With the World's Great Travellers Volume Iii Part 1

With the World's Great Travellers.

Volume 3.

by Various.

THE WORLD'S GREAT CAPITALS OF TO-DAY.

OLIVER H. G. LEIGH.

LONDON.

To the ordinary eye the moon and stars have at least prettiness, perhaps grandeur. To the trained astronomer, and the contemplative poet, the mighty firmament overwhelms the mind with the sense of human inability to grasp the vast. Knowing and loving the features and characteristics of London as a lover those of his mistress, it can be imagined how such a one despairs of doing justice, in a brief s.p.a.ce, either to his subject or his own sane enthusiasm. He would fain impart his knowledge, insight, and what glimmerings of romantic fancy may add charm to the prosy exposition, but the showman's harangue is received as art without heart.

London is a hundred captivating sights and themes for our hundred capacities and moods. You go to it the first time with the child's enviable eye-delight in novelty, and are lucky if in a week you are not eye-sore, dazed, and jaded with the very monotony of new scenes and blurred impressions. You wisely fly to the lovely country lanes for restful change, and come back with new eyes and a clean slate. Then the mysterious quality which lifts visible London into the London of real romance and realizable antiquity dawns upon the mind. A third exploration reveals its almost omniscient and omnipotent headship as for three centuries the world's centre for the intellectual and material forces that have so largely built up our civilization. Continued observation brings other and endless aspects of the indescribable city, which is no city, but a Chinese puzzle of separately whirling worlds within each other.

This mystifying prelude may seem rather disheartening to the stranger, primed with rational curiosity to understand, as well as see, this unwieldy London. He will find, however, his curiosity whetted, deepened, elevated, in proportion as he takes with him a moderate grounding in the historical a.s.sociations of the old city. This easily acquired information will prove to be a key that will unlock hidden places holding bunches of other keys, so that everywhere one may turn, the streets, buildings, and monuments recite their own fascinating stories.

We live in the day of big things, and sneer as we may at the superficiality of estimating quality by size, there is no escape from it when the purpose is only to kindle interest. a.n.a.lysis can be undertaken afterwards. London "whips creation" in the number of its people, though its greatness is quite independent of this. The circle can be drawn to include four, six, or seven millions and it will still be true that the sustainers of its greatness come within a single million, possibly the half of that. Yet it has a few businesses useful for the novice to know.

People have walked and ridden through the double tunnel under the wider part of the Thames since 1843. Its underground railway, costing five million dollars per mile to make, carries one hundred and fifty millions of people a year, and has been running forty years. The public are served by fifteen thousand cabs, which earn twenty-five million dollars a year. There are over one thousand omnibuses, not including tram-cars, on which there are roof seats, and you pay from two to six cents, according to distance. Steamboats afford a fine view of the city, at the same fares.

It has about five hundred theatres and music-halls, giving variety programmes. Many of these hold from three to five thousand and they are always well-filled. The roof of a famous music-hall built in 1870 slides off for a few minutes at a time, for ventilation on summer nights. The Crystal Palace entertains a hundred thousand people without being crowded, in its beautiful gla.s.s hall, 1,608 feet long, with two great aisles and transepts, and a charming pleasure park. In the palace are reproductions of ancient architecture, primitive peoples, extinct animals, everything in art and nature that can expand knowledge. The orchestra seats four thousand, the concert-hall four thousand, and the theatre four thousand, all under the same roof, yet their performances are simultaneous. The Palace cost over seven million dollars in 1854, and admission is twenty-five cents. The Albert Memorial Hall holds ten thousand. The Agricultural Hall covers three acres and a half, and holds audiences of twenty-five thousand.

There is not a day in the year without half-a-dozen or more public meetings, convened by religious, scientific, or other societies, a free field for the stranger to see distinguished people, hear average oratory, study character and customs, and lay in stores of useful knowledge with varied entertainment. "Doing the sights" is a matter of course, but they should be selected to suit one's mood at the time, also the usually unlovely weather, and above all, after some preliminary guide-book reading. The Tower is already familiar in story and picture, yet not every c.o.c.kney is aware that its walls enclose a virtual town of over three thousand inhabitants. It has a hundred distinct interests for the leisurely-minded, besides that of being a great old fortress.

The new Tower bridge equals the underground railway and sub-river tunnels as a triumph of engineering, lifting itself high above the tall ships' masts when they sail in and out of the port. Near by, the much maligned East End, the Whitechapel district beloved by horror-vending reporters, invites and will repay a visit.

