12. A Squalid Village

Strange that the wealthiest class in the wealthiest country in the world
should so long have been content to inhabit a squalid village!

I'm not going to compare London, as Englishmen often do, with Paris or
Vienna. I won't do two great towns that gross injustice. And, indeed,
comparison here is quite out of the question. You don't compare Oxford
with Little Peddlington, or Edinburgh with Thrums, and then ask which is
the handsomest. Things must be alike in kind before you can begin to
compare them. And London and Paris are not alike in kind. One is a city,
and a noble city; the other is a village, and a squalid village.

No; I will not even take a humbler standard of comparison, and look at
London side by side with Brussels, Antwerp, Munich, Turin. Each of those
is a city, and a fine city in its way; but each of them is small. Still,
even by their side, London is again but a squalid village. I insist upon
that point, because, misled by their ancient familiarity with London,
most Englishmen have had their senses and understandings so blunted on
this issue, that they really don't know what is meant by a town, or a
fine town, when they see one. And don't suppose it's because London is
in Britain and these other towns out of it that I make these remarks:
for Bath is a fine town, Edinburgh is a fine town, even Glasgow and
Newcastle are towns, while London is still a straggling, sprawling,
invertebrate, inchoate, overgrown village. I am as free, I hope, from
anti-patriotic as from patriotic prejudice. The High Street in Oxford,
Milsom Street in Bath, Princes Street in Edinburgh, those are all fine
streets that would attract attention even in France or Germany. But the
Strand, Piccadilly, Regent Street, Oxford Street--good Lord, deliver us!

One more _caveat_ as to my meaning. When I cite among real towns
Brussels, Antwerp, and Munich, I am not thinking of the treasures of art
those beautiful places contain; that is another and altogether higher
question. Towns supreme in this respect often lag far behind others of
less importance--lag behind in those external features and that general
architectural effectiveness which rightly entitle us to say in a broad
sense, "This is a fine city." Florence, for example, contains more
treasures of art in a small space than any other town of Europe; yet
Florence, though undoubtedly a town, and even a fine town, is not to be
compared in this respect, I do not say with Venice or Brussels, but even
with Munich or Milan. On the other hand, London contains far more
treasures of art in its way than Boston, Massachusetts; but Boston is a
handsome, well-built, regular town, while London--well, I will spare you
the further repetition of the trite truism that London is a squalid