so perceptible as on the
line of railway which, commencing at Camden
Town (they are about to extend it to Kilburn,
I think), runs through Islington, Hackney, Bow,
Stratford, Old Ford. Stepney, and Limehouse
to Blackwall.  It extends nearly half
round the Middlesex side of London. It is
an eccentric railway, for I have measured the
distance  (on the map)  from Camden Town to
Blackwall, and my friend the railway goes
miles out of its road to take you to the last-
named locality;  though, curiously enough, it
rattles you thither in quicker time than the
omnibus would do.  I have seen irascible old
gentlemen clench their umbrellas, muttering
fiercely that they didn't understand being
taken to Hackney on their way to Fenchurch
Street; and middle-aged females reduced to
a piteous state of mental imbecility by
Islington being near Limehouse;  afterwards
piteously demanding which was Bow  (which
they were given to understand was in Cheapside),
and inextricably confounding Stratford
with the birth-place of the Swan of Avon.
The last time I patronised this cheerful line,
there was no glass to the window of the carriage
in which I sat.  Complaining mildly to
four separate porters at four separate stations,
and pleading rheumatism, I received
consecutive answers of  "Dear me!"  "Oh, ah!"
"So it is!"  and  "Can't help it;"  which
(taking them to be somewhat evasive and
unsatisfactory in their construction)  prompted
me to give vent to vague threats of
memorialising the public journals. I should
like to become better acquainted with that
philosopher  (he must have been a philosopher)
who, seeing me irate, administered cold
comfort to me by telling me that the last
time he travelled by the line in question, his
carriage had no door.  "And it was night,
sir!"

As this iron and not immaculate railroad
(it has its good points, notwithstanding)
pursues its circuitous route, you may—if you
don't mind looking out of the window, and
running all the adverse chances of easterly
winds, and ashes from the engine—see many
curious and edifying things.  Anon, the train
rushes through mangy, brown-turfed fields,
where the invasion has just begun;  where
rubbish may be shot;  where poles, with
placards affixed to them, denote the various
" lots" which are "To be Sold or Let, on
Building Leases."  Melancholy-looking cows,
misanthropic donkeys, pigs convinced of the
hollowness of the world, wander pensively
about these fields, gazing at the building-lots,
grubbing about the lines of foundation
for rows of houses which are to be erected;
lamenting, perhaps, in their vaccine, asinine,
or porcine hearts, the ruthless march of
bricks and mortar. These semi-suburban
animals feed strangely.  Feeling themselves
to be in a state of transition, perhaps, like
their pasture-grounds, they accommodate
themselves to all kinds of food.  I think the
cows eat quite as much broken crockery-ware
as grass; the donkeys eat anything, from
saucepan-lids to pieces of fractured bottles;
and there is a pig of my acquaintance—
residing in an impromptu pigstye in the