Would you like to realize a dream of some magnificent pageant, in which the great notabilities of all the earth take a share? Take your stand where Rotten Row meets the Drive any morning or afternoon between April and July. Here meet the pink of fashion and the celebrities distinguished for honors won in art, science, diplomacy, statesmanship, and war. The outward and visible magnificence belongs to the horses rather than their riders and drivers, for plainness of attire and decoration is the rule among the great folks. This double daily parade is truly a unique spectacle, viewed by throngs of idlers of all nations, themselves a picturesque feature of the show.

A panorama with another sort of interest should be viewed ponderingly.

Let the visitor approach Westminster Abbey from Victoria station along Victoria Street, once a worse than any Whitechapel nest of criminal slum-dwellers. Grouped into a picture unrivalled elsewhere in the world for architectural splendor combined with historic glory, he will see the h.o.a.ry Abbey, not simply the stone record of a thousand years of human progress; not simply the petrified survival of druidicial worship in the forest groves, with its soaring tree-trunk columns breaking into foliage as their tops meet to screen the sun and echo down again the ascending incense of prayer and song; not simply the stately temple which for ages has been the shrine of England's great ones, thirteen kings, fourteen queens, and the greater than these--the glorious array of its poets, musicians, statesmen, soldiers, sailors, and explorers, who, like Livingstone in his line and Chaucer in his, poured all their wealth of genius and power into the lap of their motherland, to make her happier and stronger. He will see through the mediaeval stained windows the deeper meaning of the old church's story, the reddened sun-rays telling of the bloodshed that watered the growing plant of the nation's greatness, and the blue beams that figure Britannia's olden mastery of the seas, and the rainbow hues suggestive of her labors to give hope to the people that long sat in darkness till she brought the light of civilization.

Close to the Abbey's side stands the venerable St. Margaret's parish church, where Caxton printed the first book and is buried; where Amba.s.sador James Russell Lowell's epitaph on Raleigh graces the window that honors the memory of Virginia's founder, whose headless body reposes in its precincts. Just behind the two churches stands Westminster Hall, as King William Rufus built it in 1099, though its great oak-beam roof was heightened by Richard II. Close behind it rises the majestic file of the Houses of Parliament, the great Victoria tower at one end, at the other the clock tower, with its minute-hand twelve feet long and its chimes that float around for miles. From its foot Westminster Bridge gladly crosses the Thames to the n.o.blest of hospitals, St. Thomas's, founded in 1213. Its separate blocks corridored together, fitly match the Parliament building on the opposite bank of the river. When you stand on the Abbey sidewalk, near the Beaconsfield statue, you may feel you are standing in the true centre of the earth, for there will pa.s.s you in the course of a week in the season the picked leaders of most nations, the representatives of every faith and system of government, the ruling men of Asiatic empires and tribes, and travellers from the world's end to do homage to the mother of parliaments and the shrine of the immortal dead. And far in the distant haze hovers the dome of St. Paul's like a balloon ascending through the smoke clouds to the clear blue.

Starting westward from the Abbey, in this sacred bit of the great city, it is possible to walk seven miles on the gra.s.s and paths, through St.

James's park, surrounded by Government buildings, stately old mansions, the home of the king when Prince of Wales, St. James's Palace, and Buckingham Palace. Then along Const.i.tution Hill, across Piccadilly into Hyde Park, along Rotten Row (from _Route du Roi_) to Kensington Gardens with the house Victoria was born in, and so on, with a few breaks. The group of palatial museums at South Kensington tempt the stranger, whatever his tastes or culture, to spend a year there, and each year so spent will need another to do justice to their marvellous contents.

Turn back now, along Piccadilly, a unique panorama in itself, pa.s.s the cl.u.s.ter of great restaurants, theatres, music-halls, and other pleasure places that reach half a mile or so towards the Strand, where the hotels range round Charing Cross. Along this narrow but brilliant highway lie more theatres and a famous church or two, and the cold bath in use since the Romans made it two thousand years ago. Then up Fleet Street, whence the daily papers flutter morning, noon and night, until St. Paul's crowns the highest bit of the city. Its interior, and the monuments to the nation's naval and military heroes, will impress the visitor, though hardly so much as the exquisite singing at the short services of morning and afternoon, the strains of vocal and organ music floating and billowing in the great dome and along the lofty aisles.

Between St. Paul's and old Bishopsgate lies "the city," that is, the square mile or so given up to business, with no private houses left in it. Still going eastward the route pa.s.ses through the Billingsgate fishmarket quarter, where its famous language still flourishes.

Here stands "the Monument," a column surmounted with a gilt frame, commemorating the great fire of 1666, which began at this spot. If we take our stand far away on Blackfriars Bridge some thirty-five church steeples may be counted, each with its upper part painted black. The dome of St. Paul's is one of these. They mark the area of the fire, as each rebuilt church had to bear this memorial. But for this law St.

Paul's would have had a gilded dome. Soon we come to the Tower, and then the long line of docks, covering thousands of acres, and stretching miles down the river. Here the merchant wealth of the country, and of the world, is realizable as nowhere else.

London shows both sides of its shield: incalculable wealth, poverty that defies description. Years of familiarity with its slums, before slumming was invented as a fashionable fad, only deepened the conviction that all the n.o.ble efforts to eradicate the worst evils in the situation are utterly hopeless. The breed flourishes faster than the mild measures to improve it can operate.

The homes of aristocracy in Mayfair, the heart of the West End, disappoint those who expect magnificence--long rows of houses in narrow streets, once red brick, now dingy black and musty-looking, the monotony broken here and there by a newer and more pretentious stone mansion. The great Squares are a brighter feature. The same sooty brick houses, large and small, make the quadrangle, each having a key to the gates that enclose the park, in which nursemaids exercise the children and pet dogs, and an occasional game of croquet is ventured by country cousins.

The coating of soot on every branch and leaf is fatal to clean hands and summer costumes. The newer streets, and the region around the South Kensington Museums, make a better display of architecture. A little experience will reconcile the stranger to the general dowdiness of house exteriors, when he learns that the English climate has caused the English people to think most of the home within. The contrast on entering these plain structures is startling and gratifying. While this home love and home pride with homely ways are the strongest characteristics of the people, the saying of Charles the Second is still true, that there is no other country in which one can spend so many hours the year round in the open air. They spend as much of their daylight as possible out of doors and their evenings at home have a hearty, informal, delightful charm, wholly in contrast to the stiff and stagy receptions known in other cities.

The innate love of country life is shown by rich and poor alike. On the four legal bank holidays, the Monday after Christmas, Easter Monday, Whitsun Monday, and the first Monday in August, all business is suspended throughout the land, in most cases from the Friday evening until Tuesday morning. Then the ma.s.ses come forth in all their might and finery, they take possession of the street vehicles, the railways and boats. The "upper" and "upper middle" cla.s.ses religiously stay at home on those days, dreading the uproarious throngs of 'Arries and 'Arriets, who jam themselves ten deep into seats for five and monopolize every place of amus.e.m.e.nt. Yet it is a cheery sight to see all these hundreds of thousands of London toilers hurrying on wheels of all sorts away to Epping Forest, kept in its virgin state these four hundred years, and to Hampstead Heath, the Crystal Palace, the great parks, and similar handy breathing places, not to mention the favorite resorts within a twenty-mile radius. You will smile at grown folks playing skip the rope the whole day long, and kiss in the ring, and such like primitive games, but it is a wholesome sign when a whole population can find hearty pleasure in romping on the gra.s.s, for simple delights gained by healthy open-air exercise yield a more lasting happiness than is to be got by paying money to sit still and see hirelings make antics for you.

These outlying places are the crowning glory of London. Beautiful Windsor, Richmond Park, Kew Gardens, Epping Forest, and the ideally delightful Edens that nestle along the bends of the upper Thames, are all within the twenty-five mile circle, though one can find fifty fairy-grounds within five miles from any city station, where one can sprawl on the velvet gra.s.s beneath some spreading oak, and drink in the balmy scent-laden air, out of sight and sound of bricks and mortar. You may, certainly, be disturbed by the carolling of larks, linnets and others of the feathered choir, and perhaps by the waftings of some village church's silvery peal of bells, celebrating a wedding on the general holiday merrymaking. Even in the very heart of London's busiest quarters one can instantaneously step from the streets into gra.s.sy enclosures with great old trees, as silent and restful as if we were in some monastic cloister a century or two back. Until it has been experienced it is impossible to realize the beauty and mental relief of being able to turn from the rush and roar of the great city into one of these lovely retreats, or into the Cathedral, or Abbey, or nearest old church, where "the dim, religious light" of the stained windows, and the poetry of design and a.s.sociations, and perhaps the pealing organ, waft the jaded senses into lotos land.

Coming back to details of another kind it is to be remarked that for noise, we can conscientiously claim our own New York as champion unrivalled. This item of metropolitan noise in some wise hits off the characteristics of the nations. New York has its fearsome rattle-clatter, sharp, pungent, nerve-racking, incessant, typical of the ceaseless "hurry-up" of its folk, in talk and motion. All is "rapid-transit" rush, anyhow, anywhere. Paris has its light, flitting, skipping, pittypat noise, as of a million chattering magpies busy shifting quarters. London has altogether another noise--a deep, soft diapason, Niagara-like in its immensity and pitch--a low melodious roar, the noise of "the roaring loom of time"; noises of the past; great booming echoes of dead centuries; the wailings of populations crushed by endless wars, oppressed by dynasties of tyrants, crowned and uncrowned; smitten to death by plagues; swept out of life by Ignorance, Poverty, Evil Fate. Great London has gathered the voices of the peoples in a thousand years of matchless history, and he who listens aright can hear them all as they go up to heaven in the mighty volume of its sun-dimmed incense of smoke.

This London is a miniature world. It is made up of representatives of every nationality; is the hive of every land's industry; the market-place for every country's products. It is the mart where traders from all the ends of the earth transact their business; the bank to which every nation and tribe intrust their gains; the parlor, the parleying-place, the parliament of the earth, where rulers and subjects, races and clans, leaders and followers, explorers, travellers, scholars, reformers, do their best talking, most of it in the hearing of all peoples who use the English tongue.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LONDON BRIDGE]

London is more than all this. It is the purgatory and the elysium of generations of Britain's great souls. As the centuries have cast their hallowed tints of sombre gray over her dumbly eloquent stones, they have seen a long procession of sad figures threading the old, quaint, crooked byways and highways, figures of gaunt men and weary women, dropping out from the ranks here and there from sheer want of the wherewithal of life. These have been the forerunners, the seed-sowers, the pioneers of England's greatness--singers and seers, planners and day-dreamers, toilers with hand and brain, potential Caesars and Alfreds, Shakespeares and Arkwrights, Wrens, Reynoldses and Wellingtons, without a ray of the ripening sunshine. Old England had its genius-breeders long before the luckier later sons were born. Not a stone of St. Paul's that glorifies the powers of its designers but is also, when you rightly look, a tombstone to the memory of some unknown toiler whose brain, heart, muscle or blood was spent to make that cathedral sublime; nor can you pick up a page of your Chaucers, Shakespeares, Miltons, Goldsmiths, and Tennysons but, if you scan it closely enough, you will find it stained with the tears of countless strugglers, who wrought themselves sore in the cause of man's elevation, only to earn a nameless grave for themselves. Pioneers, they sank, but their bones so enriched the soil that the London which was a purgatory to them is an elysium to us to-day, pacing whose witching shades we may see, if we close our eyes on inferior sights, the ghosts of the legion of Greathearts who haunt the old home, whose coldness to them in their own day they have avenged by making it glow with the glory of their names and works.

This is the crowning charm of London the unique--that we tread on ground every inch of which has its thrilling story to tell. There Shakespeare trod. Here Marlowe fell. Here Otway died, starved. Here Carey fainted, foodless. Here Goldsmith trailed footsore, hungry, despairing of fame.

Here Johnson and Savage tramped the street all night with three cents between them for coffee at the street stall in the early morning. Here gentle De Quincey slept on the doorsteps. Hear him: "So then, Oxford Street, stony-hearted stepmother, thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans and drinkest the tears of children, the time was come at last, that I no more should pace in anguish thy never-ending terraces; no more should dream, and wake in captivity to the pangs of hunger. Thou, Oxford Street, hast echoed to the groans of innumerable hearts!" Aye, and still do thy throbbing streets, O glorious, pitiless London, reverberate with the wails of unsuspected thousands! To-day, this very day, the artist, the poet, the scholar, the inventor, the helpless sons of genius may perish, and most literally do perish, die of the heart-break that is born of hunger, in the wilderness of merry London. Who cannot readily recall a score of these tragedies, within any past score of years, where genius, talent, worth, character, industry, patient effort, failed to win recognition for the ill-fated ones--until the day _after_ their lamentable death?

GLASGOW, DUBLIN, LIVERPOOL, MANCHESTER.

London is not the typical English city, though types of almost every city in the eastern hemisphere can be unearthed in its mazes by those who know. The traveller who would get an understanding view of the United Kingdom must visit the great centres of industry in England, the sources of its modern strength, and take a look at the chief cities of Scotland and Ireland. But if he would penetrate deeper into the heart of the nation he will do well to halt by the way and get in touch with the unpretentious towns and lovely country scenes from whose old-fashioned folks most of the makers of the great cities have sprung.

Leaving London for the north a pa.s.sing thought is due to Birmingham, the most American of English cities in its marvellous activities, metal work of every kind especially, from "ancient" idols for pagan temples in the East to exquisite altar-plate and prayer-book bindings for the inst.i.tutional foes of idolatry. The local corruption of the name into Brummagem has added a descriptive term to the language, and it also ill.u.s.trates the interesting fact that these local p.r.o.nunciations usually preserve historical fact, as the now important city used to be no more than a hamlet adjoining Bromwich, hence Brumwich-ham. It showed the way, in the early seventies, how munic.i.p.alities of unsalaried and unselfish citizens can acquire their own lighting and waterworks and otherwise carry on the town's business at an immense saving over the ordinary system. A new city has arisen out of the old one and the running expenses are lower than ever. Sheffield, the centre of the cutlery industry, is well worth studying for a day, for its activity, the surrounding scenery, and the effect of foreign compet.i.tion upon its staple trade.

Manchester is familiar as the mother of the cotton trade. Its fortune was made by its spinning and weaving enterprises, by its quick utilization of the steam-engine and the inventions of mechanical genius.

The first working railway was that which ran between Manchester and Liverpool in 1830. It first gave England the honor of being regarded as the workshop of the world. The wider adaptations of steam power and the establishment of free trade enriched its capitalists and merchants beyond the dreams of their fathers. Many a Lancashire millionaire could not write his name. Within the memory of middle-aged men there have been great enterprises, princely philanthropies, and striking public speeches by self-made magnates who could not compose letters nor speak gracefully without help from others. The city is marked by its pillar of smoke by day and of furnace fire by night. Its wise people carry their umbrellas as constantly as their pocket-books, for "the rain it raineth every day," at least drizzleth. The population of Manchester and its twin city, Salford, touches three-quarters of a million, st.u.r.dy and stern Britons, proudly dubbing themselves "Manchester men," in distinction from "Liverpool gentlemen."

Its murky air, ungainly factories and buildings generally, impress the stranger with its intensely practical spirit. The poetry of existence reveals itself in the cosy interiors and the charming outskirt residences. It has romance in its history and a.s.sociations. Mancastra was a Roman camp in the reign of t.i.tus. Under the Saxons and the later Normans it fashioned itself to the times just as it did to the magic wand of the nineteenth-century genius. It fought for the Parliament against the Royalists. For more than three centuries it led in woollen and, latterly, cotton manufactures. Its district is rich in coal-mines.

The Bridgewater Ca.n.a.l dates from 1761, the princ.i.p.al one in the country.

A greater, though apparently a less wise, because unprofitable, enterprise, has been the ship-ca.n.a.l. American cotton has always been unshipped at Liverpool, by which its brokers have greatly profited. To save tolls, delays and cost of rail transport, Manchester men made an imitation Suez Ca.n.a.l by deepening and adapting certain waterways, by which ships can pa.s.s into the new port of Manchester without troubling Liverpool. It may be hard to realize that Manchester can scarcely hope to become again the world's cotton factory, seeing that she has not only taught other nations how to do her work, but has long been selling them her machinery and coal for that purpose. A momentous sign of the times is the rapid migration of her capital and brain to j.a.pan and India, where operatives of sufficient skill are content with a mere fraction of the home-workers' wage, and ocean transport is saved.

The sight-seer will be charmed by the n.o.ble city hall with its tall tower, its peal of twenty-one bells, and the public recitals on its great organ. Manchester possesses the oldest free library in the world, Chetham's, with 40,000 rare old books ranged on the shelves in the old mansion rooms where some of them have reposed for nearly three hundred years. It also has the first of modern free libraries on the grand scale, opened in 1851, a gift from a citizen, greatly enlarged since.

Its famous Free Trade Hall has echoed with the eloquence of the world's famous men and women, in speech and song. Scarcely an American statesman or orator of note, being in England since 1856, but has been cheered by its audiences. The public meetings of all kinds in this hall have been among the most valuable educational influences of the half century. It was said by Lord Salisbury, many years before he became Premier, that "as Manchester thinks to-day, England thinks to-morrow," and it used to be true.

The traveller should try to be in Manchester in Whitsun Week, to see its most striking characteristic. It is the Sunday-school children's gala time and all business is demoralized in their honor. On the Monday twenty or thirty thousand Church of England scholars march with bands to a service in the Cathedral, the whole town and country around crowding the streets. Tuesday is the only off-day. Every other one is a half-holiday for those who do not take whole ones. Each church gives its scholars picnics in parks or on local farms in the afternoons, and a whole day's country outing on one day. Friday is the grown folks' picnic day, and on Sat.u.r.day the Total Abstainers' parade. They are called Tee-totallers, because one of the founders, a Lancashire man, happened to stammer in a speech in trying to say _total abstinence_.

The Cathedral is not a great edifice, but has many remarkable fifteenth-century carvings and side chapels. It is affectionately known, in the local vernacular, as "t'owd church," the old church. On Easter Mondays the villagers and working folk used to crowd in to be married, as many as two hundred couples being despatched at a blow, the same service answering for all simultaneously. The city may be proud of its Victoria University, the development of Owen's College, founded in 1847.

Of its many famous characters, the names of De Quincey and Harrison Ainsworth are perhaps the best known in literature.

Liverpool is thirty-six miles from Manchester and three from the sea.

Its first charter was granted in 1229 and it sent two members to Parliament in 1296, yet its population until the seventeenth century was only about one thousand. It has the distinction of having made the first dock, penning up with flood-gates sufficient water to keep ships afloat between the fall and rise of tides. This was built in 1709. It is unkind, though true, to record that Liverpool's first fortune was made in the slave-trade. Its ships went to the west coast of Africa and took in cargoes of natives whom they then transported to the West Indies as slaves, being paid for by cargoes of sugar and rum, brought home to Liverpool. This traffic began about 1720. It was suppressed by Parliament in 1807, the number of ships then engaged in it being 185, carrying over forty thousand slaves annually. A good deal of privateering was carried on during the eighteenth-century wars, an echo of which survived until the American Civil War of 1861-65.

Liverpool has many unique features of interest. It has not many manufactures, and only four or five ship-building establishments, for reasons which will appear in the pages on Glasgow. Its commercial growth has been extraordinary. In 1800 the population was under 78,000; in 1900 it was about 750,000. In the first-named year the tonnage of its ships was 450,000, and is now nearly 10,000,000. Its commerce is chiefly with America. A magnificent sight is its endless array of docks, stretching along both sh.o.r.es of the Mersey in a line, measured continuously, of over thirty miles. Many a stately procession of great ships glides up the s.p.a.cious river, laden with precious cargoes not to be estimated by statistics. Over fifty thousand Americans, it is said, visit England each summer, entering by this majestic water-gate. Who shall tell the influence of this mingling of kindred peoples, the moral and national worth of all they bring and all they take?

It is a new city, as towns go in the old country, with few visible marks of its history. The public buildings are not specially imposing, but St.

George's Hall stands on a commanding site and in exterior and interior holds its own with the best civic temples, in s.p.a.ciousness and grace.

The great public library near by does honor to the city and to its donor. The art gallery is remarkable for its construction, as for its exhibits. It has a circular floor of one hundred feet in diameter without columns or any intermediate support, and beneath it is an amphitheatre, used for lectures, with its benches hewn out of the solid rock.

To ferry across the river to Birkenhead and Bootle, and down to New Brighton and other popular resorts, is an excellent way to appreciate the greatness of this famous port. As a city it has little charm, except in its surroundings.

All the excitements of the transatlantic voyage may be had in miniature (except the _mal de mer_) in crossing the lively channel to Dublin. The metropolis of Ireland must not be judged by commercial and cosmopolitan standards.

A city of many contrasts, stirring a.s.sociations and poetical interest, two patriotisms, two grand divisions of its community, are discernible in the air. On the one hand is the Castle, lacking the castle feature and charm, with a pervading sense of royalism _minus_ the outward symbols of state which give it popularity and influence. On the other is the vibrant nationalism which, in many tones and by a hundred tokens, expresses its hostility to the emblems of what it regards as alien dominance. Pathetic in its way is the decay of once fashionable, not to say aristocratic, districts, that have lapsed into commonplace, and many fine streets hobn.o.b with veritable slums. This gradual decline of much residential property impoverished old families and added to the sum of general discontent. Dublin has never taken kindly to the idea of becoming a commercial city, such as Liverpool. The intellectual head of the island, it prides itself on the genius of its professional people.